C. S. Mills
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cscottmills.com
C. S. Mills
@cscottmills.com
Writer and walker in the world of generation. Author of ‘Drift Gestures’ (The Lune, 2023).

cscottmills.com/polylith
Day five, packing up. Sun spills through a gap between dark blue waves and low cumulus at dawn and lights the point. Farewell for now. Not much walking to speak of today.

#pointTurnstone
August 29, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Day four, six-odd miles off trail through dense forest. A few brutal sections of blown down beech, a redtail alarming over the canopy, tired legs. A lovely mossy spot for lunch and a wild, dizzying swim in huge waves back at camp.

#walking #pointTurnstone
August 28, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Day three, fourteen miles after a late start. Two wavy hours on the government boat only to end up just down the beach. We made up for it with a brisk pace across the island. Elderberry, sugar maple, more beech thickets. A hidden lake just as the rain arrived, five long miles back to camp, to swim.
August 28, 2025 at 12:16 AM
Day two, seven steep miles. Another spring, a cabin in ruins, one dune fossilized by forest and a second still at work. Feeling good.

#walking #pointTurnstone
August 26, 2025 at 6:59 PM
The first of five days of fieldwork on the island. Twelve miles off trail led to two springs, steep valleys flanking the moraine, endless beech thickets. Back along shore for a swim at sunset. Cooked.

#walking #pointTurnstone
August 26, 2025 at 1:32 AM
A week of solitary work on North Manitou Island wraps up. A storm delays the boat, so it continues for now. Damp, thundershaken, sipping tea.

#walking #pointTurnstone #lakeMichigan
August 11, 2025 at 1:44 PM
June 29, 2025 at 6:50 PM
June 28, 2025 at 8:57 PM
With solstice comes Pitcher’s thistle in bloom. The arrival I most anticipate, a sweet friend faithful on the dunes amid long and sometimes grueling days of fieldwork.
June 23, 2025 at 8:54 PM
Sunday to Friday

#walking
May 17, 2025 at 1:16 PM
Who — ?
I see.
April 25, 2025 at 6:40 PM
Day four of work at the old lifesaving station on North Manitou Island, where flickers and starlings, juncos, mergansers, killdeer, gulls, eagles, snow buntings and sparrows outnumber me ten-thousand to one. It’s good this way for a week here and there.
April 20, 2025 at 1:57 PM
Further experiments in ink — today a black with cool undertones made from carbonized wild grapevines.

#ink #pigment
March 1, 2025 at 10:46 PM
From a long walk with friends across the dunes yesterday. Bearberry and juniper, sand, sky, sun. One last loop of the year.
December 31, 2023 at 6:40 PM
Solstice sunrise dune walk. Coyotes calling, deer in the swales, drift frozen hard underfoot. Lay in the lee of the jack pines as Venus leads us in.
December 21, 2023 at 5:24 PM
Went for a long walk on the dunes, took a proper photo of the book on home ground. Drift to drift, breath to fiber.
December 14, 2023 at 4:03 PM
Flat calm at the shore this afternoon: fowl clatter way out on the water, old light before the solstice.
December 7, 2023 at 10:15 PM
The first copies of my book arrived yesterday! "Drift Gestures" is a collection of 42 poems emerging from the dunes and swales of my home peninsula.

Copies are available here:
poetsonearth.com#gestures
December 7, 2023 at 5:43 PM