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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Sunday to Friday

#walking

Who — ?
I see.

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.

Further experiments in ink — today a black with cool undertones made from carbonized wild grapevines.

#ink #pigment

From a long walk with friends across the dunes yesterday. Bearberry and juniper, sand, sky, sun. One last loop of the year.

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.

Went for a long walk on the dunes, took a proper photo of the book on home ground. Drift to drift, breath to fiber.

Flat calm at the shore this afternoon: fowl clatter way out on the water, old light before the solstice.

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