The Long Road North

I can't say that I've ever considered Michigan to be a great vacation paradise. I think of automobile factories, the occasional cherry orchard, and that football team that we won't discuss here. I've had a couple of friends from Michigan, and a couple move there. Beyond that, it's just the mitten up there...the place I-75 disappears to on the other side of Toledo. And then, on the generosity of friends, we vacationed there. Michigan will never strike my ear, my mind, or my heart the same way again.

Just north of the state line, Michigan looks pretty much the same as Ohio. There are cities, suburbs, and small spans of trees lining the highway. Bypassing Detroit, urban life fades into the distance, bringing farmland rolling up to meet the highway. The cities gradually return, but in smaller scale. But then, you notice something about the trees. Small clumps and sparse stretches of deciduous trees are replaced by darker, denser woods, evergreens gradually becoming the norm rather than the exception. Against the dark green of the summer foliage, an occasional stand of birches appears, gleaming white against the heavy underbrush climbing to meet the lower branches of the trees. You begin to feel as though you are passing deeper and deeper into a forgotten time and place -- as though the trappings of the modern world are garish intrusions on the world that has taken hold here in the centuries since the glaciers receded.

There is another recurring feature that punctuates the wall of trees. Whether affected by some disease, or by the emerald-ash bore that has invaded in recent years, there are a number of trees dead or dying that reach out with baring branches, grasping to hold their positions among their still vibrant companions. It seems odd...there are some who stand, straight and true, as though offering their life and their strength upward in encouragement and support of the newer trees and vines below, even as their leaves wither and drift away. But then, there are others that are bent and gnarled, even out to the tips of their tiniest twigs. They reach down toward the ground, not with the graceful sweep of a willow, but like an old crone's fingers, reaching to touch the soul of the earth below, and either be drawn in completely and consumed, or revived by some sorcery that eludes the minds of men. It all unfolds in silence, and they ultimately wait to be taken by the wind. They will fall into the waiting arms of the vigorous young beneath them, and then to earth, and she will receive them back in silence.

Just south of Grayling, the forest shows yet another lilting step in its delicate dance; a fire has run through. High in the pines, the needles still glimmer silvery green against the sky. On the ground, dense ferns fan out, almost unnaturally verdant, carpeting the rocky earth from the highway's edge to the fields beyond the trees. Blackened trunks span the blue sky between the layers of green. They are deceptive; such a scorched bridge must surely be too weak to bear life. And yet life indeed rolls on. Fresh greenery above and below the fire's fingerprint gives shelter to all manner of small creatures. Birds still nest, small animals scurry among the roots of the trees, and deer delicately pick their way among the ferns, grazing cautiously as they mind the strange visitors that roll and growl along the stone ribbon that winds through the woods.

It's always the same, but it's never the same. It has ever been. It may continue, but it may be snuffed out without a moment's notice. It is a paradox, but it can be no other way than this: Life and death in intimate dance among the trees.