Road Trip!

"The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail.

Travel too fast and you miss all you are traveling for."

 - Louis L'Amour, Ride the Dark Trail

We do lots of things as a family - which is fun. But sometimes all the doing seems hurried and harried. Especially when it involves gathering together 5 grown children, their spouses and 11 grandchildren.

Which is why I relish the memories of last summer's road trip with just three of my grandchildren.

When I was planning the trip, I did so with a bit of trepidation due to memories of road trips of my childhood:

a.) Being crammed into the back seat of some sedan from the sixties - no air conditioning. Windows rolled fully down. Drowning out any music that might be blaring from an AM station. Whipping locks of hair into ice cream cones that dripped faster than they could be licked. Dust from dirt roads being lodged in every pore on your face so you arrived at your destination covered in grim - a situation that always brought out my great-grandmother's hanky. A bit of spit and some brisk rubbing would always dislodge the most stubborn grit.

b.) The vomiting. I am not sure if that was because of the insidious wind, my great-grandmother's tendency to lurch toward her destination, my obsessive reading in the back seat without "watching the horizon" as directed, or the fact that road trips always involved junk food of every shape and flavor imagined.

c.) The boredom. The kind of boredom that caused me - for entertainment's sake - to pick, pick, pick on littler children in the car until they turned into lunatics, threatening to shove their teddy bear down my throat.

So, as much as I love my grandchildren, I wasn't sure I wanted to be locked in a car with them for 6 hours of forced togetherness as we made the trip to and from Drummond together.

To my surprise, not only was there no vomiting, no complaints of boredom and very little combat in the back seat - it was actually fun!

It was fun because we decided to saunter. I love to saunter! Sauntering means there is always a starting point and an ending point to your trip - but what lies between those points on the map is left up to the imagination of the travelers.

Which explains why our trip back downstate from Drummond last year took over 13 hours and involved numerous phone calls from the parents of my grandchildren wondering if we were okay and when we thought we might get home.

And why one granddaughter whispered to her cousins - "Grandma's a bit crazy." To which they responded: "We know, isn't it fun?"

We climbed Castle Rock, got mesmerized at the Mystery Spot, ate lunch overlooking the Straits of Mackinac, shopped at Sea Shell City - and somehow missed viewing the Man Eating Clam!

Headed to Cross Village - but made a sudden U-turn to be totally blown away by a huge field of sunflowers.

Played on the shores of Lake Michigan as we searched for where I use to take their fathers camping when they were young.

Drank virgin Maragritas at the Legg's Inn.

Used a construction site Port-a-John in Harbor Springs because we were laughing so hard from some silly joke that we knew we couldn't make it to a 'real bathroom'.

Played Auto Bingo using game cards we had purchased on Drummond at The Islander Shoppe.

As we meandered down the Lake Michigan coast peals of laughter came from the backseat. Cousins. Slap-happy and tired. Locked in a car with a pile of junk food as the water and trees and lakeshore landmarks flowed past our windows.

Learning how to enjoy the ride as much as the destination.

"All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost."

 - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954

Poking Around . . .

“If all the lakes were chocolate cakes

And all the isles were great big cup cakes

Then how lucky I would be

For all the Lakes surround me!”

- Candis Wilds

I was 6, maybe 7 when I first penned those lines while attending elementary school in St. Ignace. We had been assigned the task of composing a poem about a place we longed to visit. It was my first introduction to creative writing – it was also my first introduction to the sting of rejection. I received an “F” along with a strong lecture about conforming to instructions. I sat quietly during the lecture, knowing full well that while Ms. Peterson was to be admired for her “flat lander” clothes and manners she still knew nothing about the magic of living in the U.P. or of the art of “poking around”. And she wasn’t willing to accept a “brilliant child” such as myself being enthralled with the idea of living out my life wandering the woods and waterways of the eastern Upper Peninsula. We spent the rest of that year at odds.

I was taught to poke around at a very young age by my Great-grandpa Wilds. Sundays were always reserved for our walks. We would stop at the shed and collect the burlap bag waiting silently in a corner and then head off in one direction or the other. Direction was never important. Poking around was – paying close attention, prying at stones with sticks, turning over rocks and lifting logs to look for snakes and other crawly things, kneeling close to search out the tiny bones mixed with fur in an animal’s scat, tracing tracks and telling tales associated with how they came to be, poking a cattail down some hole. “Poking around” as Grandpa put it.

People who poke around have burrs stuck to their shoelaces and rocks in their pockets. Their days are not divided into hours and minutes but by the passage of the sun across the sky – or the rude grumblings of a stomach reminding them of a meal missed while wandering. They appear – to those who walk with the purpose of exercise in mind – to ramble aimlessly. They spit into the water to make the fish rise. They randomly gather wildflowers to bestow on those they love. Often they stand still for a long time, listening, and then head off to follow some far away sound.

Unlike hiking, poking around has neither destination nor timetable. And while Thoreau insisted that you must think while you walk, poking around has no such noble aspirations. This is because poking around doesn’t take much sustained thought. Poking around simply leads to nourishing that inherent sense of wonder we are all born with but which few of us manage to sustain into adulthood – children are often the best at poking around.

A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune, that as adults, most of us have lost this true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring. “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder,” Rachael Carson wrote, “he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy excitement and mystery of the world we live in.” I was blessed to have the companionship of my Great-grandfather and later, after his death, the encouragement of my Great-grandmother to continue poking around on my own.

It is this indestructible sense of wonder, this unfailing love of woods and water inherited from my Great-grandparents – which managed to withstand Ms. Peterson’s early chastisements – that has often sustained me in adulthood.

And it is this same inborn sense of wonder I hope to help my grandchildren keep alive. A sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and unknown, exploring nature by becoming receptive to what lies all around them, inspired by long lazy meanderings through the woods and along the waterways of Drummond Island.

And so we poke around together as we roam about in the early mornings while the sun rises over Potagannissing Bay, trailing sticks in the clay along the shore, stacking stones to “mark our way” and gathering pockets full of rocks to be used in some yet unknown craft project – often carrying a burlap bag in which to gather our treasures. And we keep alive my Great-grandparents legacy while we chant the lines to some poem about the Great Lakes penned by the little girl who grew up to be their somewhat unconventional grandmother.


“All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost.”
- J. R. R. Tolkien (1892 - 1973), The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954