The Most Beautiful Thing in the World

            This very morning I ducked out of two of my classes to spend a few hours in the woods and fields. Up before the break of dawn, I was bound for a ten or fifteen minute trek across the corn field by our house, a walk that consisted of me constantly tripping over the rows of cut corn. In my journey to the hunting blind that my brother put together between two fields, I spooked a deer only to hear it run off, as it was too dark yet for me to see it. As I settled into the cold chair, I waited for light to break and visibility to just enough to fire a gun and not get hounded by the DNR.

            As I sat there, waiting, I experienced one of the most beautiful things that a person may ever experience: a crisp November sunrise. Nothing is more enjoyable than watching as the sun slowly peaks up over the dark tree line. You sit there, in the silence and cold, your breath leaving trails of steam drifting into the pastel sky, slowly noticing that your eye sight is either improving, or it is truly daylight on its ways. Before you know it, the darkness that cloaked you in a realm of privacy has given way to a light that exposes you to the world, and in return, exposes the whole world to you. Sunrise is quite magical in being a true time of awakening.

Why my Mom is the Best Mom Ever and What I Did

           Wednesday nights have been my night off of work for several months now, which is significant considering I never used to have a consistent schedule. Many of these Wednesdays I will spend a few hours with my mom, watching TV and talking about life. This is the time when we get to really connect and catch up. Our conversation had casually turned to deer (which is a huge and very common topic in our house right now) and I expressed to my mother the upset feelings I had over not being able to go out this year. Upon this, my mother directed me to bring her their cash and she gave me the fifteen dollars I needed to buy my hunting license. There is no doubt that my mother is the best mother in the world. Because of her, I get to go hunting this year, like all of the years before.

            In a rushed hour, I was ready for the woods. We hunted out on my boyfriend’s family’s property at the very back of a rugged, forested 80-acre parcel. I then continued to sit in a tree stand throughout the remaining two hours before dark. The stand I sat in was nothing more than a metal rack, perched some ten to fifteen feet in the air, with no supports and a steady wind against my back. Safety hazards aside, the view was gorgeous. Nothing but tall, majestic trees surrounded me and all that filled my ears were the occasional musical notes of the arriving winter birds.

And They Went Hunting (The Long Anticipated 15th of November)

            The weekend was a time of preparation. Shopping for last minute supplies and pulling the camouflage from the closets, my father and my brothers were getting ready for the fifteenth, opening day of firearm season. I honestly cannot remember opening day ever falling on a Monday before, but as time has it, this year it did. My brothers were given the day off of school in order to spend their morning and afternoon sitting in the field, but I didn’t get to go along.

            This year, due to financial reasons and time conflicts, I decided that I was not even going to buy my hunting license. It broke my heart to watch as they donned their gear and headed out into the dark morning to wait for the deer. I had never gone before without going out. In fact, I had been hunting practically every year since I could walk. I would run out in the shadow of my father, toy gun in hand, and sit there in my swishy snow pants and coat waiting; I was a little girl with a love for hunting formed at a young age. So, this year, to not even have the opportunity to go out, I was in a large amount of emotional pain. What was a girl like me to do without her yearly fill of hunting? The effects of college on my lifestyle have just become very realistic for me, sometimes you have to give up on one thing to maintain another.

A Cold Wind Blows

           As a long time Michigan native, the weather recently has been no shock. Our near-record highs have been absolutely wonderful, but really not all that unusual. This glorious warm-up, though a pure blessing, has created a terrible monster of me. I refuse to succumb to the winter coat. I deny my warm wooly hat, gloves, and scarf to laugh in the face of the cold old man winter as he approaches quickly upon us all. Maybe I’m putting way too much faith in my overestimated and overstrained immune system, but the resistance of a winter coat in a Michigan mid-November really has a thrilling aspect to it. How many people can flaunt that they can withstand the weather in Michigan, where it typically snows six months of the year, without their winter coat in the middle of November?
            But, for as much fun as this weather is creating for me, there is a growing pain within me. All of the trees have spilled their leaves and I am the one left crying over these spilled leaves. The sun shines less and the clouds loom over our bustling heads. As many people scurry about, I’m found within the crowd with my face turned to the sky, longing for my light to return. The next couple of months will bring less smiling and laughter from me, as I have never adapted well to the gray and white monochromatic landscape of winter. Where winter will make most people upset over temperatures, winter will make me upset in general, with no scapegoat to point to. When the snow begins falling this year (and actually sticks to the ground), I will be counting the days to spring, but until then I’ll be found wearing a frown for a greater portion of the day. Winter, you’re giving me wrinkles.

The meaning of the family garden…

            Every year, for many years now, we have grown a family vegetable garden. Usually the garden is put together by everyone in the family. Everyone puts in equal effort in hope of great and plentiful harvests in the late summer and early fall. For three to four months, we water the garden fervently to fight off drought and pray that when it does rain that it doesn’t flood out the seeds and seedlings that we so carefully place precise distances from each other. A lot of patience and hope is planted into the soil, hoping to be able to eat the fruits of our own labor and even share the surplus with others around us. The plants we plant by hand return to our hands on the dinner table, where we feast as a family, strengthening our family ties.
            This past summer, though was not one of great harvest. The growing season was filled with too much rain with severe dry spells in between storms. Our corn didn’t turn out as large and edible as previous years (the year before we had over 6 dozen good ears, this year we had only 1). We lost most of our peppers, we lost several pumpkin and melon plants, and our potatoes were tiny. But, the growing season did grace us with some very plentiful carrots (one measuring about nine inches in circumference). Carrots grow best in black soil that is extremely quenched, and the rain over the summer made our dry soil more ideal for these root vegetables. We harvested many, though small, onions, which we probably will not completely use. Our pumpkin plant that did survive provided us with over twenty-five beautifully shaped pumpkins that, like the onions, were also small in size. We were also fortunate enough to receive some surprise late growing watermelon that sprung up in the weed-infested garden in the early fall, much after the rest of our watermelon had been picked. The questionable growing season, though not as good as seen in past years, provided us with a great amount of satisfaction in the long run and, as always, proved to be a good deal of entertainment as we watched our seeds grow and change, much like our lives do.

An adventure and a promise…

After having read twice about the famed Michigan pawpaw, I decided that it was time for an expedition out into the mucky black soil on property that belonged to my boyfriend’s family. So upon waking early in the morning, I watched and waited for the right time to embark upon this journey I had so carefully planned. The night previous, while chewing on the stem of a sassafrass leaf, I stumbled upon a curious story that I had never heard before. Apparently my boyfriend of several years had already tasted this fruit coveted by the English 3110 class at WMU. I immediately interrogated him to discover that these mysterious fruit grew only a mile from my house. I knew that I had to hunt them down. The trip was carefully planned, and donned in my cowboy hat, I took off to find the mystery grove of trees. We wandered through trail after trail of trees of every kind. I identified maples, oaks, pines, everything except for the tree I wanted to find (and oddly had no clue what it looked like). We spent well over an hour in the heat of the day trailblazing through the woods, only to have no luck. We shook tree after tree, hoping that by some curious miracle an odd, green, banana-shaped fruit would fall to our feet. No such luck.

                We returned to my house empty handed, only having discovered a trespasser’s arrow lying on the ground. There are fruit somewhere in that dense, adventurous woods, but they evade my eyes. I vowed to find them, especially after being attacked by countless prickly vines. One of these October days I will find them, that sneaky little fruit, the pawpaw.

What I learn in school…

I’ve spent a good deal of time lately reflecting on the class. The readings have been, in so many ways, much more enjoyable than I expected. They are gripping stories that hit really close to home in so many ways. But, the most shockingly lovable aspect of the class (outside of the people in it) has to be the guest speakers. I’ve always imagined guest speakers to be where you just sit and listen to someone talk about what they’ve accomplished, or listen to them explain why they wrote what they did, their motivations and struggles, but instead, the guest speakers we’ve had so far are interactive and incredible. I was completely in love with the fact that instead of just listening to Alison Swan, we were able to connect and have legitimate conversation with her! It was so incredibly fun! Then, with Dave Dempsey, there was more listening involved, but he came fully armed with humor and kept my attention with ease.
                The readings we’ve done in the class so far have really kept me going. I’ve never been the English student who does all of the reading for class, but in this class, with the assigned readings, I’ve found it to be a pleasant and enriching experience to keep up on the readings. I enjoyed the humor of Bill Bryson as he hiked the trail. The readings in Alison Swans book really made me reflect on the lakes that I’ve grown up around. So far, though, my favorite stands as Tom Springer’s book. There is such a deep and meaningful connection that I can draw with his book that I end up feeling like he could be my next-door neighbor. This class and the readings we do within it have really deepened the feelings I already had for nature and the impact it has upon my life.