Christian Author and Speaker
That last day of our northern getaway, we drove on to revisit and re-create the final sites from my memories in 1955. In this case, I’m glad only the photo setting was recreated – not the actual event that occurred here at my grandpa’s cabin many years ago.
I was just a wee one. My family was at the cabin – a small log cabin in the deep woods, just south of L’Anse, Michigan, located on a sandy road on the way to Little Mountain.
Daddy bought a new Kodak 3 mm in 1955, so my family, including my brother and sister, inherited a plethora of photos, most preserved in slide format. Some years ago, I transferred these slides to digital form, saving them on disks for my family. I’m nostalgic, to say the least. I thrive in a mid-century décor shop. Program my TV to record 40’s and 50’s movies on Turner Classic. So when I view those digital photos or browse through my mother’s photo albums, I seem to “go back in time.” And I love it!
(You’ll hear waterfall in addition to the music on this post. If it’s distracting, feel free to mute either as you read.)
When I became a Christian, I became a new person in spirit. Naturally, my spirit yearns to shelter in the comfort and protection of the Father. The Psalmist refers to that place of shelter as the secret place of the Most High God, El Elyon. (Psalm 91:1) And when we dwell, actually reside, in that secret place, we find rest. Rest of mind – peace – assurance. Isn’t this kind of rest what we really want? I do.
Some places on this earth, even right here in Michigan, would make amazing secret places.
When I was a teenager, I had a clock radio much like the one pictured. Mine had a “snooze” button on top, which I used a lot! An analog clock is rarely used today, is it? Instead, nowadays we most often look at the digital clocks on our dashboards, ovens, and especially on our phones. Occasionally, when Ron and I are driving, we cross a time zone line, and one or both of our cell phones doesn’t “catch up!” That is confusing. Well, something similar happened to us during our time camping in the Porkies.
I had looked at photos and articles in the brochures, pamphlets, and travel guides of the park, considering which sites Ron and I might want to see. Much to my distress, one article had a photo of a bat, which I immediately covered up by folding the corner of the paper over it.
Contrary to the report on Ron’s weather app, the sun was shining today, so we drove up the mountain, 1000 feet above Lake Superior to the “Lake of the Clouds.”
The Porcupine Mountains in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, are unbelievably remote. Our campsite is at the Northeast tip of this huge state park;
Ron and I have a passion for waterfalls, so today we made plans to see five waterfalls in surrounding areas outside this huge park. We marked them on our map, set our gps for directions, and headed toward Ironwood on the Wisconsin border. Our goal: five waterfalls.
We saw one.
The dull but busy road we encountered yesterday in the Lower Peninsula (click here to read Post 1) changed to an unusually quiet stretch of lonesome highway as we crossed the large bridge and headed west, chasing the sun in its setting hours. It was like we had traveled some decades back in time.
Today’s highway is paved, flat, barren, and ugly, but adequate and necessary, nonetheless, for our purpose of journey – to pull our little “home away from home,” headed north to our destination, yet 600 miles away. The eyes of my driver, the man I’ve journeyed with nearly 50 years must scan the road, follow the lanes, obeying the signage and lineage. I choose to observe the landscape – instead of the road.