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.
After an extremely anxious, sleepless night along the road near Escanaba, our northern trek continues.
Upper Peninsula white birch differ from those in the Lower. The white is whiter. The blackened edges are blacker, and the trunks, although similarly straight, are heavy, bulky, bigger, as though they’ve withstood colder temps, stronger gales, and lengthier winters.
In this western corner – the stretch between the two “Greats,” Michigan and Superior, rests the remnants of a thousand emptied motels, a hundred abandoned trailer homes, and a dozen or more ghost farms, their barns fallen to the ground, their fences derailed. Bumpkin towns dot the way from one county seat to another. An occasional manicured lawn surrounds an attractive log or ranch home, reminding the traveler that some people choose this remote life, willing to trek a hefty distance to the “city” for necessities. Inwardly, I am a bit envious of their distanced life, wondering if they find a greater solitude and communion with God than I.
Finally the end is in sight, the end being the big lake, deeper than any of the five, and proven more dangerous and deadly. But today, it feigns innocence. It is calm and blue, enticing us to settle on its southern shore. We are drawn to its frigid waters, unlike the waters we know this time of year at the very opposite point of this beautiful state.
In order to hear the waves and the breeze, you might want to “pause” the website music. Find the Music player to make adjustments. It’s on the side of the post – or at the bottom.
We have been placed on Site 22, between a small rise to the south and the lake itself to the north. Ron angles our little trailer east to west, causing our door and our largest window to open directly to the water.
It is the perfect view, and I am drawn to the water, so I step across flat-layered, red slate rock and reach to touch it, ignoring and forgetting for now the couple setting up their tent on the nearby site and the man across the way placing his American flag upon his teardrop trailer. Nothing else matters. At this moment, the site, the wild blackberry, the hard maple, which has pushed its way through the red rock, and the Lake itself are mine. I am the sole owner of this property on the Great Lake. And the joy of ownership fills my lungs as I breathe purified air thrust over miles and miles of cold, deep water. It is only mid summer, but I want to stay here until the waves freeze into small mountains of ice on this huge body of water, until the campground closes, and I know I have found a secret place of the Father.
Our Father owns it all. I am His heir. Are you? He has asked you to be. Click here to learn more at https://kathiwaligora.com/become-a-believer/
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Further Reading: Romans 8:17, Galatians 3:29, Ephesians 3:6