The light flickers through the window on the warm white walls of my grandparent’s cottage as my eyes begin to blink open. The space between the full moon of night and the morning felt like only a second even if it was hours. The light of morning dances through the willow tree just beyond my window that laps water from Crooked Lake that’s fed by springs all year long and keeps it cool even deep into the warmest days of summer. Cotton gauzy drapes cover the windows and the light cool breeze of early summer distill the morning light floating into the room. It feels safe beneath the quilt that covers my little body of all of 6 years old. I linger there in the sound of the lapping water, the rustling of the trees, the chatter of family a floor below, and the clank of coffee cups and plates as everyone awakes.
As I lay there, in the far off distance I hear the call of a loon “oooo—-AHH——ooo” echoing over the water. The sound hangs over the fog of the early summer morning like it exists within the fog itself. A sound I have come to hold precious even in its haunting nature. The sound runs a tingle down my spine when I hear it. A feeling of of joy and sadness all at once. It awakens me like a call to find the loon itself as it calls to its mate across the glass textured lake. The call is a sound of home of place of finding my way to where I was always meant to be just as the call does the same for a fellow loon. Each morning I spend at the lake house at my grandparent’s I remember this sound as much as the willow that rustled out my window. It is likely I heard it before I could even remember and it is written into my soul. I hang onto the sound every morning like a hook into the depths of my soul.
As I lay there awaking in the morning, the light dances and the loon calls. A sign of morning on the lake with people I love. People I call home despite our differences and ways of perceiving how to live. There is love. Laying there I know just how the willow rustles its long branches into the water outside and the lake laps at the grassy shoreline by the dock where I sit most days with a fishing pole in my hand just waiting for a fish to find my worm. The inland lake at this Crooked Lake house has a scent I cannot describe that even now as an adult. Yet every time I have driven the road even decades since my grandparents sold the home I still feel something stir in me. The scent of moss, fresh water, fish, pines, cedars, cool air, soil, and the mineral makeup of a place you know in your body because you have been made of them. It’s written in me like a story I have inscribed in the deepest places of my soul.
In April, my grandfather passed away quietly and peacefully on Good Friday. He was a good man. He raised five kids and educated many. He valued our education so much, but he also built a life with my grandmother where something even more valuable was offered to me: He gave me a sense of place with the life he built. A memory that as a child I needed to hold me solid through heavier and harder times. Things that shifted the smile to a deep longing like the loon’s call carried on the echo in those mornings. A memory that I never knew at the time would be the greatest gift he never knew he gave to me.
Just this last week, the loons called over me one day as I walked through the woods after dropping my kids at school. My daughter is six just like I was when I remember the loon’s call over the lake for the first time. She is the same age when memories like this become identifiers of not just who we are but what defines our sense of place.
Walking that morning the loon called over head just off Cedar Lake. The pair called a different call, but I knew I still knew it well. I instantly could feel myself there at that place just miles north of here. I could envision coming down Graham Road in Alanson just north of Petoskey. I could smell my grandfather’s wood shop. I could picture the field stone fire place and the sunroom my grandmother sat often with the paper and her tea. I could picture the willow tree over the lake and the dock where I caught fish and my hair running wild down my back. For a moment I felt free as the loons called over me. I felt the quilt over my body as the cool morning air brushed my cheeks.
At nearly 40 I think about the way my grandfather left me something he never anticipated, a sense of place. He left something he most likely never knew he gave to me. The intentions he had to leave me with education and a confidence in my knowledge is still present. After all, I am dyslexic and yet still have become a writer some of which is due to his desire to see all his grandkids persevere in education. It’s how I know legacies aren’t always inherited monetarily or from what someone intends to give us, but they are also are from the tiniest lived moments with or without that person. Sometimes they are the thing they build that we get to enjoy or the things we unknowingly experience in the wake of what they leave behind. It’s in the way those days on the water felt as a child. In the way I fell in love with nature along the lakeshore of this house and their hunting cabin. How I found comfort in touching worms and hooking them on a line alongside him or he showed me how we can make what we want in the world with our hands because he always did.
My grandfather faded from us with the loss of himself from Alzheimer’s, but despite it all we talked many times about those memories of the time at that lake. Sometimes even when he was pretending to know who I was he still could remember these moments. I would describe the call of the loon, boat or the lake, and his memory would return sharp as a tack. Allowing us to still connect despite what we were losing at the same time. The call of the loon held us together like only nature can and is meant to do for us. We often forget that nature is what cements us where we belong and many times it is with the people we love. The scent of a tree. The sound of a bird. The texture of a beach. The smell of the earth itself. The way the light moves. It places us in a memory and as we lose these parts of the natural world we lose our sense of belonging with it.
When that loon called this last week, I didn’t just remember my grandfather and the cottage. I also remembered who I was as a small child. I remembered the sense of urgency to do what I love and trust who I am without any other deeper thoughts. I remembered where I belonged, but that memory and pathway is created by the moments the things my grandparents built opened up to me. Those moments offered me a memory and sense of who I was so I could pursue something greater. It allowed me the chance to hear what I value the deepest in the world so I could eventually fight for the places we love and offer a sense of place that grounds us as humans like nothing else can.
My deepest desire is for generations from now other kids get to know place for themselves the same way I have. That the sound of a bird grounds them in place. That the flavor of a plant takes them back to the people who first showed it to them. That the bark of a tree connects them who they are at the very core and childlike self. After all, this is thing that got me through so many hard moments of loss, moving, changing place, till I could once again find my way back home in place and self again. To have places that allow for the Loon to call so they can hear the way back home to themselves and to the land that holds them.
My family no longer has that cottage on Crooked Lake and I have many times dreamed of it coming back to our family, but I also know it would ever be the same because my grandparents wouldn’t be there. They wouldn’t have the same colors in the house or the soft gauze drapes hanging over the windows still. It’s a memory. A moment in time that I need to just hold as it is knowing that the gift it has given me will extend for generations to come.
That call of the loon, though haunting and full of sorrow as it longs for its mates or its children, will always be the sound that takes me home. It will always be what reminds me of my grandfather and the smell of his wood shop on Crooked Lake and the tender summer’s where I swung on the willow tree before many things in life changed. A place I know still lives in me and calls me back to all the best parts of what matters in life…family, fresh water, sunshine, stillness in nature, and place to feel safe and held as a cool breeze blows over you and just how easily these things can be lost or forgotten when we let the natural world around us be lost as well.
You can check out the Spring playlist today on Spotify! Head here to get access to it for Free.
Random writing from my notes and notebooks over the weeks that gather in the spaces between in life. A practice of writing where inspiration finds me.
5/18/2026
It’s easy to say you love something when the sun is shining.
It’s easy to say you will be there when the sun glitters on the water at sunset.
It’s easy to find her beautiful when your skin is tanned and the abundance is high in your arms.
It’s easy to fall for her when you laugh in the setting sun that covers the full pastel palette and the edges of the trees hold the warmth and lavender tones only given in the height of summer at 10 pm.
It’s easy to love her when the wind is perfect and the sun heats you just right.
It’s easy to sing her praises when the loon calls over the water in the morning to its lover.
It’s easy to feel the magic of her and promise forever when the flowers rise and they dance in the warm wind in July.
To love northern Michigan though isn’t to love her in her moments of perfection. It’s to love her when her cold winds rips and burns your cheeks. It’s to embrace her unpredictable nature and give to her whims. It’s to find her beautiful when the sky never stops being gray and the mud is thick after the snow melts and nothing looks like it will ever come to life again. It’s to find her a gift when she still freezes the air or threatens snow in mid May. It’s to love her in all her wild ways knowing that land like this is a gift not many learn to find the breadth of its beauty. That the wild in her is what teaches me to love the wild in me.
Just some things happening and that I am thinking of lately:
Waiting: We still are getting some frosts so I am holding off on planting our warm weather things for a while. I would say 2 more weeks looking at the forecast.
Changes: I recently deleted all social media from my phone and now I only use it on my iPad which is more or less my laptop now for work. The distance has been amazing for me. I have spent most of this year rewiring my digital life to be better for my writing, mental space, and allowing to be more present in my life with what matters.
Prioritizing: Plants. I have a garage full of plants right now and I am spending the weekend organizing and preparing all of my things for install in the coming weeks. It’s going to be intense and amazing all at the same time!
Dreaming: I have many big ideas lately but work is busy in all the best ways so I am keeping them tempered, but I am sitting with them when they come and letting them float till something feels good when the time is right.
Wearing: We are still layering around here these days, but with an intense uptick in Ticks this year, I am focused on light colored clothes, tucked in pants to socks and tall boots, and spraying myself with tick spray along with the kids being at school. Tick prevention this time of year starts with these things, but it also involves regular good body checks as well!
Doing: ALLLL THE YARD WORK! I cannot wait for a long weekend to just get all the things done that need doing right now. Memorial Day is a little earlier this year so it pressures things up north right now especially with how cool spring is right now. But I am hoping to get some time at the market this weekend and get lots of work done around the land.
Use the link below to become a member so you can get access to the new one with all the updates. I plan to post about it in the next week or so.
If you are already a member, you can head here to get access
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.