Walking after midnight in Hessel, Michigan

In a few hours I will be heading up to Hessel in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula. So naturally, I'm thinking about old times there. In particular I remember how me and my kids used to get up in the middle of the night, two or three AM, and take a walk around town in the quiet and the darkness.

Along the way we would get a pop from the soda machine which stood outside the marina. Do you have any idea how loud a pop can sounds dropping out of a machine when it is almost totally silent in the world? It's. Loud. Trust me. And we would do that three of four times in a row depending on how many of us were out and about. Each can got louder in our anticipation. You honestly believed you might wake someone up.

We would walk around and talk in low voices for fear of waking the locals. The last time we took such a walk was in 2003. It was only me and my sons; for reasons I can't recall it was just the three of us up there. We were actually still up a little after 1 and decided to take that walk.

We strolled to the marina and bought our pops. We then made our way down Hessel Point Road, stopping to chat in the middle of the road a good ways back into the woods. It was pitch black, the trees forming a bit of a canopy which made the moonless night that much darker. We were all alone on the Earth, my boys and I, chatting softly. I have no idea anymore about what.

Eventually we made our way back to the house for a couple hours sleep before heading back to Detroit. That walk remains one of my fondest memories.