Dear West Branch

Dear West Branch,

Look, I know it isn't your fault. You're just a victim of circumstance, a geographical accident. But you are half way to Hessel. And that's exactly the problem. 

Part of that's on me. When I go Up North like last Wednesday I should be happy to see you because the trip is half over. Yet I'm not. I can't be. I'm only 50% to da U. P. A lot of time is still on the clock.

Grayling, Gaylord, Indian River; that's when you start making time. That's when you're really picking up and laying down those miles. Then you make that curve around mile marker 334 and the Mackinac Bridge rises to greet you...

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. That was rude of me, West Branch. You can't help where you are.

We've had great times, right? Coffee stops, lunches, dinners; even breakfasts when I've left Detroit early enough. Let's focus on them. Let's remember the good times. I'll still stop, I'll still check in from time to time. I promise.

Friends?

Marty

4:30

Perhaps what I like best about being up north are the wee hours of the morning. If there's an advantage to not feeling well, as I did not feel well yesterday, it's that medicines can ease you into sleep. I slept from about Noon until 3:30 Friday afternoon, got up long enough to have a bite to eat and re-medicate, and was asleep again from 5 late in the afternoon until 2 or so this morning. I'm still a bit headachy though.

Be that as it may, sometimes a walk can clear the mind. A small headache I have discovered might actually break with activity. So at 4:30 I took a walk, just as the dawn was rising.

What you cannot see in the city you can see quite well in the country. Through breaks in the lowest clouds I could spy the first faint rays of the Sun creeping up from the horizon, the heavens through the clouds more gray than blue. I can't recall seeing much of early dawn while in Detroit; you can tell the Sun is on its way by how the sky overhead brightens but you don't see much horizon. I wished it weren't so cloudy so that I might have seen early morning color. Tomorrow maybe.

I went far enough out State Route 134, the major thoroughfare near Hessel, that I felt I should turn back. A storm was a brewin' - I had checked the radar online before heading out, as old men will do - and I thought I had best not stray too far. This had me headed west. I could make out low rumblings of thunder and the faintest lightning not more than ten degrees above that horizon: quick flashes chased by tiny rolls of grumbling sound. I watched the western flashes of light grow closer, heard the thunder rise in timbre as I neared home.

As I sat on the porch with a hot coffee the rain just began. It isn't so hard yet but I expected to be chased inside sooner rather than later. It is just as well. The bread won't toast itself.