#blue highways

manifestations of my familiar or this morning i saw seven deer, including two peach fuzz stubble stubby new antlerbois, six turtles, one barely the size of a beer bottle cap, and one paint splatter princess

Roads less traveled

More and more, I am inclined, when circumstances allow, to avoid freeways when back-road routes can get me where I’m going.

Even when I know that the so-call “blue highways” will take me a little longer, I’ll often opt for style over speed - especially when I have the chance to see a new season being born.

For example, on Sunday Sharon and i drove to Saline, a town just south of Ann Arbor. I-96 could have gotten us there in just over and hour. But it was a beautiful morning and we chose an 80-minute route through the awakening forests and farmlands of southern Michigan.

As we rolled along, we spotted a trumpeter swan brooding her eggs in a wetland just a few yards off the road. That’s something we never would have seen on I-96. To get the above photo, Sharon just lowered her side window.

from Reckless Chants #25, August 2019

I drive past this old school house 

all the time – a 

landmark in the grain fields 

between the east and west sides 

of the mountains. 

I’ve stopped and poked around 

a few times, 

mostly in the summer. 

The bats didn’t like that. 

It’s gotten more and more 

dilapidated in the years since I began 

traveling Highway 2 regularly. 

It’s caught fire a few times, 

lost some siding to a windstorm and 

projects in need of scrap wood. 

I know one day I’ll make the trip 

across the plateau 

and it won’t be there: 

finally collapsed 

by hand or flame. 

And I wonder if I will 

still recognize the roll of the hills