Lake Michigan, 17 years ago

That shiny imminence beneath the cloudbank out there is Lake Michigan. This battered and solitary pine stands prophetically just off the beach at a state park not all that far from where I grew up, a park where I worked for three summers long, long ago. Seventeen years ago, we were visiting "back home" when I snuck out at dawn to see if there was any kind of beauty to take home in my camera. 

It was January, no wind particularly, but a level of humidity that made five degrees of cold enough to make you keep most everything covered, including trigger finger.

The cloudbank is advancing here, but it's still there above the water you'll have to believe is still there. I'm trying to be cute--using the beach grass and the overhang to frame the wonderful gray cloud of lake moisture as it readies to come ashore.

Why?--I don't know, but I find this shot more attractive that either of the other two, even though the significant characters are rather clearly defined. The beach grasses are beginning to catch the dawn's Midas touch, just enough to make them seem burnished. They're up close and personal, but there's enough of the landscape--or lake-scape--behind them so as not to be forgotten. 

It's early January, by the way.

Yet another--same characters, same morning, same January cold. I must admit to liking this one too, although who on earth would like to hang it on their walls--it's too blame cold! This one, for reasons I can't begin to list, bespeaks early January.

I've always liked this one too, as if the roots of these trees are holding up a handful of cards. 

Not much to this one, but that's its strength. To find some kind of conch shell would require a hike of a thousand miles from this sandy spot, but I swear if you look at this one for a while, you'll hear the gentle sound of surf rolling ice chunks up to an expanding shore. 

We're off to Wisconsin on Friday, but I'm not as agile as I was 17 years ago, when these were taken. Don't look for a new batch--sad to say.

I wish.