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| Tahquamenon Falls October 16 |
But the water I give them shall be a well springing up
into everlasting life. John 4:14
Dad drove our family from Warren
to Kentucky every summer for vacation. We came home with a trunk full of canned
green beans and corn from Granny’s garden.
Our neighbor Bill Rowe
drove his family to destinations such as Yosemite and Disneyland. They returned
with more stickers on the back window of their station wagon. When time came to
sell their car, his wife Marion stopped by our house and asked Mom if she had a
single-edged razor blade to remove the decals.
“No one will buy our car
if they know where we’ve traveled,” she said.
I wasn’t envious. The
McCoy Bottom and The Breaks Interstate Park with my cousins satisfied my
childhood thirst for adventure. I didn’t need Mackinac Island or Old Faithful. I
needed kinfolk.
After my parents’
divorce, Mom reestablished her household in the McCoy Bottom. Envisioning a
brood of grandchildren, she built a new home with an upstairs roost. The ideal
Nana, she fed her grandkids Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast. They swam with
their cousins in Aunt Kat’s built-in pool. Mom cooked a mess of green beans and
corn bread for supper.
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| Mel and I walk up Tahquamenon Fall's 94 steps |
Although my husband
and I camped once with our girls in Michigan’s Wilderness State Park and spent
a day on Mackinac Island, I preferred the comfort and company of my mother’s home.
Furthermore, my family
moaned the only time I insisted we exit at the Natural Bridge Park off
Kentucky’s Mountain Parkway.
“Mom! Let’s just go to Nana’s,” they pleaded.
Forty years later, there
is no gathering of generations in the McCoy Bottom, for most matriarchs and
patriarchs are buried on a mountainside and in Lexington Cemetery. Children and
grandchildren have grown and gone their separate ways. Aunt Kat’s pool stands
stagnant.
Within this gradual
and pervasive emptiness, I’ve come to need places and their stickers on my
car’s windows. In no certain order, I’ve checked off the following on my bucket
list: Yosemite. Muir Woods. Olympic National Park. Washington D.C. Gettysburg. The Greenbrier. The
Biltmore Estate.
Without exception, the
places call unsolicited. Most recently, in my Monday night writing group, a
friend read a beautiful poem she composed in honor of a childhood visit to
Tahquamenon Falls.
I reserved our critter
sitter for three days and a room for two nights in the MacCleod House B&B
in Newberry. My husband drove us north with my friend’s poem on my mind—94 steps
down to Tahquamenon Falls, then upward. I heard the thundering waters as we
sped through the golden passage of I75 to the Mackinac Bridge.
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| On the road to Munising |
And the Tahquamenon Falls,
dear Reader, those maple syrup colored waters that submit to perpetual plunges,
turn to foam, and flow to Superior?
“Come, drink,” they
say. “Buy another sticker.”
