Coming home is always bittersweet. I'm so happy to see everyone who is here and retrace familiar steps, but the evidence for leaving rears its ugly head soon enough. Like the conservative junk that I see on the TV and read in the paper.
I spent Wednesday driving around southern Michigan, seeing my grandparents in Kalamazoo (best city name ever, if you ask me), my friend Mars and her new family in Jackson, down into South Bend to see some of my SMC family at Fiddler's Hearth, and finally back to Elkhart. I took the back ways for most of the trip - not the Toll Road or 94 - and it was well worth it. "Were I not on a schedule…" I kept thinking as I meandered through some of my favorite landscapes.
For those of you that don't know, southern Michigan is not quite like northern Indiana. It's like the magical state line somehow changes something. There are more trees and the hills start to swell here and there. As you go through the farmlands, there is a certain joy and serenity that I don't feel when driving though my section of northern Indiana.
The scenery was perfect. The corn fields are drying out, almost leeched of their green volume. The overcast sky hasn't allowed the sun to burn the mist off yet, and gray pockets hide things. Some of the trees have started to turn, peeks of yellow and red through the misty fields. The soybean crops have all turned their happy yellow gold, which is muted by the foggy mist. I am reminded me of a dancer with a translucent, teasing scarf. I am not able to see everything, which is tantalizing and comforting all at once. I want it to go on forever. Barns and farmhouses - old and new - dot the landscape near the roads just frequently enough to be picturesque. Knowing that at the end of each segment there awaits family and friends makes the drive sweeter, and less tedious.
Sadly, I was on a tight time schedule, so I didn't have the opportunity to stop and take pictures. But I promise, it was lovely.
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