When the Power is Out

Originally posted to Substack “Follow your heart but bring along your brain.”  Senator Kennedy It’s 5 am this ordinary Thursday morning here in the backwoods of Michigans Upper Peninsula. No daylight yet penetrates the kitchen window as I make my way over to the coffee maker and hit the button. A piercing green eye awakens the room with just enough light I’m able to find my way around. I stop for a moment and gaze out the window over the sink. The northern sky is bright with a glowing radiance from the sun slapping his powerful waves towards earth. A flash of brilliance momentarily lights the whole sky with spotlight of color so powerful it fills my kitchen with it’s glow, then just as quickly fades away. What a show!     I notice an ambient orange glow from the living room from the remnants of last night warming fire. I make my way to the woodstove and poke it disturbing the glowing coals. Time for another log. Almost immediately it bursts into flames creating a com...

Creatures of the long silent night. . . Many years ago, the young and adventurous me, discovered a 40 acre parcel of heavily forested property which even the locals had lost track of the  original  owner. It was smack dab in the middle of a state forest. Deep in the middle of this secluded 40 acre parcel in the wild’s of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula stood a 20’X20′ tar papered shanty I was about to call home. It took every penny, but I had to buy the property that had been up for sale for more than 15 years. I was beside myself with excitement! I was 43. The cabin/now shanty was built as a hunting camp in 1963 using real saw milled 2X4’s. Sturdy, well built, no electricity or water as there were no power lines out there in the early days. It was now a dirty, run down and neglected waif from all the years of no human intervention.   However, a local population of mice and raccoons had made a ...