The Turtle's Back is Orange
The turtle’s back is orange and I wasn’t watching. (Mackinac Island - Ojibwe "Big Turtle" - Mishi-mikinaak) Summer crept away. The moment this dawned on me I remember well. I was looking across Lake Huron facing Mackinac Island on a cool afternoon. It had mutated into a mass of oranges. I tend to mentally flog myself if I don’t pay attention to seasonal changes. Seasons haven’t looked the same since March. That’s when I migrated to St. Ignace to temporarily be with my mom. Acute awareness of changing seasons is ingrained in me. I grew up in northern Michigan among fisherman, sailors, tourist traps and upper peninsula survivors. If you didn’t have your cords of wood stocked up for the winter, your boat ship-shape for summer, your garden planted in spring and your snow-tires on in autumn, natural consequences hover like a silent teacher reeking with vapors of “I told you so!” This is the first time Covid-19 marked itself as a season of its own. A season of gloom. Like b