Wanderings

The Dune region that curves around the bottom of Lake Michigan is a source of fascination and wonderment.

Geographically, it's magical--make that spiritual in my scheme of natural religion.

I've learned it's the axis mundi of North American, where major ecosystems converge. It's no wonder that it was a labratory for modern ecological studies in the early twentieth century.

Its history and its lore, along with surviving remnants of days gone by, inspired a romance for one of the most unique regions I've ever experienced.

Ellie and I often travel through, yes through, Gary to Michigan City on US 12 & 20. For some 2o years a favorite byway stop was Andershocks in the country outside of Portage--a rambling, ramshackle farmers market, nursery, and flea market. It was as authentic as it gets--an unpretentious remnant of what once was. In the autumn there were great wooden bins of gnarly apples, piles of pumpkins, and tables of ornamental gourds and Indian corn from Indiana farms. Several years ago Andershocks closed. (Nothing lasts forever.)

In its final days, among the forlorn rows of neglected plants were little pots of "wandering jew." I bought one for a quarter and have managed to keep it alive since then from successive cuttings.

Yesterday afternoon, the sun sluicing in my kitchen widow illuminated the plant's purple leaves. I remembered Andershocks with the sweet pain of nostalgia for day trips to Michigan City and back.

Those day trips around Lake Michigan are metaphors for untold day trips we'd taken as diversion and recreation in Vermont and Upstate New York, Quebec, Ohio and neighboring Pennsylavania and West Virginia, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.