lake michigan

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loneliness as vast – Travel haiku and reflection – Western Michigan

loneliness as vast
as the sky above the lake;
michigan road trip
__________

I love road trips–with a group of friends, with just one friend, alone. I confess it might be the last two which I love the best. When on my own, I have developed the routine of visiting the library before heading out to select some audio books, with almost always one selection being Seamus Heaney reading his beautiful translation of the elegiac epic Beowulf. I guess I keep hoping it will make me more self-sacrificial and heroic 🙂 Recently, James Herriot’s veterinary tales (which are truly tales about people) have also been a bit of a staple. These are comfort food. And then occasionally I may even submit to an “improving” book about diet or history. And then I select some music CDs from my collection, which have the virtue over a complete iPhone’s worth of music of limiting one’s selection, of making one imagine while selecting what sort of mood each CD might evoke.

The most illuminating part of road trips, though, are those parts where I push the button on the stereo to turn it off and just let the rhythm of the road and vagaries of the scenery wash over me, when so often the inward eye turns to a mulling of the past or hopes of the future. Sometimes the road and its landmarks are the very substrate for these ruminations, especially if I have been down that road before. This weekend, driving through a section of Michigan that we traveled through many times as college students to get to a camp in the Upper Peninsula and which some friends and I visited just last summer made for some reflective, too too lonesome traveling. I confess it was all a bit too much.

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Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore – Mount Baldy Panoramas – Microsoft Image Composite Editor

It may not be the best idea to present these images in such a large size (be sure to click on each image twice), but I wanted to do so just to give you an idea of the scope of these dunes. Amazing. Also, I wanted to demonstrate the great job that Microsoft’s Image Composite Editor did in stitching 8 or so images together in each case. You will also need to download this software package first.

Oh, and if you do decide to download and/or print these images, just toss me some credit, OK? 🙂 And visit the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, a pretty amazing park, rather intriguingly situated amidst some pretty heavy industries and plants.

From the top of Mt. Baldy, 250 degree panorama

Mt. Baldy, west peak, 146 degree panorama

Mt. Baldy from the beach, 198 degree panorama

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At the Beach in the Windy City – 31st St. Beach Surf – Chicago, Illinois – Lomo Arigato (Mr. Roboto)

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I don’t have nearly a good enough poker face to pretend that I am not excited at being recently “Freshly Pressed” by WordPress for this post. If you are here from there, thank you and welcome to the blog.

Yesterday was the last day of the annual weekend my friends and I take to Chicago every year, to shop and eat and see what we can see. This year we discovered 31st St. Beach and went to it three times, the last time spontaneously choosing to do so as we were driving out of the city on Lakeshore Drive and saw the breakers. A lifeguard at the beach said this was a pretty rare occurrence. It was splendid ending to the weekend.

Photographer P.S.
The effect on the photos is what I have been calling “Matt’s Lomo preset” for Lightroom for the longest time, but which is actually Lomo Arigato (Mr. Roboto), with a little toggling on each photo. And to give this preset its full due, it is the preset I use to get the intense sepia in photos such as “Steel Structures in Sepia” and ones such as “Market Street Downpour” or “Stacked.” I apply the Lomo effect and get the right brightness and contrast I want and then completely turn down the saturation. What appears is this lovely, intense sepia which I use quite often. The secret is out.