in the outdoors
Along with the ice reflecting off the frost and ice covering trees and bushes, a mist can be seen rising from the Driggs River near Seney.
WATER WONDERS
No matter its form, there’s great beauty in our most abundant resource Story and photos by Scot Stewart
“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.”
— Loren Eiseley, from the essay “The Flow of the River”
T
he changing seasons play a magical part in our lives and the life of water. The two are so wrapped together we hardly recognize how close we are to it. For the obvious parts, the drinking, washing and cooking, most of us take water for granted unless it runs low or out or is poisoned – by lead or other substances. We find enamoring words to describe it in our everyday talk – sprinkles, mist, flurries, showers; phrases too – the smell of rain,the gurgle of a stream, the tinkle of ice in the lake. The secret part water plays in our lives though, is often a bit harder to flesh out. It surrounds us all the time, in one form or another. We inhale it and exhale it. We are blessed to
be surrounded by the Great Lakes, the best in the world. But it is found in so many other places, in the spring and fall, as the temperatures rise and fall, where water takes amazing turns to delight, educate, and thrill us.
“Its (water) substance reaches everywhere, touches the past and prepares the future, moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air. It can assume forms of exquisite perfection like a snowflake, or strip the living into a single shining bone cast up by the sea. “ – Loren Eiseley
T
A thick summer frost forms on tamarack needles.
he changing seasons provide the opportunity to see water in all its guises—gas, liquid and solid—and sometimes all at once. In the first really, really cold snap in the Upper Peninsula, when the temperature is -15, there may be some skims of ice bobbing on the gentle waves of Lake Superior as a mysterious cloud of vapor rises from the much warmer water of the lake. It is miraculous to see all three states at one time! But there is so much more to witness of the forms water shows us in northern Michigan. The best
November 2021
Marquette Monthly
51
