ice bricks

Navigating the day. It’s a bright one, though not as warm as yesterday. Fill up with b&b food (oh, the guilt!) and head out toward Lake Michigan.





Port Washington looks good from above. At least from this bluff. Views are truly wonderful if you selectively focus away from parts that are indifferent. For example, I don’t know why Part Washington puts its sewage plant by the waterfront, but it does. You will not see it here. I’m concentrating on the other vistas: lighthouses against a glittering body of near frozen water.






We drive to Harrington Beach State Park (on the coast of Lake Michigan, further north).

Cedar swamps, frozen, with few trespassers now, in the midst of winter.

Except deer. We see the tracks…




…and then, fleetingly, the deer.






We lose our way because deer tracks look very much like people tracks, except for the shape of the print.

Eventually we are on firm, if soggy ground. We follow the path to Lake Michigan.





…where the water is crashing against ice boulders and it all seems terribly unsafe.





…but not for Ed, who takes this opportunity to demonstrate to me that death is not as easy to stumble into as you may think. Which most certainly is a good thing.

Can we walk back to the car along the quiet nature trail? – I ask. We do that. We're both feeling agreeable. It's the weather, I tell you. All can be ignored, all can be forgiven.

The waves crash into the fissures and then retreat.





We are safe. Life is brilliant, all the dramatic twists not withstanding.