Short Stories

10-8-10 ~  “A Great Place to Be!” Indeed.

Mattawan, MI is the sort of town I like to imagine Europeans picture when they think of the United States. It’s rural enough to have a small-town feel, but well developed enough to avoid hickishness. It’s the kind of town where everyone attends the Homecoming Game, complete with town parade (consisting of straw bale floats, and horses painted with large letter M’s and paw prints in honor of the town mascot). And everyone knows the name of the cashier at the local hardware store. It’s too strip mally  and close to a major highway (I-94) to be considered quaint; but you can make not-so-small talk with anyone you meet for at least a half hour as long as you stick to the topics of local high school sports teams, hunting, or the weather. It’s the sort of town where, now that the leaves are changing color, signs read “Hair is Fall-ing!” outside the beauty salon, and “Fall into a new kind of relaxation!” outside the chiropractic’s office. It’s that kind of town.

And I’m living here for the month of October while I intern at a permaculture tree nursery called Oikos Tree Crops in nearby Lawton. I took a train to Kalamazoo, MI (15 miles away) to get here and then road my bike to Mattawan. As I approached the town for the first time, I couldn’t help but notice the roadside town banners, emblazoned with mantras like, “Mattawan, A Place for all Seasons!”, “Mattawan, A Great Place to Be!”, and my personal favorite, “Mattawan: The Best of Rural Living.”  I’m staying in a cookie-cutter house in a subdivision (ironically named Brown Stone), which I found through the Couch Surfing Network. Two men live here: David, a father of 4 in his 40s, and Dave, a 27-year-old security guard supervisor, and member of the US Marines. They’ve treated me really well since the moment I arrived. Both are very agreeable – David likes to cook, and Dave like to hunt. And while I am an avid cook/baker and could easily relate with David; I am a hapless urbanite, with no hunting experience and therefore at a loss for common hobbies with Dave. Until now.

I arrived on the eve of bow season for deer hunting. And hunting is a skill that I’ve wished to acquire for well over a year now. As luck would have it, Dave is only too keen to teach me. He was pleasantly surprised when I asked him if he’d mind teaching me to hunt within the first ten minutes of our acquaintance; and this past weekend he located a complete ladies’ archery set on Craigslist for me, to be retrieved on Tuesday by Dave himself. Today is Monday, and my third day of work at Oikos. Last week we started building an edible forest garden (a new and enchanting concept to me). Beneath a grove of hybrid bur-white oak trees, we’ve now planted schisandra, 6 types of wild ginger, hog peanuts, 3 kinds of violets, che (similar to osage orange), leeks, paw paw, hypatica, hearty kiwi, beach plum, chickesaw plums, high bush cranberry, american black currants, jack in the pulpits, 2 varieties of Solomon's seal, Jerusalem artichokes and wild asparagus. All perrenniels, all edible. Today I spent the morning collecting seed from dozens of wild quince fruits, and the afternoon harvesting hundreds of pounds of persimmons with a fellow worker. We spent the beautiful sunny Autumn afternoon at the edges of the nursery where the persimmon trees grow, overlooking hundreds of acres of grape vineyards (used for making Welch’s grape juice – hardly akin to the permaculture mission of Oikos, but nonetheless tasty to snack on throughout the day). We were so caught up in it all that we worked an hour past knock-off time, and would have kept going had the nursery owner not tracked us down and told us the time.

I biked home, reveling in the day still; and passed the now familiar “Mattawan: A Great Place to Be!” banner. I was just turning the curve into the Brown Stone development when I spotted a rainbow sundog – truly one of the most magnificent natural phenomena in my opinion. I eventually tore my eyes away and returned to my host house. As I opened the door, David stood before me, arms outstretched holding up none other than, a kitten. A kitten with a tan and grey coat, patterned halfway between leopard’s print and the brindled appearance of some pitbulls; and stormy blue-gray eyes that just break your heart. Needless to say, I was entranced and on all-fours for the next half hour.

As I sat playing with the little kitten, I thought to myself as I do nearly every day, “My life can not get any better.” And then sure enough, in walked Dave, a smile on his face, and a bow-shaped case in tow. He lay it down before me, and popped open the latches to reveal a simply stunning piece of camouflaged craftsmanship. My very own hunting bow and arrows, a day early! And so I sat, torn between cuddling with a fluffy mewing kitten the size of my hand, and experimenting with my new deadly toy. Just then the kitten, seemingly in tune with my conflict of interests, crawled down my flannel shirt and began climbing into the bow case. I took it as a sign, passed her back to David, and went racing with Dave and the bow set to the backyard where a practice target already awaited me and my first archery lesson – the setting sun providing just enough brilliant daylight for me to make out the bulls-eye from across the yard.

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10-1-10 ~ Two Jacks Atop a City Skyline

While in Chicago, I stayed with some dear family friends, the Murrays. Michael, Jurate and their adorable 5-year-old son Michael, Jr. I’ve written about them frequently, as they are one of the most enchanting families I’ve known, and every interaction with them leaves me a little fuzzy and sentimental; like a character in a classic black-and-white film – when cameramen knew it was far more flattering to blur the lens a bit during close-ups, rather than detail every blessed pore in high definition. They live right along the shoreline of downtown Chicago, and their 16^th floor apartment overlooks a stunning panorama of Lake Michigan, a harbor with hundreds of little sailboats, the Field Museum, Millennium Park and the downtown skyline of Chicago. Half of their apartment faces out over this view in one long window, and framed as such, it almost seems a bewitched mural that changes colors and lighting as the days and nights open and close.

My sister Julia was with me the first night of my stay, and we arrived after Little Michael had gone to sleep. I was sorry not to see him, as I truly revel in the boy’s company; but I knew he would never fall asleep if he saw us so close to bedtime. Come morning I was attempting to pack and dress silently in the dark when I heard a little knock on the door. I softly called, “Come in!” but no one came. So I opened it and there before me was Little Michael, still in his rocket ship-patterned pajamas, arms full with a jack-o-lantern. The two were quite the pairing, with their identical toothy grins. He set down the Jack, lit a chocolate-scented candle and placed it inside. For the next 24 hours the pumpkin made repeat appearances, Little Michael uncertain as to whether he preferred it in his bedroom or in the living room. The morning of my departure, he had placed it upon the dining room table, which overlooks the harbor and skyline. It was early enough that the world was still dark, only faintly turning from black to murky blue with the coming of the distant rising sun. And in the hustle and bustle of the morning, I found myself eating my breakfast accompanied only by the jack-o-lantern. And so we sat, two Jacks, atop the city skyline; christening the impending autumnal holidays.