A Vacation from A Vacation

This came from an assignment for a class I am taking at the UM BioStation.

This is more like it: my kind of place.  I’m sitting on a bench next to Lake Michigan, looking south from St. Ignace, marveling over the Mackinac Bridge.  Gazing out, I feel like I’m leaning on a broken fence between the wonder of the manmade and the beauty of the naturally occurring.  I feel more at home here, with just my journal and my pen, than I feel when I’m back at the cramped cabin in the woods where I keep all my stuff.

 
I’m sitting here because I had to get away—because I’m a little bit bipolar when it comes to nature.  I love to gawk at reptiles and lay in the grass underneath a spread of hundred-year-old trees, but only for about a half hour or so.  Any extensive contact with what I deem “hardcore nature”—any place remotely remote, where a Starbucks is more than fifteen minutes away—and I get extremely aggravated at a rapid pace.  The funny thing is, I find myself feeling extremely aggravated when I have to spend more than fifteen minutes in any sort of downtown area, where there is a Starbucks on every corner.

 

I might have found my center here, aligned my chi, found the perfect balance between nature and the metropolis.  Sitting just far enough away from Lake Michigan that the sloshing of the waves is just loud enough to drown out the faint hum of the whizzing cars in the distance, I’ve found where I want to be, if only for a little while.  Soon I’ll have to take my car and head across, up the incline and onto the bridge, under the north tower, and reluctantly under the south, and head back to where I’m supposed to be.