Untitled, photo by jenny murray.
Check it out bigger or in Jenny’s slideshow.
There is unrest in the Forest…..
There is unrest in the Forest….., photo by RBS62.
There is unrest in the forest there is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight and the oaks ignore their pleas
The trouble with the maples and they’re quite convinced they’re right
They say the oaks are just too lofty and they grab up all the light
~ Rush (listen on Rhapsody)
Check this out as big as the trees and in his Winter in the UP set (slideshow).
Lots more winter wallpaper on Michigan in Pictures.
Ojibway spirit god and the Song of … Manabozho
Manabezho Falls in the Porcupine Mountains, photo by Gittinsj
A previous post on Manabezho Falls in the Porcupine Mountains State Park offered another view of these amazing falls and some information from GoWaterfalling’s page on Manebezho Falls.
While trying to find out more about Manebezho, who also seems to be the trickster god Manabozho, I learned from Indian Names in Michigan that although Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha uses the name of a real-life Mohawk sachem (paramount chief), the deeds are those of Manabozho. That’s enough grounds for me to bring you the Manabozho and the ultimate fish story.
Cool Blue: Michigan Lighthouse Ice
Wind, waves and winter work create some amazing ice formations on Michigan lighthouses. To see some of them. click over to the Lighthouse Ice show from the Absolute Michigan pool!
See this photo of the St. Joseph light bigger or in Brian’s Lighthouse set (slideshow).
US-27 In Michigan
US-27 In Michigan, photo by U.S. Highway 12
Ronnie writes:
For 76 years, from 1926-2002, US-27 was a primary highway in the state of Michigan. During the Postwar highway expansion era on the even of the Interstate Highway system, US-27 was extended to St. Ignace, Michigan, across the Mackinac Bridge. However, as I-75 was completed in sections north of Tri-Cities area, US-27 was eventually truncated to just north of Higgins Lake in 1961.
As Interstate 69 was completed in the 1970s around the Charlotte area, US-27 was moved onto the new Interstate freeway. In 1991, MDOT petitioned AASHTO, to have US-27 removed from the state of Michigan’s highway network. This request was denied because MDOT made no mention of their plans for US-27 north of Lansing. However, eight years later on in 1999, they submitted another application, and AAHSTO approved the request to truncate US-27 from south of Grayling to Fort Wayne, Indiana. The end finally came in 2002, when all of the old US-27 marker signs were removed.
When I think of US-27 and the many other U.S. Highways in Michigan, this two-lane photo from the Michigan State Highway Dept. comes to mind. This image was shot in Clare County, near the community of Harrison during Labor Day in 1955. I can just image driving along this hilly and winding highway at 105 km/h (65 mph), and having a deer run standing in the roadway as I crested the hill.
Image from the Michigan State Highway Dept. (MDOT) and is in the public domain.
Looking for more? Check out the US-27 group slideshow on Flickr and US Route 27 on Wikipedia.
Turnip Rock, Port Austin and The Thumb
Turnip Rock, Port Austin, Michigan, photo by jensenl.
It’s been a while since Michigan in Pictures got out with the incomparable Lars Jensen, for my money one of Michigan’s best outdoor photographers.
His winter visit to The Thumb offers this photo and many more larger and he writes:
Turnip Rock and Kai standing on the “thumbnail” in Michigan’s thumb area. Unfortunately, this area is privately owned so Kai and I skied to it from the harbor at Port Austin (about 2.25 miles away) on Lake Huron. We then skied out to the Port Austin Lighthouse which sits out in the middle of the bay on a shallow shoal (about 2.5 miles from the shores of Port Austin). We saw all sorts of interesting ice formations along the way and had a great time on a cold and blustery day.
Click over to his site for the whole day of photos. Here’s more of Lars Jensen on Michigan in Pictures and I also recommend kicking back for his Michigan slideshow.
PS: Too cold for you? He has summertime photos in Kayaking the Thumb!
Seeing Red: Rose Hips
Seeing Red, photo by Kiley_Evanne.
One of my favorite books as a kid was My Side of the Mountain. In it, the teenaged hero Sam Gribley learns how to feed himself and survive in the woods. Inspired by Sam’s example, I got as far as being able to identify rose hips, the red-orange fruit of the rose plant.
When snowshoeing or skiing in the winter, I like to snack on these when I find them. This article about gathering rose hips begins:
Known mostly for beauty in the garden and as a floral declaration of love, roses don’t usually come to mind when we think of either food or nutrition. Yet, all parts of the rose, and especially the hips, are storehouses of Vitamin C and other important nutrients.
Compare the nutritional content of oranges to rose hips and you will find that rose hips contain 25 percent more iron, 20 to 40 percent more Vitamin C (depending upon variety), 25 times the Vitamin A, and 28 percent more calcium.
They’re also a great source of bioflavanoids, pectin, Vitamin E, selenium, manganese, and the B-complex vitamins. Read on for suggestions about gathering and drying them. The BBC has an article about Rose-hips as a possible remedy for arthritis that you might enjoy as well. One tip: you have to leave the blossoms on the rose bush for hips to fully develop.
Check it out bigger or in Kiley’s slideshow.
Winter Wonderland at the Tahquamenon Falls
Winter Wonderland, photo by Kiran Bhat..
Kiran says that he absolutely loves the Tahquamenon Falls. I confess that I do too.
He’s just begun posting his UP Trip slideshow where you can see it bigger.
Need more? How about the Tahquamenon Falls in winter slideshow from Flickr or more of the Tahquamenon Falls from Michigan in Pictures?
Michigan January Event Calendar
Untitled, photo by Terrapin Dawg.
“The Old Year has gone. Let the dead past bury its own dead. The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time. All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months!”
~ Edward Payson Powell
Every month Absolute Michigan puts together a massive list of events from all across the state designed to help you get more out of Michigan.
Our January Michigan Event Calendar features some great events designed to help you get more out of the outdoors like Newberry’s Tahquamenon Country Sled Dog Race, Kalkaska Winterfest, Tip Up Town USA (Houghton Lake), Snowfest in Frankenmuth and the Subaru Noquemanon Ski Marathon in Marquette. If you like your events on the indoors side, there’s Ferndale’s Bluesfest, the Ann Arbor Folk Festival and the The North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
Matt took this photo in Cheboygan County. Be sure to check this out backround big or in his snowmobile trip set (slideshow).
Where To Now?
Where To Now?, photo by Mike Lanzetta.
Mike took this photo yesterday at Michigan’s largest ruins, Michigan Central Station in Detroit. Check it out bigger in the Exposure.Detroit slideshow or in the MCS slideshow on Flickr.
Seeing this and other photos prompted me to look back in on TIME Magazine’s Assignment Detroit (?) to see what one of the nation’s largest media outlets was thinking about the future of Michigan’s largest city.
They have been exploring how people in the city are grappling with the profound challenges in Detroit including rising budget deficits in the face of soaring costs, reduced public services, unemployment and also (according to Detroit Mayor Dave Bing) a failure by many to recognize just how serious the situation is. In many ways, these are the same issues that folks in other places in Michigan are dealing with.
One feature that caught my eye and that I really feel offers the kind of thinking that it will take to raise Michigan from its current depths is Can farming save Detroit?. They talk with Detroit businessman and millionaire John Hantz, who envisions:
A large-scale, for-profit agricultural enterprise, wholly contained within the city limits of Detroit. Hantz thinks farming could do his city a lot of good: restore big chunks of tax-delinquent, resource-draining urban blight to pastoral productivity; provide decent jobs with benefits; supply local markets and restaurants with fresh produce; attract tourists from all over the world; and — most important of all — stimulate development around the edges as the local land market tilts from stultifying abundance to something more like scarcity and investors move in. Hantz is willing to commit $30 million to the project. He’ll start with a pilot program this spring involving up to 50 acres on Detroit’s east side. “Out of the gates,” he says, “it’ll be the largest urban farm in the world.”
…But still there’s the problem of what to do with the city’s enormous amount of abandoned land, conservatively estimated at 40 square miles in a sprawling metropolis whose 139-square-mile footprint is easily bigger than San Francisco, Boston, and Manhattan combined. If you let it revert to nature, you abandon all hope of productive use. If you turn it over to parks and recreation, you add costs to an overburdened city government that can’t afford to teach its children, police its streets, or maintain the infrastructure it already has.
Faced with those facts, a growing number of policymakers and urban planners have begun to endorse farming as a solution. Former HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, now chairman of CityView, a private equity firm that invests in urban development, is familiar with Detroit’s land problem. He says he’s in favor of “other uses that engage human beings in their maintenance, such as urban agriculture.” After studying the city’s options at the request of civic leaders, the American Institute of Architects came to this conclusion in a recent report: “Detroit is particularly well suited to become a pioneer in urban agriculture at a commercial scale.”
Can you see the halls of massive ruins like Michigan Central Station, the Packard Plant or any of the countless other abandoned buildings across the state filled with green growth and warm light? Michigan is already a leader in agricultural diversity, producing an amazing array of crops. Rampant unemployment is a huge drain on our public services. Why not try and recover some of what we’re spending everywhere in Michigan by putting folks to work growing food and paying them in part in food?
Definitely check it out and offer your thoughts in the comments.
Michigan in Pictures 