Winter Comes To Traverse City Michigan

I usually post on the first snow in my hometown of Traverse City, Michigan.  The first snow to stick to the ground came last Sunday, at 5:00 A.M. when Brian and I were heading to the airport to get on a plane to Los Angeles.  Now, several days later, it is snowing again.  Big. Fluffy. Flakes of snow.  I don’t know why I love winter so much.  It’s the most dramatic season change there is.  It is a signal of change and usually opens a new chapter in my life.  I love winter.  Especially in Traverse City, Michigan.

Right now, I am sitting in the car with my three sons, Echo, Fielding and Apollo and our new dog Hickory.  Hickory was abandoned as a small puppy at the local city park, which doubles as our local ski resort in the winter.  Of course, the park is called Hickory Hills.

See if you can follow this logic.  Echo was born in a record snowstorm in Boulder, Colorado.  I got the middle name.  That name is “Storm.”  Fielding was born while Mars was prominent in the sky in Leland, Michigan.  I got the middle name.  His middle name is “Mars.”  Apollo was born in Traverse City, Michigan on the third day of a hard north breeze.  Any sailor knows that wind always blows three days out of the north.  I have always taken this as a sign that Apollo would be the son that would sail around the world with me.  His middle name is, of course, “North.”  Hickory was found as an abandoned puppy up at Hickory Hills, and I’ve already told you her name. 

I believe in the power of the universe.  I respect the energy that is beyond each of us as individuals.  We think we are so bad but we are just humans.  Mother Nature and the broader universe have powers in which we have not discovered.

So as winter brings a symbol of change in world whose common issue appears to be “change”, we venture out onto Main Street in Traverse City to take Hickory for her Sunday stroll through the downtown area.  Big fluffy flakes of snow drift from the sky.  All is good with the world.