A Complaint, a Discovery, and an Adventure

Now that I know people will visit my blog, perhaps I ought to give you something to read . . . :)

Yes, my first Adventure in Michigan! It came at the perfect time, too. Driving home from work today, the only thing I desired was to be outside and to take a tramp through some deserted, rugged, countryside with nary a house to be seen. I had been cooped up in a small office in a basement for the majority of the daylight hours for the last two days. Moreover, the weather here has been the most beautiful weather a person could ask for in a lifetime. But how and where am I supposed to enjoy the outdoors? The sight of the perfect, smooth, crack-less and weed-less concrete walking/bike path meandering among the artificial hills lining the perfect sub-divisions along my way home made me want to cry. Am I doomed to live in a place where Mother Nature was so imprisoned and controlled that you could walk forever and forever with nary a living blade of grass to touch the sole of your shoe, if you didn’t want it to? A place where every tread of that shoe could be perfectly, solidly, and smoothly planted on flawless poured concrete? I don’t WANT humans to be in control of this planet! But, I needed some food. And maybe a nap. And the girls at work had been disappointed when I turned down their invitation to return that evening for a Young Women’s formation group. Sure, it was probably lovely, but I thought it was pushing it to stay at work until 5:30. I thought surely I could leave by six. But then the printer had to take issue with me and I didn’t get out of there until 6:30. Sore, tired, hungry, and unused to living underground and sitting still, let alone at a desk, all day, there was no way I could harbor the thought of coming back to that WINDOWLESS hole to SIT and listen to people talk for the rest of the evening—no matter how nice the people or how excellent their words.

Enough complaining? After dinner Linda, my house-mother (I suppose that’s a good title for her) wanted to show me “her” secret garden. I figured I’d humor her. I wasn’t quite sure what she was talking about. Some small corner of the subdivision where no one hardly ever went (because they don’t get outside), but there was a small remnant patch of wildflowers to be found? Well, at least it meant walking outside, and I wouldn’t be able to have a destination in mind were I to talk a walk on my own.

The place she took me required crossing several streets and going through several subdivisions until we came upon a little hollow behind a small brook in-between two subdivisions. In the space that should have been the extended backyard of four or more houses was the most lovely garden, filled with meandering paths, quaint and queer statuary and odds and ends and, most lovely to see, a plethora of blooming flowers! Some of the flowers I did not realize bloom this early in the year. Several others I have never seen cultivated in a garden in such great numbers. Others I have only sold to customers in pots, or kept in inventory, but have never seen growing in a bed. It was beautiful! I wandered around, wondering at each new discovery. I had forgotten the joy of simple discovery—the joy in knowing that something exists! The pleasure at giving them names. There was pasque flower—in two different colors, as well as Hellebore (I finally remembered their name), Dutchman’s breeches, and Virginia bluebells. Brunnera in several varigated varieties, forget-me-nots, white trillium, May apples, fiddleheads of ferns curling up, as well as the strong spokes of hosta. An old tree leaned over, and the master gardener had trained a climbing hydrangea to grow up its upward-facing side. Old-fashioned bleeding hearts, a bright yellow flower I’m sure I only know as a weed but was beautiful there, forsythia, hyacinths, a daffodil, rock cress, vinca minor (periwinkle), and a beautiful azalea, to only name the ones I can remember or know the names to. It was a lot of fun. (Even though I had to listen to Linda complain the whole way that she can’t get her flowers to grow so nicely or so well. She tried asking me for advice, too, on how to get her garden to grow half as nice—while I’m still in awe over the mounds of woodland wildflowers.)

The Great Adventure, however, was on the way home—and winds up at an old, deserted psychiatric hospital, so you’d better listen well and read all the way to the end.

So, I’m the newcomer, and Linda ought to know the way. We walked up to Schoolcraft. We turned in next to the children’s ward. We see a baseball field. We continue on the “road” or service drive that travels past it. We see a sign that says “do not enter.” We see two other that say “this road closed after 5pm weekdays and all day Saturday and Sunday. We continue on. We climb over the road block. Linda doesn’t know what this road is or where it goes—although it is pointing approximately the direction we want to end up. Even though we were surrounded by development, this lone road gave the atmosphere of being in the country. There was marshland on either side of the road for a while, and then thick tree-covered hills. The road was an old one, crumbling on the edges where Mother Nature was reclaiming that which was rightfully hers. The sun went down, the bats began to twitter and flitter overhead. Two deer crossed the road in front of us. We began to wonder where the road would lead us. Then Linda remembered—there was an old psychiatric hospital in this area, long closed down, which the owners had been unable to sell, even at auction. Eventually the buildings and out-buildings came into sight. Long and low, with many windows, there were many lights on in and on the walls of the buildings. Linda began to remember that the police patrolled this area, because of the great number of 'trespassers.' We couldn’t find the way out, especially because we were hindered by a great, tall wire fence that seemed to encircle much of the property. We found one gate open—open and held open by many years’ growth of vines. Beyond it was a fantastic four-story high building that looked like the factory an evil villain would use to produce whatever sort of evil robot or rocket he was going to use to destroy the world. It had three tall, symmetrically-placed chimneys crowning the top of the building and a massive ramp (or, with a little imagination, aircraft landing-pad) emerging from the one side, and two round granary-type metal buildings next to it—and behind it was a subdivision! After climbing through a hedge of spruce trees and traveling through two backyards we made it onto the street, and Linda knew her way back home from there.

It is an amazing feeling NOT to have been caught by goons or by the ghosts of the souls of tortured psychiatric patients. I also like the feeling and smell of fresh air in your lungs. I could breathe the air outdoors all day.