Goodbye Winter. Hello Spring!

@rickblumenberg 

When I visit with friends and family from Southeast Missouri where I grew up, or with other "Southerners" who live in milder winters, they often ask, with some trepidation, about all the snow we get in Michigan. I then let them know that if you don't love, (or at least tolerate) snow you shouldn't live in Michigan.

The nice thing about my adopted Michigan home is that we have four marvelous seasons and each season is beautiful in its own right. The picture below is one of my favorite winter scenes. It is taken from a trail in Warren Dunes State park, which is only about a mile from our home on Tanner Creek. 

I took the picture a year or two ago as we were hiking up to a dune we call "High Point". I'm not sure if it has an actual name, but I thus named it and in our family when we say let's go to High Point we all know what it means.

We were about halfway up the trail to High Point and as usual I stopped for a moment at my favorite spot to look out over Lake Michigan. From this vantage point it is beautiful in every season. The ice mountains you see are from the waves washing up in the shallow water and freezing. When it is really cold the water quickly freezes and begins to pile up into ice mountains running up and down the beach. After a while, it becomes the way you see here and there is an awesome silence--no birds singing, no waves to be heard because the water is now frozen for about a quarter mile or more away from the shore. On a wind-still day the silence is beautiful and you feel like you're in another world. We don't make this hike often in winter because of the cold, but when we do it is always worth the effort.

This view isn't literally from Tanner Creek. Here, I am high above Tanner Creek and about a quarter-mile south. But it is my view and a favorite photograph from the many I've taken.

But this posting is really my "goodbye to Winter!" I'm ready for Spring. Recently I've seen Robin Redbreast, and I've heard the coo of turtle doves around our home.

As it is every year in the Springtime when I first hear the doves I am reminded of the Song of Solomon 2:12 and the words from the King James Version of the Bible float through my mind. "The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle [dove] is heard in our land."

Goodbye beautiful Winter! Hello marvelous Springtime. Welcome to our wonderful world!

I'm Rick Blumenberg and that's "My View from Tanner Creek".