This is the season that we love to go out to Michigan. In the woods over the next six weeks, the tiniest forest plants put on their thrilling pageant, blooming alone or in great patches until the trees overshadow them with canopies of leaves.
Yesterday the temperature was forecast to hit seventy. My party decided to head for the Warren Dunes, where we would walk an ascending forest trail and then detour to the top of one of the tallest dunes. Would we see the earliest flowers of spring? As we set out, it appeared unlikely, but in the higher reaches of the sleeping forest, we found evidence of the season at hand.
Click on images to enlarge.
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- Forests are as ugly as they are beautiful.
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- The first flowers of spring.
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- Leaves and blossoms unfurl.
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- Hepatica: foliage and flower
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- The path shows no signs.
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- Blossoms clustered amid the dead leaves.
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- The blow-out had grown steeper
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- Lake, forest, dune
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- As far as we could see
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- On top of the world
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- Hepatica, which can be lavender, is a complex flower
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- A may apple?
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- Beside an old log
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- Left over from last season
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- Looking out on a vale of old and new shades
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- Deep furrowed bark
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- A haze of twigs
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- Olives and greys
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- On the cusp of change
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- A moss as high as grass
simon0252 says
Wonderful location and series of photos – thanks for posting.
Celia says
Thanks for the kind words, and good luck with your upcoming show!
Harley says
Really nice pictures—-I especailly like the one of the lake, forest and dune…………….Must have been some climb to make all the way up !!!!
Celia says
Mr C and I were trying to figure out how high it might be. I think I’m going to try to get a USGS map of that area. There was an excellent article in the Trib yesterday about a famous sand dune to the south, in Indiana, known as Mt Baldy. The reporter, Bob Downing, gave the heights of some of those peaks. I think he said one was 192 ft? Anyway, yes, it was quite a scramble to the top, and some years the sides are steeper than others.
Janet says
Beautiful!