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Scrapbookphotos, articles & writing snippets The Path to Page Experience"In August, 2004 I attended the first "From Path to Page" workshop led by Anne-Marie Oomen, writer and chair of the creative writing program at Interlochen Arts Academy. A group of women, dressed for hiking and bearing notebooks for writing met at the Olsen Farm, in the restored farmhouse that now serves as the office of Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear…..Our plan was to walk through some of the farmlands, and former homesteads, including cemeteries, to learn in a one-day session what we could about the individuals and families whose lives left their imprint on the beautiful and formidable landscape. There was no assignment. As we listened to histories, and spied old fence posts, long forgotten apple trees, or the pair of pines that once framed a house no longer behind them, we jotted notes, or in the case of one woman, sketched the reminders of bygone years..." - Marcy Branski © 2004 Who Are You?"Eleven in the morning is naptime for me. But today, I hear female voices and footsteps. I peer through a spider web stretched across the space between the boards of the east wall, sunlight burning my night-time eyes. I squint at women with notebooks, chatting, surrounding me, trying to see into the dimness that is my home. They bang around the outside of the barn for just a while, and then move on so I can get back to sleep. I’m a loner, but not really a grouch, except when I’m awakened. You see, night is my time. I squeeze my stocky, grey-brown body through a bigger hole in the south wall and find a nearby fence post, dependable, strong, made from a nearby locust tree, meant to last forever. Occasionally, I hoot to my friends, but mostly I sit silently and watch for the critters that scurry toward and beneath my post. They don’t hear my flight and though I’m not streamlined, I’m fast. I pounce—again and again—until I am sated. Afterward, I take time to listen to the wind skip through the trees and watch the wildflowers dance in moonlight. If I’m not too full to move, I flap my noiseless wings and alight in the Werner Family cemetery. Sometimes, I sit on Katie’s grave; at other times I perch on Margareta’s. From their tilted, weather-worn stones, I can see the big water through leaves, far below, and I drink in its power, much greater than my own. As I glide among the graves, I wonder if the young lovers who meet in my barn at night are descendents of those buried here. I hear them laugh and murmur as they make love. They don’t know I’m tucked in the shadows on the rafters above, so they are at ease in my space. There is a boy who comes, too. A sad boy. I listen to his soft sobs. Sometimes he sleeps under my favorite beam. I think his name is Jackson; I’ve seen it on his jacket. He’s always alone, so I don’t know his story. When he is not crying, he is silent, too, like me. He doesn’t even wake me as he leaves. When winter settles over and around me, the lovers don’t come and Jackson, too, stays away. I wonder if they or the women from the August morning will return. Mostly, I sleep, thick and puffed in the cozy space where the old roof meets the rickety, leaning wall, and snow sits heavy above me. The rodents, silly things, come to me, believing there’s warmth and safety with these tattered walls. My dinner delivered. Through cold, dark months the lake roars, pushed to screams by the north wind and I can’t find the graves, so concealed are they by drifts. It’s okay, though. The old barn keeps me dry, provides my meals and my resting place. I’ll explore again in spring, visit Katie and Margareta, and then wait to see who returns and who will discover my special place for the first time." - Marcy Branski © 2004 Go Back :: Home Page |