Anywhere Is A Better Place To Be

Harry Chapin wrote a song entiltled: “Anywhere Is a Better Place To Be.” In many phases of my life I felt that way, like all humans, I was always looking for greener grass on the other side of the fence. I hoped that someday, I would find a place to live that I wouldn’t want to leave, well, a place that had it all---a place that I had no reason to leave. I thought I found it when we bought this place up here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Our place is right at the top of Lake Michigan in fact.

We are blessed with incredible sunrises and sunsets and we see the weather come and go and kick up waves that you can surf on and it pushes the salmon in and I can walk into the woods from my back door and see the eagles fly and the seagulls bellow and we watch the commercial fishermen right in front of my beach haul in tons of fish.

Yeah, I thought I’d found it all and seen it all. However, I realized it isn’t perfect at all, it isn’t at all what I wanted. No, you see, it can’t suit my needs. I have to be able to go to the river on my way home from work and cast for egg-sucking rainbows. I have to be able to fire up the boat and troll out in front of my house and catch silvery salmon. This is not enough, well, yes, of course each day is fulfilling and beautiful. It is, even when I have to drive to work in the early morning hours---I cannot get over how beautiful the drive is in the fall—when the golden/red leaves are falling and occasionally it snows a bit—but then melts. I can’t believe how green it is when I drive to work in the summer---the evergreens and the green deciduous trees---blasting you with fresh oxygen and wavy undulations of leaves delighting on the wind.

The problem is, I only have one lifetime in which to enjoy and experience and smell and taste and see this place. I cannot walk out onto my beach enough. I cannot light enough beach fires. I cannot catch enough brook and rainbow trout and salmon. I delight in the experience of not wanting to go anywhere. I don’t want to get on an airplane and see the world. I don’t want to go fishing anywhere else. I don’t want to do anything but be here, just experience here, see here, breath here, sleep here.

A 20 year-old would be squirming by now---how could anyone want to stay in a place where you can’t buy drywall screws on a Saturday? Why would you want to live in a place where you have to order special supplies and lumber days to
weeks in advance. You can’t just drive to Lowes in the middle of the day and get that last piece of corner-round molding you need---you have to stop when you run out and go to the next project and think about replenishing the other supplies next week. If you run out of butter at 7 p.m.---you have to do without, there’s nowhere to go unless you want to drive a half hour or two. It’s insane that anybody would want to live here. Witness winter---70 mph winds blowing over the ice and knocking down trees around your house and making it exceedingly difficult just to get in. Sometimes you have to shovel four times a day---even then the drifts still get the best of you. Why? Well, if it isn’t obvious, I guess I have to spell it out.

I don’t have light pollution. I can see the stars and the planets when they appear. I don’t have noise pollution---in fact, I can’t hear anything but the wind most of the time. I don’t have neighbor pollution. My nearest neighbor is about ¼ mile away---and she likes being by herself too. Well, most of the time she’s traveling and visiting children anyway. I can walk into my front yard in my underwear and pee in the grass and not give a shit about the neighbor next door.

I can live a lifetime of one----but, I cannot live enough lifetimes in one to get enough of living on the frontier…I am
living on the edge of the greatest fresh water lake in the world and waking up and in and experiencing Paradise.

I know there is a God in Heaven. I know he created me. I love Him, I am pretty
sure He loves me. I hope he loves me enough that when I pass on, He will create for me a Naubinway Nook. I hope that I will find my swing in my front yard looking at the Lake. I hope that I will see my boat next to the garage, ready to go, ready to fish. I hope I will still have my big garage---with all the tools in the tool crib ready to go and Northern Exposure on and a couple of guitars ready to play.

I hope that I will find you there, sitting in a chair, ready to talk, bond, and take it all in with me. Because this, well, this is a much better place to be….