Jerry’s new book is out! Up North in Michigan: A Portrait of Place in Four Seasons is arriving in bookstores now and is already generating buzz. Listen to his interview on Michigan Public Radio. The illustration are by Glenn Wolff and are (of course) wonderful.

Jerry’s and Glenn’s latest limited-edition print, “Opening Night” is still available at Big Maple Press. Check out their others, as well, including “Bohemian Rhapsody,” , “Ruby-Crowned Kinglet”, and the four-seasons-on-Lake-Michigan series. (We’d be happy to notify you in advance when new work is forthcoming from Big Maple Press, just click on this link and we’ll add you to the mailing list…)

The Living Great Lakes audiobook is now available in all the usual places, in both digital and CD versions. Thanks to SoundCommentary.com for this terrific review…

Jerry was honored to be the inaugural author in the Great Lakes Author Series produced by Great Lakes Now and Detroit Public TV, who are doing important work on raising awareness about issues facing the Great Lakes and Michigan….

Many thanks to Keith Taylor and “Stateside” on Michigan Radio for the fine review of A Walk in the Animal Kingdom….

While we’re tooting our own horn, a 5-star review of A Walk in the Animal Kingdom came our way (and another, here). The three titles in the Wonders of Nature Series are available at our favorite independent bookstores. If you can’t get to an indie store, visit the newly revamped and user-friendly Big Maple Press website .

We hope you’ll sign up at the bottom of this page for Jerry’s monthly newsletter, which offers observations on the seasons, updates on works in progress, and insights about the writing life. We promise your address is secure and we will never share it.

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art by Glenn Wolff
www.glennwolff.com

I remember a spring many years ago that arrived more slowly than most. It was 1979, the year that 32 feet of snow fell on the Keweenaw Peninsula and a succession of blizzards swept across the U.S. and Canada, shutting down cities from the Rockies to the East Coast. I was a student at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, and watched with astonishment as the temperature plummeted to 20 then 30 then 50 below zero. Lake Superior froze from shore to shore that year, and snow banks rose so high that pedestrians could touch the telephone wires.

By April everyone was eager for spring, but the wait became discouraging. I walked to school every day and noticed that the buds on the trees and shrubs remained tight as fists. The snow settled to a few feet of dirty crust, but would melt no further. The days stayed a cheerless 25 degrees, and the nights fell to the teens. The sky stayed dark and cloud-covered.

The last Saturday of the month, the opening day of trout season, I drove to a stretch of river I had discovered the previous summer. It was in a secret valley of cedars, and getting there required a long walk over ice-crusted snow with my unstrung fly rod in hand. When I reached the river it was flowing high, dark, and dangerous. I walked the bank, pretending to look for trout, but watching, in truth, for spring.

It arrived in the afternoon, when the clouds parted for a few minutes and an ice dam upstream burst, sending a knee-high wave of ice and slush surging toward me. The river rose two feet in five minutes and changed to the color of freshly stomped puddles. The sun broke free and birds began to sing. Hope surged through my veins and I hurried to string up my fly rod, attach a bead-head nymph, and roll some casts across the murky water. No trout showed themselves, but I didn’t expect them to. After a few minutes the sun disappeared behind clouds, the birds went silent, and my ears burned with cold again. But no matter— spring had arrived, with fanfare.

(First published in Jerry’s column, “Reflections,” in Michigan Blue Magazine)

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