Our First Camping Trip

 

Our First Camping Trip of the Year (May 17-19, 2025)

 

So, here we are, back home again after the beginning of both the camping season and the square dance season. We combine the two activities as our calendars permit and I explain below. We are dancers at the group known as the North Woods Stompers, formerly a part of the National Square Dance Campers Association. After several years of a slow decline under the aegis of the national camping and square dancing group, we decided to begin dancing without the unnecessary oversight of the national group. This weekend’s event was the first dance of the year for our now independent dance group and it went off without a hitch. Surprisingly, we remembered most of the steps that the Caller/Cuer* called, making the dancing pleasant.

We are now dancing at a campground just south of Harrison, Michigan where the campground features a covered pavilion with a dance floor. The new owners of this campground, known as the Hidden Hill campground, were congenial hosts who have made several improvements, including a host of gardens with flowers just now coming into bloom. We expect to use their facility for all of our upcoming dances this year.

Two new dance couples joined us in Harrison, Michigan for our first dance of the year, a Friday and Saturday dance under the direction of our Caller/Cuer. The pair of new dancers are recent converts to square dancing who seemed to fit in nicely along with our long-term dancing friends. The dance included just enough new steps to make to make the dances challenging for both the newcomers and us old-timers.

 

*For the uninitiated, the Caller is the leader of the dance who directs dancers to perform a series of movements in a four-couple square. The dancers spin or twirl their partners as well as others in the square at one time or another depending upon the dictates of the Caller.

Both square dancing and round dancing (the name used for ball room dancing where dancers sashay around the dance floor) to the instructions given by the Cuer. Marjorie and I include ball room dancing in our skill set as a consequence of the several years we have spent trying to master the art. Unlike square dancing with its set routines, round dancing features a variety of dances like the waltz, two step, cha-cha, rhumba, and whatever other patterned dances the Cuer favors.

The dancing is not immediately demanding on our bodies in the sense of speed walking or running or some other strenuous exercise. However; after several hours spent on the dance floor, Marjorie and I realized that we were tired when we returned home. Then we began the task of emptying our camping trailer with the left-over food, bedding, clothes, etc. After we finished that task and were ready for the sofa, Marjorie peaked out our living room window and told me to look at our flag pole.

I did. It wasn’t in the same state that it had been when we left. Nor was it in the same state of being that it had been for the previous 22 years. For some inexplicable reason, the pole had fallen to the ground and the American flag was laying in the dirt. Whoever heard of a flag pole suddenly deciding to topple over for no apparent reason?

This couldn’t do. I decided there was nothing for it other than beginning the repair immediately, by retrieving the flag, analyzing the failure of the pole, cleaning and re-hanging the flag and making at least a temporary fix to the pole. The task took the rest of the afternoon and my tired body completed it only with a required routine of grumbling with a few swear words thrown in.

I hope our next camping/dancing trip will be as enjoyable as the last one without the flag pole incident.

Springtime in Roscommon

 

 

 

 

                           2025 Springtime in Roscommon

 

Since I have decided that our winter of 2024/2025 is now over, I thought I should advise you of the status of the oncoming spring via a blog. I had been considering issuing a new blog anyway and so my early morning decision about the end of winter seemed to be a marriage of practicality and timeliness.

It is probably no surprise that I always try to write something on a topic that I know about. It is either that, or I must write something sufficiently clever so that those of you who have nothing better to do than follow my blogs, continue to do so. I stared writing this morning. As shown in the picture above, I began too soon after making my way from the bed to the computer.

It is now several days later, and I have finally decided to continue writing by looking up a few of my earlier blogs on the topic of springtime in Roscommon. I found the following two poems in an earlier blog and they were written by authors too famous to ignore, so here they are.

 

Daffodowndilly, A.A. Milne*

She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,

She wore her greenest gown,

She turned to the south wind,

And curtsied up and down,

She turned to the sunlight,

And shook her yellow head,

And whispered to her neighbor

“Winter is dead”

(This poem is in the public domain)

 

Snowball, Shel Silverstein, Falling Up, 1996

I made myself a snowball

As perfect as could be

I thought I’d keep it as a pet

And let it sleep with me.

I made it some pajamas,

And a pillow for its head.

Then last night it ran away,

But first – it wet the bed.

 

 

2025 Springtime in Roscommon

Winter in Roscommon began in November 2024 after the first snowfall entertained our deer hunters who cheered the snow that made tracking their prey a bit easier. Things went downhill from there. Frankly, the 2024/2025 winter was a doozy with excessive snow, too much cold, and too little sun. Now, it is behind us as the calendar indicates. Yet the recent rain and lack of warm sunshine is making spring in Roscommon problematic as winter seems not to want to depart. After analyzing this circumstance for several weeks, I decided that bold action is needed to chase winter and welcome spring. What better way to accomplish this than a blog declaring that winter is now dead. Of course, some evidence for this cataclysmic change needs to be given and I decided that I am just the correspondent needed to convince doubters that spring has arrived in Roscommon.

The hints that spring has arrived are everywhere. One of the early indicators that winter has ended comes from my pond. Last fall, the pond responded to the first snow in November by forming a layer of ice at the shoreline and extending a dozen feet or more into the deeper water. The ice must have liked what it found because it decided to stay for the next four months. The ice is now a distant memory as it melted last month at the south end of the pond that was shaded by leafless trees. Those same trees are now showing buds and the tall swamp grass that ringed the pond at its north end are now dead, as they float into the deeper water pushed by the growing plants who seem to think their 2025 growth is more important than last year’s offspring that died after the first snow.

I have ventured to the river several times over the last month and noted the two new beaver lodges that adorn the shore. I don’t know if this portends the end of winter or not but at least is shows that beaver think so. The source of the material for the new lodges is readily seen: sometime during the last several weeks beaver have felled two of my Red Pine trees and dragged the branches to the river’s shore at the end of my property.

The daffodils in the front lawn are now responding to the warm sun just as A. A. Milne offered and a have several dozen of the daffodils showing their bright yellow color.

* Alan Alexander Milne (1882 –1956) was a British author, editor, poet, and playwright. Born in London, he is best known for his children’s books about Winnie-the-Pooh. He produced a vast amount of work in other entertainment genres. Interestingly, his degree was in mathematics. Milne served in both World Wars, despite his position as a pacifist. Though he suffered poor health in later years, he was at one time a gifted cricket player. I have several daffodils now showing their yellow blooms just as Milne described. Of course, I have no spring tulips to admire as a harbinger of the changing season. I planted several upon first moving to Roscommon, but they all disappeared. It took me several years to learn that tulips are a favorite treat for the local deer population, thus depriving me of another plant that shows its colors in spring.

Another important indicator of the seasonal change is the noise in the morning. We now have numerous woodpeckers who beat the logs, tree limbs, and a nearby road sign in hopes of attracting a mate. In addition to the woodpeckers, we now have many of our resident songbirds who think they should begin their singing as soon as the sun peaks over the horizon. While we are talking about birds, here is clincher that winter is dead in Roscommon and spring is now fully in command of our weather: today, May 8, 2025, a single hummingbird arrived at our feeder to the serenade of the Spring Peepers who finally began their regular calls to other new-borne frogs (in search of sex). Ain’t life grand.