Ray Bradbury and I

 

The Sunken Pier at Glen Harbor, Michigan

We spent our youths on the shores of lakes and rivers, Bradbury in Waukegan on Lake Michigan and I in Michigan on Lake St. Clair and the St. Clair River.

There is some quiet and subliminal effect of water, flowing, moving, breaking on the shore, or carrying the great storm clouds from the west on its mighty back towards you standing expectantly for hours on the shore, as Lake Michigan does in Empire, Michigan - or in Glen Harbor north of the massive sand dunes where the waves lap the ancient piers and the wind blows sand into your eyes.
(refer to Google Earth  45 degrees 54' 22  86" N / 86 degrees 01'30 45 W  for the ancient piers.)

The interior of the country is oppressive; it is a place where change happens with the slow speed of creeks drying up in the summer and the mud cracking wider and wider. The interior is a land from which water escapes and flows away, and everything runs! Runs at the proverbial speed hydrological, which in our hearts is far faster than the speed of light.

My friend was going to go golfing at a place called Canadian Lakes. It certainly sounded great to me, and I was just a bit envious. But when I looked it up in Google Earth, I discovered it was not in Canada at all, and was furthermore in the middle of the Michigan; it consisted of some landlocked lakes throttled by houses and golf courses.
I was no longer jealous.
Golfing in the prison of land stretching as far as the eye can see - with a few spitoons of lake - is not comparable to golfing at a place, like Antrim Dells, where one starts high on the hills near Lake Michigan and drives down a fairway descending into the deciduous forests of autumn... and no matter how dense the foliage and how deep the declivity, one is never far from the life-giving wind off the lake. The only thing better would be the additional salt on your tongue from a sea breeze.

Water has formed our lives.
The impetuous transformations of water and air forced the minds of Bradbury and myself to the vast, foamy, and quick reaches of imagination.
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