The carpet in the woods

I can’t sleep, and it’s the bloody carpet’s fault.

Last week, Up North police found a blood-soaked rug rolled up in an abandoned truck in the Huron National Forest. They didn’t see the body hidden in the woods nearby, at least not right away.

Police arrested Clifford Marion Farthing, 57, after he told them he shot a man three times in the heat of an argument, rolled him up in the carpet, used a dolly to hoist the body into the truck, and hauled it to the forest for disposal. Police say the dead man’s girlfriend, Doreen Schunk, helped hide the body and provided the gun.

People kill people with guns nearly every day in Michigan and barely cause a stir. Another shooting in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Benton Harbor, Jackson? Meh. Same old, same old.

Mix in a tell-tale carpet and place the crime in the wilds of the rural north, though, and the story gets interesting. Ooh, that monster, we say, shuddering a little and scanning for more lurid details.

But the important part of this story ― the part that keeps me up at night ― isn’t the rug, or the truck, or the forest. The important part is what we do with it.

Back in the mid-80s, when Michigan was ramping up its “tough on crime” policies, Farthing pleaded guilty to second-degree homicide in Oscoda County and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. He was 17 at the time of the crime.

I don’t know details of that incident, and the court documents that might enlighten me are a vexing three-hour drive away. I do know it wasn’t the same murder as a more notorious incident in the same county that same autumn ― one in which two downstate hunters were killed by a couple of locals, chopped up, and fed to pigs.

Farthing was raised in a cage, locked up with the most dangerous people in the state from age 18 onward. In 2023, having never learned the shaping lessons of independence, the 50-something man was paroled to woodsy Iosco County, where he had no connections, no support, and little access to resources that might have connected him to something resembling a “normal” life.

Two years later, police say, he killed again.

Michigan in recent years has overhauled its rules regulating life sentences for minors and young adults. Hundreds of Michiganders found guilty of serious crimes committed when they were teens now qualify for resentencing and possible release after serving decades expecting to die in prison.

Farthing’s case will make advocates against the recent changes sit up and take notice. See? people are already saying. This is why we can’t just let them go. They’re dangerous.

That understandable reaction doesn’t reflect reality. Juvenile lifers, once paroled, seldom reoffend. (One notable exception in Michigan involved a man named Timothy Riddle ― who, I must clarify, is NOT the same person as my brother-in-law, who bears the same name and is a very nice guy.)

Releasing Farthing didn’t cause the second murder. But, as I lay restlessly awake in the wee hours of the morning, I couldn’t help thinking how we might have prevented the three gunshots that took another Michigan life.

Back in the early 80s, Farthing’s community could have buckled down on efforts to protect families, keep kids in school, prevent abuse, and give troubled teens an alternative to destructive behaviors.

The Michigan Department of Corrections could have paroled Farthing somewhere with robust reentry services rather than depositing him in a rural motel.

His prison overseers could have made sure he had adequate life skills. The parole board could have seen the danger and refused to release him. Once they did, properly funded local police could have done more patrols, been more vigilant, kept closer tabs on him.

The state could have passed gun laws that made it harder for him to get his hands on a deadly weapon. Advocacy groups could have pushed for rural mental health access and jobs training programs. Communities could have backed efforts to combat poverty, substance abuse, isolation, and other root contributors to violent crime.

Individuals could have donated used items to the clothing drive, given the unkempt job applicant a chance, gotten to know their neighbors, reported suspicious activity, and modeled healthy ways to address conflict.

Could-haves and should-haves won’t stop Farthing’s bullets. But other would-be killers are already lining up behind him. Other arguments are igniting, other lives are in turmoil ready to boil over to violent acts that will make us shake our heads and say, “What a shame.”

The shame is on us if we see it coming and do nothing.

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I know not everyone wakes up stewing about violence reduction. A raging national fandom for true crime doesn’t translate to a national determination to find solutions. Family and acquaintances get a little glassy-eyed when I launch into one of my tirades about the criminal legal system, and I get it. Everyone has their own battle to fight.

This is mine. 

To be honest, I’m not sure how to fight it. A friend suggested I start a podcast focused on the “What next?” behind real crime stories. I could call it “No Murder Before Coffee,” we agreed. I don’t think that matches my skillset, but I might launch a Substack, if I can figure out how to attract readers. I’ll keep plugging away at the book project that daily convicts me of one person’s ability to enact change, and I’ll keep lying awake at 3 a.m., working out ways we can do better at keeping one another safe.

If that’s something you wake up thinking about, too, shoot me an email at julie.j.riddle@gmail.com and we can fight together.

Life and death and doing more

I’m in the back of a courtroom, where soon the bailiff will call, “All rise!” and the day‘s docket will swing into motion.

Attorneys I know and like stand in a small cluster in front of the room. They are talking of work, maybe, or of their families. In the jury box, inmates in orange watch the gentle hubbub of waiting. One looks curious, anxious. The other looks like he’s been here before. The deputies look at their phones. We wait, quietly.

Last week – or maybe it was the week before – a nurse called to tell me I have cancer. She was new to delivering such news, and I felt bad for her. It’s OK, I told her. Her voice still shook. Someone would call soon with more information, she said. She couldn’t tell me anything more, just that one bit of information. I have cancer.

Decades ago, that news would have equaled a death sentence, or close to it. Not today. Today we have new medications, new therapies, and new approaches, and fewer people die, at least from the kind of cancer that’s in my body. I’m told I stand a good chance of landing among the not-dying, despite the rampant cell death the coming chemo will cause. But you never know. Cancer still kills people all the time.

I choose to believe I’m going to live.

But I can’t help thinking there’s merit in living like I might die.

Court is underway now. The judge is a temp, covering for the regular judge, who’s overseas doing cool National Guard things. A handful of defendants have taken their turn before the temp: a man asking for drug addiction treatment so he can get a construction job; another who got drunk when he was a teenager, had sex with a younger teen, and now gets beaten up by people who find out he’s on the sex offender list.

When my mom found out she had cancer, she knew it would kill her. I wonder, sometimes, what she thought about as she neared her finish line. Did she contemplate what makes a life well-lived? Did she weigh what mattered to her most? Did she wonder if she’d done enough?

Pale and bleak in the harsh light of you-might-die, my days take on an alarming Lack Of Merit.

I’ve done this, I’ve done that. I’ve impacted people. I’ve said nice things and made people happy. I’ve loved.

It’s enough.

And it’s not enough.

A woman is standing in front of the judge now. Slim, 30-something, nervous. Her name is familiar. It’s on a spreadsheet on my computer. Two decades ago, she was part of a kerfuffle over a baggie of oregano passed off as marijuana and sold for $60. Another girl involved in that transaction is now dead, shot in the head and left in the woods a few years ago.

I look at the slim woman, with a lifetime of drug use and trauma behind her, and wonder if her trajectory ― or the trajectory of the dead woman ― could have changed had someone, one person, done something differently 20 years ago. I wonder if anyone is making sure her kids, and the kids of the dead woman, have a better chance at being OK.

The time I have left is limited. Maybe not by the cancer. But it will end. And with it will end the time I have to do what matters most.

Yes, I want to leave behind a family that’s strong and loving. I want time with my kids, my granddaughter, my husband. I want to be dear to my friends and an example of my Savior’s unflinching love for me.

But that’s not enough.

Loving is the truest and most powerful thing I can do, but I’m made to do more. I want to do more. I need to find that more and do it. Now. Because time is fleeting.

Yesterday, I wrote a news story for a weekly small-town paper. A 67-year old grandfather, regular church attendee and school volunteer was raided by the FBI, who found hidden in his home several hard drives containing potentially millions of images of child pornography.

People don’t like it when I talk about stories like that. Nobody wants to wonder if the people they trust have a stash of kiddie porn in their ceiling tiles. People living nice lives don’t want to talk about drug addiction, or homelessness, or mental illness, or gun violence, or sexual assault. Pastor’s wives like me shouldn’t care about things like that, people tell me.

But that’s my more.

I care that people abuse children and men hit women and traffickers sell drugs that could kill my neighbor, my friend, my child. I care that courts and police and attorneys and laws and prisons all exist to make things better and sometimes make them worse, not just for Bad People but for entire communities. I care that we all have the power to do one thing ― if only we are willing to see it ― that could change someone’s trajectory and even save their life.

My dad, when he was alive, used to sing a song based on a Bible verse that’s become a battle cry to me. “He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”

Your more probably doesn’t look like mine. That’s OK. You can find your own way to be a just, merciful, and humble warrior in this limited, lovely life of ours.

Do it now.

And know that you are enough.

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Full disclosure: The meh photo I’m attaching to this post is totally illegal. Michigan courts only allow reporters to take photos in court ― and I was not there as a reporter this time ― and only after filing the proper paperwork. I snapped this anyway, chuckling evilly under my breath.

After seeing, to my delight, some of its results in court: Shoutout to sheriff’s departments that have instituted the IGNITE program at their jails. The program is changing lives for the better and creating safer communities. Rah.

To those of you who regularly read all the way to the end of my long posts…first, thank you. You help make my more possible. Second, I want to be more intentional about writing about the stuff that drives me ― specifically, the factors that contribute to violence, trauma, and desperate lives, and our role in addressing them. I don’t want to use this space for that, at least not often. So I need to find a new space. Where and how? No idea. But life is short. Gotta do the thing that matters. More info to come…and, if you have suggestions for me, for heaven’s sake, share ‘em. Reach me via email any time ― julie.j.riddle@gmail.com.

Liberty; or, Don't call him Frank

I hadn’t expected to fall in love. But something about him grabbed my interest and grabbed it quick. Maybe it was the confident way he carried himself, or his smooth moves. Heck, maybe it was his good-lookin’ backside. All I know is, when I glanced back over my shoulder as I was walking away, I heard him as plain as day murmur in sultry tones, “My name is Carlos.”

That was the beginning of our love story. Before long, he moved in with me, and we became inseparable. He was a little rough around the edges, sure. Sometimes he’d embarrass me, the way he growled and complained in public. But, I loved him. He gave me what I craved: Freedom. One-on-one attention. A way to get to the grocery store.

After fiveish years and more than 100,000 miles together, I said goodbye this week to my 2010 Jeep Liberty. It was time. The car no longer had the oomph to carry me safely where I needed to go. But, oh, what heartache it is to say goodbye to a hunk of metal that has been your companion and your friend.

I’ve always named my vehicles ― shoutout to Stanley, Stella, Oscar, and Mary Ann ― so I wasn’t surprised when this one named itself that first day I test-drove it.

The name grew, and so did the Liberty’s back story. The air conditioner knob, labeled in centigrade and not fahrenheit, clued me in to the car’s Canadian origins. Obviously, its real name was not Carlos but the uber-French “Guy,” pronounced the French way, rhyming with “free.”

But Guy, my Liberty decided, was a sissy name. He much preferred Carlos, a name oozing with Latino sensuality. No longer a Canadian citizen ― and, all due respect, buddy, not actually from Latin America ― the Liberty was now an American car, with the American name of Frank, which he hated.

(Those of you who name cars understand all this. Those of you who do not name cars…well, you just don’t get it, and that’s your loss.)

Guy Carlos Don’t Call Me Frank and I were quite the pair. He was loud from the get-go and would occasionally get louder until I fixed whatever was wrong with him, which usually took a while. He had been gently driven before we met, but, boy howdy, did we pack the miles on.

My 50-minute-one-way commute to work was just the start. The new job I’d fallen into was glorious and breathtaking. Despite my utter lack of training or experience, the nice folks at a nice newspaper hired me as a reporter at the ripe old age of upper-40-something. Until then, my life consisted of a string of volunteer and part-time gigs that kept my attention focused on my home, my church, and my kids’ small school. Suddenly, my eyes and my horizons exploded open in this new world of journalism, with Guy Carlos as my partner.

We went everywhere to track down a story. To courthouses and jails and soup kitchens and homeless shelters. To the driveways of brave, kind people willing to tell me their story. We raced to fires and zipped down shortcuts to get to crime scenes. We prowled wooded paths and slunk past drug houses and biker gang hangouts and got stuck on back roads where cell service was nonexistent.

When I wasn’t chasing a story, Guy Carlos and I were on the road to my kids’ colleges many hours away or seeking out forest paths I hadn’t yet wandered. He hauled tons ― possibly literally ― of Lake Huron rocks back to our house and carried my kayak from river to pond to creek. He carried me safely through countless whiteout snowstorms, the kind where you’re sure you’re going to slide into the nothingness and disappear forever.

In 2020, he paraded my robe-clad daughter, clutching her mortarboard and laughing as she sat on his roof with her feet dangling through the sunroof, in our small town’s best effort to give its high school graduates some form of normalcy. When my work life got too intense and I couldn’t take another day of the worry and fear and sadness that came with it, my car carried me away, flying down country roads where placid cows and sandhill cranes and sunlight could make me whole again.

Cleaning him out for sale was bittersweet. Through sniffles and muttered chants of, “It’s OK, it’s OK,” I rounded up the detritus of the past years: pocket rocks and smooth driftwood, shells from the peanuts that kept me awake on late drives home in the dark, dozens of pens I was forever dropping as I scribbled notes on the fly. Bits and pieces of the life I lived with this car by my side.

I saved removing his stickers for last. His back window ― held on by duct tape and Gorilla Glue ― had gradually filled with reminders of moments and ideas that had come to matter to me in this, my new life. A coffee shop sticker and one of Michigan, connecting me to places I love. An “I carry naloxone and I’ll help if I can” sticker to remind me that helping others does not start with judgement. A sticker reading, simply, “Adventure,” reminding me who I am and who I want to be.

The husband’s car was quiet as we pulled away from the Liberty. I took one last look over my shoulder and said one last mental goodbye.

The thing is, I wasn’t saying goodbye to Guy Carlos.

To the car I loved, yes. But my buddy Guy Carlos, the one who heard my tears and my prayers and my shouts of jubilation and my occasional expletives, the one who earned a pat on his dashboard when he overtook a slowpoke on U.S. 23 North and a last kiss on his steering wheel before I walked away for the last time, wasn’t metal.

Guy Carlos was an idea. He was everything that vehicle gave to me while it was part of my life. I lost the car. But I get to keep what it meant to me.

I started this blog post intending to expand it into a nice essay about some bigger concept with universal application. But I think I’ll stop here. Partly because I really, really need to blow my nose and the people in the coffee shop where I’m working are unnerved by the lady crying in the corner. But also, I think it’s OK to talk about letting go of something you love and let that be enough.

Bye, buddy.

Thanks for the ride.

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I have a new set of wheels now. It’s a spiffy 2017 RAV4 with insanely low mileage. It doesn’t have a name yet, but it will. Interested in a visitor? Shoot me an invite, because the Rav and I are anxious to hit the road.

Crisis mode

Ice.

So much ice.

Downed trees everywhere. Impassable roads, driveways, paths.

House roofs groaning under the weight of an 80-foot trunk. Windows smashed by limbs. Sheds crushed. Hours and days of branches snapping and crashing and exploding like gunshots in the woods.

Power poles snapped in half and leaning at crazy angles. Power lines drooping every which way. Hundreds of broken poles, maybe thousands.

Dark houses. Dark stores. Dark offices. Dark, dark, dark, and cold.

From my warm, lit home in downstate Michigan, I scan headlines and read stories and watch social media videos about the storm of a century that still holds northern Michigan in an icy grip. My friends are up there, people I care about, and I can’t help them. As I write this, it’s been nearly a full week since tens of thousands of northerners lost power, and many of them are still waiting for the lights to come back on. For some, it could be another week, the power companies say.

It’s not just the lights, of course. Not in a rural area in a northern Michigan winter.

No heat, unless you’re lucky enough to have a fireplace or a generator. Inside temperatures not much warmer than outside. No hot water to warm your hands. No hot shower. No electricity to charge a phone. No television, no streaming services, no Alexa. No refrigerator. For those on well water — and, in a rural area, lots of folks use well water — no flushable toilets.

No asking the neighbors for help. They’re worse off than you.

Businesses losing sales, losing productivity, losing thousands of dollars in perishable goods. Hourly employees losing income.

Flooded basements. Five, seven feet of water downstairs. Hundreds of calls a day to local water-pumping companies, begging for help.

Hour-long waits in line to fill gas tanks at the one operating gas station in the region.

Snowbirds fretting in Florida, knowing they’ll return home to yardfulls of trees and rancid refrigerators and just wishing they could do something, anything, to help their cold, tired Up North loved ones.

No electricity to plug in a home oxygen tank or charge a wheelchair or keep medications cold. In an area veined with wooded back roads now littered with tree trunks, less chance than ever that an ambulance or fire truck can get there quickly.

In homes already stressed by ill health, underemployment, or mental distress, more trauma. More worry. More isolation and uncertainty. More chance things won’t get better.

Every power outage I’ve experienced has ended with a little pang of regret. You know what I mean, right? After the first flurry of concern, you get used to it, you find the candles, you make plans, and, when the furnace suddenly hums to life and lights pop on, you have that little moment of, Aaw, I was kinda enjoying the adventure.

This is not that kind of power outage.

A week in, and Up Northernites are still struggling, still fighting for their OKness. It hurts to think of. 

But the worst can bring out the best. And my people in northern Michigan are proving how abso-stinkin-lutely lovely they are. 

In a crisis that impacts everyone, everyone is jumping in and finding someone else to help.

Hours after power started going out, warming shelters cropped up across the frozen region, complete with cots and snacks and hot dogs on the grill. Restaurateurs emptied their coolers and fired up food trucks and cooked hot meals for anyone who was cold.

Neighbors checked on neighbors, inviting them to share fireplace warmth or plug in a phone. A pet store proprietor offered respite to warmth-dependent critters. The sheriff made sure the animal shelter got a generator.

The local cement plant offered first responders gas for their vehicles. National Guardsmen grabbed chainsaws to help DNR officers clear roads. Grocery store employees used flashlights to help desperate customers find food in dark aisles.

Local officials launched the Emergency Operations Center they perfected during the pandemic, orchestrating calm in the chaos. Firefighters and EMTs and police officers and other people-servers stepped up, geared up, and put in long days. Journalists with no power at home kept telling the story of communities that are anything but powerless.

I would never wish a calamity on any community. But when one happens, we get a glimpse of what we are capable of, and of the depth of our capacity to care.

Soon, out-of-area news outlets will stop reporting on northern Michigan’s historic ice storm. The EOC will pack up its dry erase markers, and the warming shelters will turn back into township halls and fire stations and churches. Residents will tell and retell their stories, clean the branches out of their yards, and go back to work, a little more grateful for outlets and light switches that work. Eventually, even the smell of mildewy basements will subside, and roofs will get repaired, and communities will feel normal once again.

But under that normalcy lies the crisis that was there all along, before the ice and the power lines and the flooded basements.

Everywhere, in even the nicest of nice little towns, people are hurting. Mothers are scrambling to evade eviction. Children are cowering under raised fists. Young men who hate themselves are escaping into chemicals. Teen girls hungry for validation are stepping ever closer to danger. Great-grandparents are crumbling into loneliness.

When I remember all the individual crises around me, my chest thumps and my eyes close and I want to run, somewhere I can’t see or think or know about any of it. I have my own crises to deal with. I can’t be in constant crisis mode for other people. It’s too much. It’s a thousand trees down. It’s powerlessness.

But, I tell myself, none of us has to fix all of it alone.

My wish for my dear Up North is that, as it recovers from this colossal challenge, it remembers that some people face colossal challenges every day. My wish is that it finds renewed, united strength to not only return to normal, but to make normal better.

And I want to look to the noble response of those beleaguered northerners and let it inspire in me a new resolve to look for the crises in other homes — and then lend my hands and heart to do something.

I can’t empower everyone. But maybe I can share my warmth to get someone through a cold time. Maybe I can help them recharge or let my tiny light make their darkness a little less dim.

I won’t do it perfectly. But imagine if all of us kept crisis mode turned on, at least a little. Imagine if all of us decided other people need to be OK, too. 

What a storm of caring that might be.

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If you have the urge to contribute to relief efforts Up North — and they do, truly, need relief — the Community Foundation for Northeast Michigan is collecting Urgent Needs funds to provide immediate assistance to local nonprofits serving people facing hardship due to the storm’s aftermath.

Donations can be made online at cfnem.org. Checks can be mailed to CFNEM P. O. Box 495, Alpena, MI 49707. I can vouch for the organization and trust them to use donations the right way.

But your community needs your efforts, too. Help people who are helping people, wherever they may be.

Photo credit: my friend Darby, who has power back now. Yay!

Seven days

A bad case of the winter blues blew the door shut behind me as I slid into the driver’s seat. It was one of those afternoons when everything just feels wrong and a directionless sadness sits in your gut like the sludge at the bottom of a cup of hot cocoa. Nothing was really wrong and I knew it, but I couldn’t help wishing, as the engine roared to life, that I could go home, crawl into bed, and get the day over with.

You know how some days you just aren’t feeling it? It was one of those. I had just finished up a couple of interviews in a little town an hour or so away from home and had no reason in the world to be in a funk. And yet, there I was, funky as a teenage boy’s socks.

I pulled up my map app and looked for the long way home. This girl needed some country drive therapy. A little north of town lay a covered bridge that, as it turned out, wasn’t as interesting as I’d hoped. But just beyond it I came across something Ripley’s Believe It or Not discovered years before me: a tiny cemetery, smack dab in the middle of a three-way intersection.

It was one of those triangles made when a rural road joins another at a bend. I almost drove on past, but the spot spoke to me. Besides, I love cemeteries. The licheny headstones, the fading letters and numbers, the whispers of past days and ordinary lives and long ago loves, it all resonates with my soul.

The Culbertsons once farmed the land from here to the river, a helpful sign said, the same sign that noted the spot’s brush with Ripley fame as “The Cemetery in the Middle of the Road.” Knee-high stones and a few tall spires mark the final resting place of 20-some Culbertsons and the extended family they thought worthy of sharing their little piece of land.

James Culbertson, born in Ireland in 1802, was in his 20s when he married Charity Ludwig in Pennsylvania. The happy couple somehow found their way to rural southern Michigan, where they died in their 60s.

In between, they raised 11 children, farmed, did laundry, watched the river and listened to the sandhill cranes winging overhead. They gossiped about faraway news of the state capital's move to Lansing and Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation. Charity, bless her heart, endured the nickname “Chesty,” according to the stone that’s the last physical testament to her life.

Modern obituaries tell you in years how old someone was when they died. Gene Allen Hackman, 95. James “Jimmy” Earl Carter Jr., 100. John David Riddle, 70.

Old headstones are different. Chesty’s stone notes that that hardy woman lived 62 years, two months, and 10 days. One son, Samuel, died during the Civil War, aged 21 years, three months, and seven days.

Those seven days snagged at me as I wandered among the stones.

Seven days don’t amount to much.

And yet, when someone tallied up Samuel Culbertson’s life, they decided that those seven days were worth counting.

We can’t number our days as we live them. Often, we hardly notice as they slip out from under our feet, evaporating into the wind as we trudge ever forward toward an engraved number on a stone. It’s today, and then suddenly it’s next week, next month, next year. Seven days are a breath. Inhale, exhale, and they’re gone.

But, mightn’t we make them count?

Don’t get me wrong ― I do not propose that we all go out and perform heroic acts and live Larger than Life and change the world. Live bold sometimes, if you like, but not every day. Nobody can sustain that.

But that’s not the only kind of day worth counting. I suspect, if you asked him, that Samuel Culbertson wouldn’t wish away any of his 21 years, three months, and seven days.

All the days counted. Even the funky ones.

I’m not sure the secret to holding on to our days. But I think maybe it lies in seeing them as they’re happening and accepting them as they come. And maybe in remembering that, at some point, they run out.

I hope that when Chesty wrung out little Samuel’s shirt after he took a tumble into the river, or when he was playing with the dog too rough and knocked over a candle, or when he promised to be home for supper but visited his sweetheart instead, that she caught hold of each of those days and tucked it in her skirt pocket and understood that it mattered.

I hope that when Samuel turned 21, he said what he wanted to say and did what was important to do and let his heart be full. I hope he made his days count before they got counted.

Maybe today’s a sludgy day for you. Maybe your funk is as chunky as curdled milk. I’m sorry. Days like that happen sometimes, and they’re hard.

But they count. They all count. Today is a part of your story, whatever kind of day it may be.

As I type this, a kitten’s sleepy head lies on my hands, bobbling with the rhythm of my keystrokes. Wind, heavy and thick, sounds like winter as it jostles the tree branch outside the window. My feet are cold.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Today counts.

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Writer and blogger Tim Urban changed the way I spend my days and weeks, at least when I remember to think about it. He makes complicated and important issues simple, and I think he’s funny and wise. He also swears more than some people are comfortable with, so just a heads up on that.

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A couple of people lately have asked how my book project is coming along, which is nice of them. More than a year after the first deadline I set myself to finish my book proposal, I am…still working on the proposal. Sigh. It’s a honking big document, 50 pages or so, that has to convince a publisher they will make money by publishing your book. I just want to write the darn thing, but this is part of the process for a serious nonfiction book, so I keep at it. I also do paid work as a freelance writer and editor, and that work sometimes takes up all my brain space. I sometimes think -- OK, I often think -- that I should just chuck the book idea altogether. But then I get riled up again about this idea in my head and I know I need to say it, so I keep going.

Anyway, there’s your little update. I’ll give you another one when the proposal is done, and when an agent picks it up, and when a publisher green lights the project. Huzzah, and all that.

A fishy love story

I stood in the river in borrowed waders, arms cradled under the fish’s enormous, rubbery body, flummoxed by the sheer weight of the imposing creature.

Just lift her, the researcher said. Fat chance. I heaved and grunted and gasped and the fish didn’t move, all 80 pounds of her still massed like a good-natured anvil just beneath the water.

My love affair with lake sturgeon began more than a year earlier, when a 5-inch fingerling with a turned-up snoot squirmed briefly in my palm before flitting away into a northern Michigan river.

I was there to report on the release of hundreds of little fisheroos in the hopes they would grow up to be great, big fisheroos in 30 years or so. The determined creature in my hand, with armored plates instead of scales and a strength too big for its small size, snagged my heart. The ancient species has been around since the dinosaurs, scientists believe, and live crazy-long lives. My little guy might still be alive 100 years from now, a 7-foot, 100-pound monster slowly cruising the depths of Black Lake in Cheboygan County.

The following winter, in a ritual bordering on sacred, hundreds of hunters vied to catch one of only six fish harvested in Michigan’s annual sturgeon hunt. Mittened and coffeed hopefuls crouched in ice shanties, spears in hand, waiting for a dark shadow to pass below. (Spears. Yes. That’s how you catch a sturgeon. Everything about this fish feels timeless.) Pings on the phone of the keyed-up DNR officer I was tailing said one fisherman had scored, and then another. In the end, the entire, frozenly frenetic hunting season lasted 35 minutes.

And then, a spring day, wading after researchers as they tagged the big fish on their annual migration up the river to spawn. Strong guys in wetsuits and snorkels netted their subjects, clipping and prodding and weighing and then, before letting each one go, hefting it in the air for a quick, big-grin photo.

Want to hold one? they asked me.

An assistant held my camera and the researcher instructed me how to slide my forearms under the female fish. Bend your knees, he said, straighten your back, set your feet, and lift.

Yeah, no. Madame Fish wasn’t going anywhere. But I didn’t care. I felt glorious. She was so heavy, and so full of substance, and so real. She might have been 50, 80, 100 years old, maybe never before touched or even seen by a human, prowling in the dark all those years as time flowed by. And here she was, in my weak arms, pausing on her journey to let me intersect with her life, just there, briefly, in the cold of the river.

Later, I looked through the dozen or more photos the assistant kindly snapped as the researcher helped me get one bent leg under the fish, lifting her at least a little out of the water. In the photos, I’m patting the fish’s belly, feeling the menacing ridges down the length of her back, talking to her. Mostly, though, I’m smiling. No, you can’t really call it that. My mouth hangs open in a shout, eyes wide, my face a picture of utter, astonished delight.

This year’s sturgeon hunt starts this Saturday, up on Black Lake, as always. From far away I can feel the pulsing excitement of the fishermen and women, gathering their spears, gassing up their snowmobiles, prepping long johns and filling thermoses and hoping that this will be the year they catch ― or, at least, catch a glimpse of ― the fish they can’t help loving.

They say you get attached to what you touch. Retailers use that to their advantage, enticing you to pick up merchandise, knowing you’re more likely to buy it if you do.

I don’t think I’d be half so enamored with sturgeon if I hadn’t held one in my fingers and felt the weight of another one in my arms. Things that touch our hands snag at our hearts.

Maybe pulling something within arm’s reach is the key to loving it.

I look at some people and see just a fish. A stranger who makes decisions I wouldn’t make, who lives in an environment I don’t want to understand. They’re a them, and I’m a me, and I want to care about them but I don’t, not really.

But then I sit down for coffee with them. Talk to them. Ask them questions in their kitchen, sit beside them on a sidewalk, feed them at my dining room table. I discover they’re not a mere fish; they’re real, with a story and a reason and a warm heart beating beneath their armor.

And suddenly, I care.

Maybe I still don’t understand, not all the way, and maybe I’d still make different decisions than they do. Maybe they’re still a fish. But we are no longer in two different worlds. Because our lives have touched, and touch connects.

And then I remember that I’m just a fish.

A maker of bad decisions, full of failings and uglinesses I hope nobody sees.

And I remember that someOne does see, and doesn’t turn away ― someone who reaches out to touch my life, who brings me close, who sees beneath my armor and chooses to take me home.

And my mouth gapes anew with utter, astonished delight.

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The 2024 sturgeon hunt was cancelled because a mild winter meant thin ice. Sounds like everything is a go for this year, and I can only imagine the excitement in the nearby town of Onaway this week as they welcome a flood of visitors. If you happen to go to the sturgeon hunt on Saturday, please, please send me a picture. I wish I could be there.

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My sturgeon stories were among my favorites that I wrote for The Alpena News over the years. This one, about the 35-minute season a few years ago, makes me ridiculously happy. It also has a killer first line, if I do say so myself. This story brings back the really great day I got to hold that really great fish. (The News uses a paywall -- hey, reporters need paychecks -- but you should be able to read a few stories free, if you’re so inclined.)

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Don’t forget to touch a fish today. And I’m not talking about fishy fish.