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.

-------------

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.

-------------

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.

-----------------

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.

-----------------

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.)

----------------

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