Yesterday was our last full day here in Michigan.  We concluded the day by a walk down the path to the big lake.  We could hear the lake, one block away booming, like a distant sound of canon.  The sound grew louder the nearer we approached walking through the woods

For the third year we have finished our family vacation by watching the sun set to the west over Lake Michigan.  It is a big lake, reminiscent of the ocean on days when there are white caps as far out as you can see and the waves rise and crash upon the sand closer to the shore.  On days like this day people are warned not to go swimming in the lake.  Others have been over come by the rough water and have been unable to save themselves.

We watched the sun go down, or rather stood on the beach as the rotation of the earth caused the sun to disappear from view behind the horizon.  Knowing what is actually happening does not lessen the magnificence of witnessing sun set.  This is a shared experience as have been the days together, of good food, marshmallow smores, and a fair amount of Michigan wine.

Here are pictures of a setting sun with a thundering lake as foreground.  I think a few lines of T. S. Eliot’s poem, The Dry Salvages are apt for the occasion.

THE DRY SALVAGES
(No. 3 of ‘Four Quartets’)

I

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.

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