Winding hilly roads, deep deciduous woods, steep granite-faced hills and bluestone of the Upper Peninsula and northern Lower Peninsula will feel like home if you’re from the Great Smoky Mountains.

If you are familiar with the great stretches of fresh water bounding Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, New York -- if you know the Great Lakes -- you know something of this place.  This is The Great Lake State, after all.

The rolling prairie across the Midwest, through Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, stretches northward into the southwestern Lower Peninsula.  You might feel a bit of recognition driving along through these undulating fields.

But would you ever think of Michigan as incredibly flat?

I had to attend a Sunday afternoon meeting that required me to drive an hour through the mid-eastern to central part of the Lower Peninsula.  It was a cold, dull gray day; no sun, typical of Michigan’s winter weather.  The roads through the countryside are alternatingly snow-covered or clear; along some stretches next to open fields there’s been quite a bit of blowing, half of the road clear and the other half now covered in a telltale manner, fingers of still soft snow pointing in the direction of the wind.

This area is farmland, settled during the 1800’s by Europeans, most of them of German, Polish or Slavic heritage.  Their farms are small and fields smaller; they may have been divided among family members at some point over the last hundred years.  Flying overhead at five or ten thousand feet, one will see a crazy quilt, varying and irregular shapes bounded by stitches of creeks and streams, threaded by roads at mile or half mile measure.

Every once in a while, driving across this state, the road will jog slightly at an intersection.  One might have to turn left and then right again almost immediately to pick up the same road they’d been on only moments before.  A correction, that’s all; at some point the survey crew that once laid out this choppy grid more than a hundred years ago adjusted for minor errors in their sighting of county and property lines.  It’s enough of a jog to wake one from a torpor; the road and the scenery can be quite featureless, free of landmarks that snag one’s attention. 

I wondered what it was like to travel along these roads in a horse-drawn wagon.  Were one to fall asleep at the wheel at one of these corrections, a driver would find themselves abruptly in the middle of a field.  Would a horse navigate this or stop in their tracks should his driver fall asleep at the reins?

We had snow this past week, enough to cancel school one day.  The fields are covered in snow, stretches of white broken by trees at the edges of fields, punctuated with the occasional farmhouse.  It is a blessing that the sun is dim this day; were it sunny the fields would be blindingly, head-achey bright.  There is a fluorescent quality to the snow, though.  It glows, emanating a bluish gray light as if it were alive with a current.  The sporadic patches of woods between running fields are more ominous, appearing darker for the surrounding snow’s luminosity.

I wonder about the woods that pop up here and there.  They vary in size from ten to fifty acres, a postage stamp-sized island of trees in a sea of corn or soybean fields.  Why are they there?  Merely to provide shelter for the deer that hunting farmers enjoy so much?  To provide wood and lumber for a farmer long since dead?  Are they merely an indication of a farmer’s limits?  Heck, I’ve got enough to farm, I can’t clear this and still manage the fields I have…

Or are they a reminder of what once was here in this portion of Michigan?

Massive forest fires burned much of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan in the late 1800’s.  This once pristine primal forest was heavily logged, the debris left behind becoming over-dry during drought.   At least two fires cleared the land, taking many lives in the process while clearing future farm fields.

I don’t recall from childhood history classes whether anyone noticed how flat the terrain was in this area, prior to the clearing of this land.  Tens of thousands of years ago this land was scraped flat by a retreating glacier, the land pancaked under the weight and force of the icy mass.  Now, except for the occasional small woods, one can easily see three or more miles away, depending on the conditions, across barren fields empty of corn and soybeans and sugar beets.

I could see farther yesterday.  The temperatures were just below freezing; the luminous snow released moisture into the air, the haze hovering in the air reflecting images of fields and farmhouses below the direct line of sight over the horizon.  The images hung like ghostly curtains.  It’s not every day that one can experience this; sunnier days make for snow blindness and summer’s crops and leafed-out trees obscure the horizon. Colder days, more frequent here, keep moisture tightly locked in crystals, no foggy haze mirroring the fields below. 

It was mystical, seeing off into the distance for miles around, flying alone along these old farm roads towards spectral-grey houses, snow buntings scattering from the side of the road, flashing their white bellies as they take to the air, floating like confetti in the wind.  So entrancing…mesmerizing.

I almost missed the next jog in the road, slamming on the brakes over a snowy patch on the road, stopping short of the field ahead.