Scenes from Door Co. and Dickinson

Pleasure craft replace fishing tugs in Algoma's harbor.

Multicolored chairs brighten a shade garden in Ephraim.

The sunset at Bailey's Harbor as seen from the breakwater

Graffiti at the Francis Hardy Gallery

A Western Fox Snake near Woodwalk Gallery

I love taking a few days every summer to head north to visit my aunt and drive around Door County, the thumb shaped peninsula that sticks out into the water between Green Bay and Lake Michigan. This year the weather was nice, so I took the convertible, and enjoyed the sunshine, lake breezes and scents of fields and gardens. I also like to take photographs, either to just remember the weekend, or as potential subjects to paint. These altered photos show some of the sights.

The fox snake surprised me in a couple ways. I almost stepped on him, sunning himself near a former dairy barn, now converted into an art gallery. I surprised myself at not being frightened. There are no poisonous snakes in Door County, though this bad boy shook his rattle-less tail at me. He's a constrictor whose diet is birds eggs and small mammals. No "zero at th e bone" this time, just admiration for a beautiful creature.

The Snake
by Emily Dickinson

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,---did you not,
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,--
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,

Attended or alone,

Without a tighter breathing,

And zero at the bone.