Michigan

I lean against the railing and watch the transparent floor below me with bated breath. Bubbles settle like washing machine suds against the glass, and I tip a little on my sea legs. Veins of sunlight penetrate the turquoise deep. Then, suddenly, the curved bow of a ship slices into view: a ship directly below our own. She drowned, frozen in a moment of tragic time, her pain preserved to indulge the morbid curiosity of my eyes.

We cross the creek on a pretty array of pedestrian bridges beneath tree branch archways, and I feel the temperature change as we leave the trickling falls. Their fresh smell lingers, and I can taste icy cold droplets in the air. As the sound of the waterfall dissipates, it is replaced by the melodic splashing of a nearby water mill. It draws us deeper into the diverse garden community, where there live sweet-smelling apple trees, paper birches, weeping willows, purple-leaved ferns, and pine trees with long draping arms that reach for the water of a pond filled with rainbow trout.

We pass a series of giant pockets hewn from the side of the cliffs by ages of water erosion, creating the appearance of Swiss cheese. Water gurgles, erupts, sloshes, and spurts as waves push white bubbles in and out of the holes. The slapping surf echoes in a sound like animal-skin drums as the wave’s wax turns to wane.