A soul mate is one with whom you share the same ideas, someone with whom your thought world is so alike that words are not necessary. Politically and spiritually you are on the same page, sharing a heart to heart, mind and body connection. Hand to hand, this bond is recognizable in our human relations. What about our relations with the animal kingdom, house pets, mainly? Well, perhaps not politically, but in a spiritual and physical way as in this story we share a heart to heart comfort in being close to our pets, our furry family member.

Many a nature lover was introduced as a child to the outdoors by a parent or teacher. The outdoors can be just the back yard, but the crucial thing is awakening what Rachael Carson called in her wise and lovely essay of that title A Sense of Wonder. Pheasant hunting with his father first kindled it in local naturalist Rick Halbert. As a teacher and volunteer, he’s spent his life connecting people and nature. A botanist, he knows, loves, and fosters the native plants of our region.

I heat with wood. Most of us up here do. Wood is still cheaper than any other fuel, and it’s available. Some of us cut our own wood, but to do that you have to have a woodlot, a truck, a saw in good condition, and time. My husband and I cut our own wood one winter, but in retrospect it seems like that’s all we did.

“So like, what do you guys do out there?” We get this question a lot, often loaded with presumptions of who we are and what we like to do. Which is fair. Let me be clear, my wife and I, a young married couple in our mid-20s, are outliers.

Winners of this year’s Empire Asparagus Festival poetry contest.

About a block up the road from the old Cannery down on the shore in Glen Haven, Henry “Hank” Bailey gets out of a white Lexus in front of an abandoned, turn-of-the-century building that looks like it used to be a store. The whole village is deserted and sad. Glen Haven today is a bleak little shore-side ghost town in the bright sunlight. It’s the off-season, middle of May, the leaves on the trees are in delicate shades, fuzzy-looking and babyish in their newness.

I am an aficionado of naturalists and field biologists. In a world preoccupied by all manner of human mischief and melodrama, the natural scientist’s wholehearted attention to the lifeways of other organisms, their primal human immersion in wild lives under open skies is a rare and wonderful thing. Their devotion yields knowledge of place, and realer than that it does not get.

The Glen Arbor Art Association’s (GAAA) “Talk About Art” series continues with host Norm Wheeler in conversation with Traverse City poet Fleda Brown on Sunday, May 7, at 2 p.m. at The Leelanau School in Glen Arbor. There is no charge.

The Glen Lake Library will once again host their “Ode to Asparagus” as part of the upcoming Empire Asparagus Festival, on Saturday, May 20. Participants should submit their asparagus-themed poems by Thursday, May 18, along with their name and contact information.