Lakes, Swamps, and Marshes

In one of Colin Fletcher's books he breaks his camera and discovers that not-taking-photographs alters the way he looks at the world. The converse is just as true: If you're shooting photographs every day, eventually everything you look at becomes a photo opportunity, boxed in an imaginary frame. On the whole I consider this an unpleasant side effect.... Cloverdale's a small town, surrounded by lakes, on M-43 in Barry County. (I've told this before, better, here .) The town's been part of my mental geography since the early 1970s, when we lived in nearby Delton; these days it's one of a half-dozen hamlets I pass through travelling between Mulliken and Kalamazoo. Since I'd been driving that route several times a week for the past few months, I'd pretty well scoped out the photo possibilities. So I stopped in the little park on Cloverdale Lake a year ago to capture a few photographs, mostly of the lake and the building I call the Painted Pony . ========== This photograph is an outtake from my 2012 photo-a-day project, 366 Snaps . Number of project photos taken: 9 Title of " roll :" Cloverdale Other photos taken on 10/5/2012: As usual I brought along the Nikon 1, and used it mostly to capture autumn's color ....

Near Richland, Michigan.

South of Richland (and north of Galesburg). For some reason none of the lakes have individual names; this is the middle lake, shot from 35th street.

Downtown Wellston, Michigan.

Near Delton, Michigan, where you're never far from a lake and/or a swamp. Several years ago; I'm guessing there's more snow today.

A short walk. We were hoping we'd encounter Sandhill Cranes, but no such luck. The pond, as always, was pretty. Michigan Audubon's Bernard Baker Sanctuary , south of Bellevue, Michigan.

Another view of Baker Sanctuary's pond.

These are at the swamp by where I used to work. We didn't find any Sandhills there, either, but did find lots of geese, a couple swans, some ducks, and a large bird (likely a heron) we didn't get a good look at.

Hastings, MIchigan.

Three Lakes, near Richland, Michigan. While the individual lakes don't have names, this is the middle lake. The photo was taken from 35th street, which runs between the middle lake and the easternmost one. When I was in junior high--many, many years back--my dad and I would hie off to Three Lakes and fish. The place still looks much the same, but you can apparently no longer rent a boat for the afternoon.

Near Richland, Michigan. I was trying to capture all the shades of green around the lake in this photo, and would like to believe that I managed to do so.

Cloverdale Lake, Cloverdale, Michigan.

Beside the pond, outside the building where I used to work near Dimondale, Michigan

As I said: The water's green . The Kellogg Bird Sanctuary calls this "The Lagoon." It's a little pond beside Wintergreen Lake (which is in the background of the photo), and it serves as both a display area and a sanctuary-within-the-sanctuary for the sorts of birds who nest beside little ponds. Of course, these particular nesting birds are pretty tolerant of humanity. It's also the first thing I see when I visit. There are several routes a person might take through the Sanctuary, but I've always begun by taking the stairway down to the lake, and the lagoon, right inside the Sanctuary's entrance. Because I like this view, basically. You don't see it unless you walk down those steps.

Canada Geese on Wintergreen Lake, WK Kellogg Bird Sanctuary. Near Gull Lake, Michigan.

Dundee, Michigan

Three Lakes, Richland, Michigan.