This morning, in spite of it being a weekend and me having been up until after midnight, my alarm went off at 5am. This was not some malfunction of technology. No, I am working all weekend and my next day off is the start of a week long vacation… but that is a full week away.
This morning I’m away from home, in a strange but mostly comfortable hotel in the Northern Peninsula of Michigan. I set my alarm for 5am because I wanted to have time to shower and watch the sunrise this morning. My room window faces East and I’m on the 3rd floor, and while there is a lot of commercial and industrial clutter in the foreground, I hoped that the sunrise would be spectacular… or at least familiarly comfortable.
When I emerged from the shower and began to dress, I heard a noise from by the window. I thought it might be the strange sound that the AC unit makes here as it kicks into action and immediately shuddered at the thought of cold air as my skin was still damp from the shower. I dressed quickly, anticipating the onslaught of cold, but it never came. As I dressed I became increasingly aware that the sound at the window was familiar, and just as I began to recognize it as an intense amount of rain, that’s when the thunder boomed in confirmation.
Once dressed I turned off all of my lights and opened the shades. The rain was coming down in sheets. Watching the reflection of the parking lot lights on the hazardously wet parking lot I could see curtains of falling water traveling across the parking lot, marching Eastward.
Cell phone timing for capturing lightning flashes is problematic at best so I set up my phone on my window sill and recorded video from my darkened room. I took the time to reflect over the past several day instead of thinking about what I could be doing on the phone that was busy recording the weather. I recorded nearly 30 minutes of video, and even now after the rain has stopped, the thunder mostly faded, and I’m starting to see the first blush of the sunrise through the parting clouds, lightning still illuminates the landscape like a flashbulb of some cosmic photographer.
In less than 30 minutes I’m supposed to be downstairs for “breakfast” with my co-workers before we load up in our shuttle van and head out to the facility for our first day of testing. At some point this morning, after our vehicles are sufficiently thawed, we will be going on a self guided “tour” of the upper peninsula. I’ve seen a lot of it already, having been on this trip last fall and spending parts of my childhood summers in this region… but it still holds an air of whimsy in places.
Preserved, ancient water towers made from stone are juxtaposed against dilapidated barns and homes. Abandoned businesses and restaurants, and even run-down motels that now serve as someone’s home. You can predict by the state of the buildings in an area if you will see pro-Trump or pro-Democrat signs. There is one billboard sized sign at the last turn before the facility that is maintained and updated by the locals and it always has some pro-Trump or anti-Democrat messaging on it. Last year it had something derogatory and inflammatory about Biden and Harris, this year it has something about DOGE being an acronym for something about Democrats getting exposed. It made me roll my eyes so hard I checked out my own ass yesterday as I was driving through. But on our way to the hotel I saw another billboard sized sign in front of someone’s house that stated “We won’t go back! Vote Democrat.”
There are a few bright spots in this mostly rural red northern landscape, but it doesn’t stop it from feeling foreboding for me and some of my traveling companions. Half of them could pass as MAGA (I’ve not inquired of their political followings because I’m not actually close with any of them), the other half of us are either the wrong color or too visibly queer to fly completely under the radar or in one case both. One person, who I will call my work bestie… but he’s more like my work bad decision buddy, could pass as MAGA… until he opened his mouth. He speaks the same way thoughts form in my brain and his mannerisms give him away. He saw me, before I saw myself.
As the clouds continue to march out of the immediate area and the sun begins to paint the landscape, I can start to make out the silhouettes of what look like mountains in the distance, presumably in Canada. It could be my brain playing tricks on me from the time I spent in Wyoming and Colorado, but I don’t think it is. I can see fog lifting in the distance, obscuring parts of the landscape in its journey back into the upper atmosphere to become rain again somewhere else.
Tomorrow we plan to be on the road earlier, before breakfast starts at the hotel. We traveled up separately, I’m not sure if they intend for all of us to travel back south together… I for one have plans to stop in and visit my cousin on my way home.
