Forrest of Roads

Three or four times a week I make the daily pilgrimage to Allendale from Grand Haven to attend Grand Valley. It's a choice I make to commute rather than live on campus, and during the fall season it's a choice I relish in. Throughout the fall months, especially in October, the trees lining Lake Michigan Drive are absolutely divine. The deep oranges and reds of the leaves paint the sides of the road a beautiful color, and each curve of the road brings new sights to see. The twenty five minute drive always goes by much too quickly, and when I arrive on campus I always wish I was still winding through the long backroads of Grand Haven. The chlorophyll breakdown in each leaf lining Lake Michigan Drive is a natural occurrence, but the rewards we reap from it are quite the splendor.

Pine's on the left (with a Burning bush in the far back right) and Maple's on the right line the road I drive each day

Through a bit of research I have learned that many of the trees that line Lake Michigan Drive are Maple, Eastern White Pine, and Red and White Oak trees. These trees show their true colors during the fall months, when their leaves go through the process of losing the color pigment chlorophyll. This exposes two pigments: carotenoid and anthocyanin. Carotenoid pigments create the yellow, orange and brown leaf colors, while anthocyanin creates the red leaf colors. As the veins in the leaf that carry sap in and out of the cells seal off, a type of cell tissue builds up around the stem of the leaf called the separation layer. As the separation layer becomes complete, the stem detaches from the tissue and

falls to the ground. This all occurs due to the decreasing temperatures of fall, and the trees do not get the same amount of sun exposure as they do during summer. When the fall months hit, all of these factors come into play and the trees lining the very roads we travel on become golden paths of sanctity.A question that arises from this though, is why do pine trees never lose their needles? It turns out that the needles are coated in a thick wax that stops the chlorophyll breakdown from ever happening, and the Pine tree stands strong through the fall months.

I find myself absolutely dazzled each time I take off for class early in the morning, and for good reason. It was mentioned earlier in this class that being in nature is a type of stress reliever, and during my drives to class I get a sense of this. Although I may be listening to music or sports radio, the stress of the day ahead is forgotten for the brief twenty five minute drive. The other day, I even switched off the radio and rolled down the windows to hear the crunching of the leaves and the rustle of the wind blowing softly through the trees. I don't often get this deep into something as trivial as driving to class, but in these past weeks I have garnered quite the love for these drives.

Old Man Winter

Working at a sandwich delivery shop (Jimmy John’s) quite frankly pits me up against the grips of mother nature, and it is especially awful during the cold, snowy months. Reflecting on my past experiences with this horrendous season we call winter, I recall one very specific night. It was a Sunday night, and I dreaded putting on layer upon layer preparing for work instead of sitting with the family and watching the Sunday night NFL game. From the time I stepped into work until the time I punched out, it was nothing but pure white snow falling and fast, piercing winds howling outside. Every time the phone rang and an order was placed, I threw the layers back on and trudged through the white trenches to my frosty red car barely peeking through the snow on top of it.

A photo of myself with the unbelievable mound of 

  snow in our front yard during this particular winter 

No matter how long the gap was between orders, I would have to grab the scraper and chip off the icy layer atop of my windshield. From then, it was an absolute nightmare as I attempted to squint out the correct addresses through the blinding snowfall. The snow seemed to be coming down in an unbelievable amount, and it appeared to be that the plow trucks could not keep up. My car slid amongst the deep, fluffy flakes and the wind pushed me around like a toy boat in a bathtub. It was truly terrifying, and at one point I had the thought, “Am I really going to die doing this delivery job? Really? This will be my legacy?”.  This continued on for hours, and I thought it was never going to end. I was stuck in some weird warp in time where I had to spend the rest of existence driving my beat up 1999 Toyota through the cold trenches of  the Hell we call Michigan. Fortunately enough, the orders started to become few and far between, and I managed to make it home safely after the shift. While I know this was all quite dramatic for the simple task of driving, it really was a challenge to face “Old Man Winter” head on as he attempted to beat me into oblivion. The seasons change so fast in Michigan, but winter always seems to be the hardest to get through. All we can hope for is that this winter is not nearly as bad as some in the past… although that is almost never the case.