Our Inland Ocean.......

Here in Wisconsin we usually "get" our weather from the west.....prevailing winds come from the west....our TV weathermen will show us the map of what's happening out over the Rockies or the Plains and let us know it's headed our way. Of course as the weather changes that shifts and we get more days where the weather gods push heat and humidity our way up from the south.

Sometimes, not very often, our wind circles around and comes at us from the southeast. And it makes for interesting days along this edge of Lake Michigan. The waves build up rhythmically hitting the shore. The breakfront out to our lighthouse stops big, rolling waves in their tracks and they angrily break and spray against that barrier.

And there is one small cove, just where we walk the dog, where the waves come rolling in and crash against the small rocky beach. When this happens it sounds just like waves crashing ashore at the ocean. It reminds me of days spent along the coast of Maine, or living on the sailboat and hearing that over-and-over again sound as we rocked to sleep in a protected anchorage. Or the time we were in Akumal and could hear the surf breaking on the shore out our bedroom window. We went to sleep to that sound. We woke up to that sound.

So on certain days the fetch builds up and waves starting somewhere in Michigan, at the southeast side of the lake, begin the push of water that ends up here. And I love to hear it. I always just stop and listen for a while. I don't necessarily look at the lake.....just listen and let my imagination take me somewhere in a memory.

Surf. Over and over and over again.....against the beach. Lake Michigan really behaving like the inland ocean she is.

Mother Nature's heart beat.