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“I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment’s gone. All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity,” – Kerry Livgren

She stared right into my eyes from the black-and-white photograph. She wore a child’s romper and a bucket hat as she stood in grass along the edge of a sidewalk that was almost up to her waist. Behind her was a mature lilac bush, a house and a brick building with a crumbling foundation, maybe a school. In this young child’s face, I could already recognize the blue eyes, familiar nose and pouty mouth of my mother. From this earliest image I found of her, and several more throughout her younger days, a theme emerged that explained her biggest influence on me – she was always pictured doing something outside.

In these early years, she grew up on a farm outside of Negaunee. Several images show her in fields holding pitchforks much taller than her, as she and other family members worked to make hay for the wintertime. In another outdoor photo, she stood between her overall-clad older brothers. The boys wore dress shirts. Charlie had an open collar. Dicky wore a tie. My mom was in a Sunday dress. The trio posed in front of an apple tree. My mom had an apple blossom in her hair.

She was also pictured next to her mother at the age of 5, standing on a little wooden bridge over a creek. In her hands she clutched the stem of a wagging cedar bough. It was a summertime scene at somebody’s camp. These two depictions highlight another of her most loved pursuits – plants and gardening flowers and vegetables. She was highly skilled in this regard.

She was often complimented by passersby on her showy sidewalk flower gardens. Her vegetable gardens covered a rectangle in our otherwise grassy backyard measuring probably 6 feet by 50 feet. She also had hollyhocks, tulips, daffodils and a trellis covered in morning glories against the back of our house too.

With tough times in her family growing up, she moved to a nearby town to live with a foster family, which included the school nurse who had helped facilitate the move. That big house was situated a good distance back off the state highway. I remember visiting there almost every Sunday in my early years. I have an old 8mm film that shows me riding my tricycle there in the front yard when I was about 2 years old. I knew the foster mom and dad as my grandma and grandpa. Including the nurse, I had four aunts and three uncles from that family arrangement.

One of the uncles, who lived in Iowa, inspired my interest in geography. He was a college professor and had written a fourth-grade textbook on traveling across the country. I still have my autographed copy. In his later years, he was a newspaper columnist in Florida who wrote about the geography of wine. In a picture from 1947, my mom is pictured as one of the 10 members of a local troop of Camp Fire Girls of America – the sister group to the Boy Scouts of America. This was another activity she became involved in focused on outdoor activities.

A portrait from two years later shows her wearing a sweater and a pearl necklace. She was in eighth grade. Another school photo shows her with her hair curly and pulled back. She was 16. I have no doubt she was singing by then. She spent decades singing in church and community choirs. She also sang around the house and she played piano.

In 1956, she was 20 years old and weighed 98 pounds. This was the year she and my dad were married in the Village of Republic by a justice of the peace. My mom was Methodist and my dad was Catholic. This likely explains why they opted for a civil ceremony. My dad was nine years older than my mom. He also loved being outdoors, hunting and fishing. He had done those things with his dad, friends and probably his two brothers.

A picture from fall 1957 shows my mom standing in front of a 1953-54 Ford. There’s a dead ruffed grouse lying on the front bumper. My mom is dressed in plaid pants and a turtleneck sweater with a hunting jacket over the top. She is smiling, holding a dead grouse with its wings outstretched.

I remember my sister and I being taken on “partridge” hunting rides in the woods with them when we were very young. We had to cover our ears with our hands before the shotguns would blast. I was the oldest kid. There were four of us altogether. In descending order, it was Marcia, Jimmy and Annie. Our family would go on rides in the woods, pick wild berries, picnic near lakes and fish along streams.

I’m now looking at my mom walking along the rocky Lake Superior beach at Eagle River in Keweenaw County. She was an agate hunter. It’s no doubt where I got my interest in “pretty” rocks and minerals from. By 1971, all four of us kids were part of the family and growing up fast, making that old mining house smaller every day. A photo of all of us, likely ready for church, shows me and my brother in suits and ties and my two sisters in dresses.

We are standing out in front of the house with my aunt, the nurse. There are beautiful red and yellow flowers growing in the rock-lined front garden. We all helped my mom in the gardens. My first tastes of fresh peas, beans and carrots came from those efforts. We were always outside as kids. We’d stay out playing until the streetlights came on.

We played backyard whiffle ball, football and basketball. We created replicas of the local iron mines in our sand box with Matchbox trucks and water for lakes from the garden hose. A photo from another day, a chilly but sunny day along Lake Superior near Munising, shows my mom dressed in a pants suit. I am holding a rock in my hand offering it to my mom to look at.

My brother and my sister Annie are sitting in the sand, looking for cool rocks on the beach, while Marcia looks out across the water. On the same August day. Different photo. All four of us kids are looking at the camera, smiling.

In 1974, after 19 years of marriage, my mom began divorce proceedings.

A summery picture in my collection shows my mom that year posing for a picture between Charlie and Dicky. She’s outside with them, wearing a short sun dress, and her hair is styled like country singer Tammy Wynette’s. One day, my mom and my siblings moved to Canada. I stayed back in Michigan with my dad. I was 13 then and old enough to help determine what I wanted to do.

This was a momentous event in my life.

I was immediately promoted from kid having fun to chief cook and bottle washer overnight. I cut grass. I painted house trim. I helped tear out an old wall. I cleaned the basement. My dad and I fished together. He continued to work as a mailman.

His top-to-bottom remodel of our old house largely ceased after a few months. The celebration of holidays largely slid by the wayside, though I would always decorate for Christmas and cook a turkey for Thanksgiving.

On court-ordered visits to Canada, my mom would drop my brother and I off at rivers to fish or we’d ride bikes to fish, like the good old days. My relationship with my mom suffered considerably. Both she and my dad would eventually marry other people. I didn’t know it then, but things would never be the same after their big breakup.

I moved to Texas and California, returning to the region after graduating from college.

When I got back home, my dad and I began to fish together again. I would see my mom and siblings occasionally on planned visits or trips we took to meet. My dad died in 2008 at the age of 84. His death hit me like a bazooka rocket. It’s a loss that I still feel every day. It’s impossible to shake.

Over the years, the relationship improved between me and my mom. She came to my house for Thanksgiving three years ago. We have often talked on the phone, and we have both consistently expressed our love for each other.

My mom died March 11. She was 90.

I’m looking now at the color portrait photo to be published alongside her obituary. Same blue eyes. Same everything. It’s a strange feeling of drifting and isolation realizing both your parents are now gone. I know I’ll always be grateful for the things my parents taught and showed me, especially in those early years when our family was imbued in nature and outdoor activities.

Even now, decades later, I can still see and feel some of those experiences like they had just happened a month or so ago – so clear, so real.

Just like a beautiful dream.

Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula.