Manistee Moonrise

The Manistee River is a river running 190 miles through the northern lower peninsula of Michigan. This beautifully peaceful river is home to very abundant wildlife and is a sanctuary for an endangered bird, the Kirtlands Warbler. A river fringed with flora and fauna — not much can give a person a deeper feeling of tranquility. This beautiful wilderness is so pure that the river otters swim alongside your canoe. In the autumn of 2008, I was on a canoe trip down the Manistee River. It was getting late and the sun was setting. I could catch the scent of a pine and cedarwood campfire upstream and was picking blackberries from the edge of the river. I turned the corner and the river was suddenly perfectly straight for about a half mile in front of me. With the sunset behind me and a straight pine-fringed river in front of me, I watched the huge full moon rise right between the trees before setting up camp. Manistee Moonrise weaves a wild bramble of blackberries through a pine-fringed river