Hike at Kehl Lake

Recently I went on a hike at Kehl Lake, a local Leelanau Conservancy preserve, with a Conservancy docent and others. I've hiked this property before, and skied it, but I like doing the tours with the docents because I learn new things. There's a shrub I’d been wondering about; it has HUGE leaves that, this time of year, are of a translucent yellow-green. The bark has distinct vertical striping. The docent said it is actually a tree, a green and white striped maple, also sometimes called moosewood. The other great thing about the hikes is the interesting people I meet. I talked to a man who is making a birch bark canoe, using the techniques of early Native Americans. I met an avid x-country skier who regularly visits one of my favorite and relatively unknown places to ski, Stokely Creek in Canada. I learned that Alligator Hill s. of Empire is a good place to ski. I met a woman who moved here after living in Alaska the past 30 years and a couple who, like me, had once lived in Melbourne, Australia. And I learned a new word: embayment—a lake that was once a bay of a larger body of water but is now separated by land. Kehl Lake is an embayment that was once a part of Lake Michigan.