Meet Maggie

Nope, not the familiar pup, this is a different Maggie, but one I'm sure you will like just as well! Her full name is Maggie Scheid, and she is Marie's cousin.

She hiked with us in 1999, 88 miles across part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Some people would say that it is the prettiest section of the trail, as it goes through Pictured Rocks. Maggie was a riot! She's zany to say the least, and she had us building sculptures from beach rocks, and seeing stories in every odd leaf.

You might wonder why she is like this. It's because Maggie is an artist. I don't just mean that she is artistic. She really is an artist. She used to make jewelry (not just beadwork), but moved on to casting iron and things like that. She teaches in Rochester, NY. Currently, she's into making all sorts of things with egg shapes.


In 2001, Rochester did one of those city-wide decorate an animal shape things. They chose horses. Most of them were just plain, standing horses, but a few were rearing, and Maggie got one of those. She covered it in sheet aluminum, and it was emerging from a cocoon. She called it "New Horizons." Here she is posing beside her horse. It was chosen to be displayed at the airport, which was some sort of honor.

Maggie is planning to come to my celebration on Tuesday.

"Maggie brings a new flavor to the usual palate of our hiking. She had backpacked many years ago, and now wants to try out the experience again. For footwear she has brought oxfords made by the Caterpillar Company. Their triangular logo is molded into the soles along with the words 'Walking Machines.' 'I'm ready,' Maggie announces every day. 'I've got my walking machines on!'

She is an Artist, zany, always bubbling with a new idea or a new way of looking at things. She arranges designs of the beautiful stones in the sand, builds small cairns decorated with driftwood and whitewashed bones as offerings to the spirits. She forces us to look ever more closely at the beauty of green sun-lit leaves against the orange fungi, to see faces in the rocks, toes on the trees, geometry in the patters of lichen, colors and textures rampant across the landscape."

From chapter 44, "The Song of Hiawatha's Friends"

I got the media done... just finished about an hour ago. The list of other things I was supposed to do has just been truncated. My back is killing me from sitting at the computer for days, although thankfully there was a lot of jumping up and down to get pictures to scan, etc. Everything prior to 2009 was not digital, so there was a LOT of scanning involved.

I hope to leave here by noon tomorrow. I'll try to schedule some kind of post, because I don't think I'll be able to connect from where I'm staying tomorrow.