Summerfield

When I was eight, we moved to Summerfield Township, a rural Michigan area that struck a tiny bit closer to Eden perhaps. Its landscape,at least, was filled with the same original garden content —
animals, crops, and just a handful of people.

Summerfield’s friendly open farmland stretched as far as the eye
could see, disrupted only if you traveled overhead via airplane where
reminders of the less-natural world — the nuclear reactors of nearby
Monroe — stood out from the landscape like rocket ships in a pop-up
book about barnyard animals. At least once while I was attending
Summerfield High School, adults wearing hazard gear converged
onto our school, buzzing about the gymnasium with the sort of
urgency we usually saw on television rather than on the streets in
our town. These visitors, as it was later explained, were emergency
personnel practicing their response to a nuclear disaster…

…We were rural, land-loving people who sheltered our one-flashing-traffic-light-town from outsiders. Despite the somewhat lonely country existence, we were good and generous people. Our founders had, in a spirit of hope and celebration, named both the township and the school “Summerfield.” The name, which reflected the season where mayapples, goldenrod, and sunflowers bloomed most noticeably, served us well, providing an enchanting almost Eden-like backdrop for the scenes that played out in our homes and neighborhoods.

Summerfield’s residents came in two varieties—one came straight from the earth and one was intent on building a life somewhere beyond farm country. The first set wore mud-colored Carharts that wouldn’t show the stains of field work or the splattering from four-wheeling through the open countryside. These residents were always topped with practically rounded baseball hats, minus the baseball logo and plus a John Deere brand, to prevent their three-season farmers-tan from requiring any aloe….

…To read the rest of Sarah’s reflections on life in Summerfield, order the book here.

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