Great Outdoors

About Great Outdoors

In October the Huron at Gallup Park runs slow and mirror-flat, and the whole east side of Ann Arbor goes the color of a struck match. Great Outdoors is out in the middle of it — the last mows of the season, the trimming and edging, the leaf cleanups that continue until the trees are honestly finished. Then the river ices along its edges, the first real snow comes down over Geddes Pond, and the work turns to plowing, shoveling and salting the walks people cross before dawn. There is a plain pride in a driveway cleared to the pavement and a lawn cut straight to the line. Both are just ways of handing somebody an easier morning.