"Is This Heaven?" "No, It's Western Michigan."

I'm two days into my vacation, sitting on a Western Michigan backyard deck, a cozy jacket barely keeping away the chill, when I became aware of a sound coming from off to my left.

"Hey! Hey, Mister!"

I ignored it at first, but the little voice was determined, persistent. Leaning up, I looked around. No one in this neighborhood knew me... did they? Falling back into the chair I convinced myself that the voice was calling to someone else. It just had to be--

"Hey, Mister!" the cheerful voice called again.

This time I sat up and turned, a flash of movement from a couple hundred feet away caught my eye. From the third floor of an unfinished home, where loose, Tyvek sheeting crackled in the wind, a little hand waved with hearty enthusiasm. The little child - perhaps a girl? - in a grey, long-sleeved shirt, continued to wave at me. I felt a flash of self-consciousness. What if someone saw me waving? What would they think? And then I just as quickly threw that out of my head and waved enthusiastically back. I saw a flash of a smile and the child disappeared playfully from the window.

So, it was me they were waving to. (And, yes, in case you're wondering, the photo accompanying this article is the actual home.) The encounter was all so simple, so normal, and yet so unusual from the Florida area I live in; I just don't always find people that friendly in the hot and humid state where I'm from. Especially children.

A safe-feeling place

Of course, it isn't the first time this area has surprised me. While buying a bag of ice at a convenience store during my last vacation here, I asked if I needed a key to open the ice freezer out in the parking lot. "You're not from around here, are you?" the young clerk asked. "This is the most Christian part of Michigan. We don't keep the freezer locked."

Later that same day, as I walked the neighborhood I was staying in, I spotted car keys in the ignition of a parked car, a visitor to my friend's house. They shrugged off any concern. "We hardly lock our house doors either."

What?

Near the end of the movie, "Field of Dreams", Kevin Costner's character stands amazed at the beautiful events unfolding around him. And in a choked up voice he asks, "Is this Heaven?"

The area I'm in right now has me asking that same question. I'm thankful that places like this still exist. It's refreshing to see a place where bicycles aren't locked at a public beach, ice freezers are easily pulled open, and keys in a parked car are of no cause for concern. This is a place where children are free to laugh, explore and play... and peek out windows and wave.

And if my little "Hey, Mister" friend were still there, I'd love to cup my hands together and shout: "Hey, little child! Can you tell me... Is this Heaven?"

I picture them popping up in the window again, a playful grin on their face.

"No, silly," they'd say, tugging on their long sleeves, "It's Western Michigan."