Grapes of Math
Packing for three drove me to a six-pack. I lugged our luggage - it had to be heavier, I'm not weaker - into the hotel, unpacked and checked it.

* Map to Leelanau Peninsula wineries? Yup. * Vintage running shoes, good for stomp ing grapes after the Harvest Stompede? All two of 'em. * Clothes, toothbrush, toiletries, five- pound spaghetti squash. What the ...?

"Flannery!"

"I help you pack," said my four-year-old daughter. "We not be hungry."

It's hard to conceive starving in the pinkie of Michigan's mitten at harvest time. Grapes, apples, peaches and more hung in morning dew, burnt off by the sun to reveal stunning hilltop vistas.

Bluer-than-blue skies, greener-than-green lakes and flame fall colors seemed to vibrate like violin strings. Fieldstones glinted with granite flecks, roads were blinding ribbons, textures of unpainted barn walls popped.

Birds do it, bees do it. These are lessons from the Harvest Stompede, which includes a seven-mile Vineyard Run and 5K "Stinger" named for the bee cloud, likely tipsy from sampling nectars, which mingled with runners two years back.

You can fall in love with it - zigzag trails through rows of fruit, movement tripping sensors that sound electronic bird-distress calls to scare off starlings, hillsides glimmering with white netting draped over sugar-ripe grapes, which also attract winged onslaughts; views of West Traverse Bay below, squishing orbs under rubber soles at the finish, tearing down the course afterward with Silvio "Tony" Ciccone, host and vintner who used to run five miles daily as respite from work and rearing kids like Madonna, imbibing in tours of 11 wineries, even lugging a five-pound squash - if you are not careful.

We labor far under love, spinning Earth below like our treadmill. What seem to be burdens are our balloons. MR