Do you wanna be Up North? Are you here already?

Sandhill cranes return every year.

 

Everyone wants to be here! Is that a problem?

 

Bear with me while I start far from Michigan....

Wilma Dykeman, in the volume of the “Rivers of America” series entitled The French Broad, which gives the history of a river region that encompassed western Tennessee and eastern North Carolina, writes in one chapter of a boom in tourism set off initially by “lowlanders” on the coast seeking to escape heat and malaria by summering in the mountains. At first conditions were rustic, but as time went on more and more elaborate hotels and resorts were built. The boom did not last forever—as transportation alternatives came along that allowed greater distances to be covered, the lowlanders were able to vacation much farther from home than Appalachia—but while it was on, it was definitely on, enticing foreigners from England, Scotland, and Germany as well as residents of North Carolina’s seacoast. In the 19^th century, the region of the French Broad River saw “a mingling of Northern wealth and Southern abandon.” 

Everyone, it seemed, wanted to be there. 

 

It was the peak of the boom for the watering places in the French Broad country. To these springs and hotels came people who at a later date would be gasping over the canyon of the Yellowstone rather than the canyons of the French Broad. The ‘Lowlanders,’ who set out from their malarial flatlands with a caravan of carriages and trekked up through the foothills and into the mountains on a journey that cost at least two weeks every year, were looking for the same things many of the tourists who hurry through so rapidly today are seeking: A combination of comfort and ruggedness, the uneasy balance between a luxurious personal surrounding and an untamed natural background. They simultaneously sought new experiences yet managed to establish many of their old ways of life in the country they visited. 

 

-      The French Broad, by Wilma Dykeman, from the Rivers of America series, edited by Carl Carmer, as planned and started by Constance Lindsay Skinner

 

The French Broad was published in 1955, that post-World War II era when Americans began vacationing in automobiles, when motels began to replace earlier “tourist resort” campgrounds, but are Americans who leave home today, whether for two weeks or permanently, much different? Don't most still want new places to offer both comfort and ruggedness, nature and luxury, the excitement of new experiences along with the familiarity of their old ways of life?

 

My bookstore is in Leelanau County, Michigan, and these days it sometimes seems to locals as if everyone wants to be here. Or in Grand Traverse or Benzie County or Antrim or Charlevoix or – well, a bookseller friend in the U.P. feels as if everyone wants to live on her road! But the other side of the coin is that businesses rely on customers, whether locals or weekenders or new residents. Then, too, not all of us who live here were born here, by a long shot. I was born in South Dakota myself, of an Ohio-born father and a California-born mother!

***

Who wouldn't want to be here?

[PLEASE NOTE: I was still reading the two books discussed below, i.e., had not finished either one, when I put this post out into the world, because I could not wait!]

Tim Mulherin’s This Magnetic Book: Candid Conversations on a Changing Northern Michigan explores the “relocation phenomenon” that is swelling the population of places like Traverse City. Northern Michigan, of course, is not the only destination of people fleeing crowds and climate disasters. Arizona and New Mexico and Idaho and Montana are all getting their share of well-to-do “climate refugees” from California. Some people are still moving to the South for warmer winters and sunshine, but others are moving away from the South. 

Americans on the move! Pulled by magnetic forces away from home to new homes!

Mulherin begins with his own migration story, but then in Chapter 2 ups the ante seriously with “An Indigenous Perspective,” interviewing several members of the Grand Traverse Band, whose people were here long before Europeans “discovered” North America. In fact, a list of chapters will tell you a lot about the scope of Tim’s book: 

 

Chapter 1. “A Migration Story”

Chapter 2. “Indigenous Perspectives”

Chapter 3. “Welcome Wagon”

Chapter 4. “Settlers”

Chapter 5. “A Taste of Northern Michigan”

Chapter 6. “Invasive Species”

Chapter 7. “America’s Most Beautiful Place”

Chapter 8. “Protecting Paradise”

Chapter 9. “Eyes to the Sky”

Chapteer 10. “Every Day is Earth Day”

 

Mulherin interviewed over 75 Northerners from various walks of life and a multitude of backgrounds. Pandemic & climate refugees or lifestyle migrants? Which label fits better as you see it? If you came here from downstate or farther away, does either label seem to fit your move to Leelanau or the greater Grand Traverse area? If you’ve lived here all your life, how do you view newcomers and change? 

One fruit grower Mulherin interviews points out that the very places seen as most desirable for new houses are also the most advantageous locations for orchards.

Growing specialty fruit crops in northern Michigan calls for being close to Lake Michigan, within several miles, and on sloping ground. This, of course, also makes for perfect view property. ‘Our desirable fruit-growing land is getting turned into golf courses and subdivisions and wonderful view mansions that can see Grand Traverse Bay,’ King McAvoy explains with a tinge of cynicism.

The lake offers protection, cooling the land in summer and keeping it warmer in winter, but property prices keep going up, while farming remains a gamble from year to year.

Mulherin, who still maintains a home in Indiana, does not presume to have answers or give prescriptions, but it’s clear that no one he talked to wants change and growth to destroy what makes this part of the country such a magnet for vacationers and relocators alike. Unfortunately, where some see destruction, others see improvement. 

 

I admit that part of my pleasure in reading Mulherin's book is encountering so many old friends, but anyone who loves our area and cares about its future will want to read This Magnetic North.

***

Now, can work be a vacation? Maybe that depends on where you are.

 

When Robert “Carlos” Fuentes introduced himself and his book to me recently, my enthusiasm was immediate. The Vacation: A Teenage Migrant Farmworker’s Experience Picking Cherries in Michigan is a personal account of what it was like to work in a Leelanau cherry orchard a few decades ago. Robert’s family were not year-round farm workers—his father had a floor cleaning business—but the summer he was 14 Robert was told by his father that the family was going to Lake Leelanau for vacation. The only catch was that they would be picking cherries from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and for a few hours on Saturday mornings. 

 

The day before they left home, when Robert tells his friend Luis that he’s going to Lake Leelanau for a cherry-picking vacation, Luis scoffs at the idea of picking cherries as a “vacation.” 

 

He tells me it is hard, dirty, thankless, and physically strenuous work. His family is still partly in the migrant farmworker stream. All Mexican American families in our neighborhood were from Texas and came to Michigan as migrant farmworkers. Luis tells me that he and his family have already done two weeks of hoeing at some local fields and will soon be heading up north to pick cherries at a farm on Old Mission Peninsula.

 

Robert was grateful he didn’t have to move around the country harvesting different crops. He liked having a settled home in Alma, Michigan. But he was excited about the “vacation” his father had planned for the family on the Esch Farm in Leelanau County, where his grandfather had first come (from Texas) to pick cherries in 1946 and, in later summers, had led church services in Spanish in the barn for the migrant workers.

Before mechanical shakers came along, cherries, like apples, were picked by hand. The author writes in his brief introduction that when machines came to the orchard,

 

…the backbreaking tradition of handpicking gave way to mechanized efficiency. In a matter of years, the thousands of workers who had once filled the orchards, their laughter and voices rising with the rustling leaves, were no longer needed. A way of life was disappearing. 

 

With these few, spare introductory lines, Fuentes reminds us that change is nothing new in northern Michigan. 

 

Robert’s cherry-picking vacation was in 1969, just a year before I moved to Traverse City from Lansing, and I remember the era well: “muscle” cars, Wolfman Jack, the miniature model Traverse City and the zoo in Clinch Park. I don’t remember ice cream at NJ’s. The Twister for ice cream (where Fiddleheads is now) must have come along much later.

 

But whether you knew the area in 1969 or not, the author will take you back in time, as he seamlessly weaves facts about the cherry industry with personal experience (Robert could pick enough to fill an average of 22 lugs in eight and a half hours; the best pickers could fill 25-30 lugs a day but worked longer hours; growers were paying 80 cents a lug in 1969; and growers were paid by the pound, varying from seven to 15 cents in those days), and his story includes not only facts and sights but also sounds and tastes and smells of those days, as well as descriptions of his own thoughts and moods. 

As we read, we hear the whine of mosquitoes and the strains of Tejano music from car and truck radios, taste a special lakeside supper of grilled hot dogs with catsup and mustard (a change from the family’s customary and probably more delicious Mexican fare), smell the Zest soap in the cold shower, and see the roadside daylilies that catch Robert’s eye. He is nervous about talking to a girl he finds attractive, but when she smiles at him all the world is bright.

On a typical day, he and his siblings would have cereal for breakfast, pick fruit until stopping for a half-hour picnic lunch, pick again until quitting time, and then enjoy a trip to a Lake Leelanau beach for another picnic meal, maybe later to NJ’s for ice cream, winding up, for Robert, with an evening gathering of teen boys in their “clubhouse” in the barn, where they would trade baseball cards and have farting contests, which he acknowledges was totally a guy thing. Outside the clubhouse, however, his sensitive nature responded to northern Michigan.

Walking back to the tent through dew-covered grass, I take in my surroundings. I gaze at the sky, marveling at the stars and planets. The wind rustles the leaves, their sound blending with the chorus of crickets and katydids…. This place feels so peaceful right now….

 

***

I am reading Mulherin and Fuentes almost simultaneously--toggling back and forth between them, that is. I’m enjoying the experience, immersed in how life was then compared to how it is now in the same region, and I recommend you do the same. 

The big question is, of course, what do we want this part of Michigan to be in the future, and what can we do about it? Your thoughts?

P.S. Current summer bookstore hours here. 

Please Mind Your Manners in the Lake District

Sheepdog in her dreams

The farms and the flocks endure, bigger than the life of a single person. We are born, live our working lives, and die, passing like the oak leaves that blow across our land in the winter. We are each tiny parts of something enduring, something that feels solid, real, and true. Our farming way of life has roots deeper than five thousand years into the soil of this landscape. - James Rebanks, The Shepherd’s Life (NY: Flatiron Books, 2015)

The Shepherd’s Life tells about sheep-farming in the Lake District of England season by season. The reader encounters details and arcane terminology for sheep that are a thousand or more years old. Dogs, too, as should go without saying – smart little border collies, dogs that can make all the difference between a farmer’s success and failure when it comes to gathering the sheep from the fells.

Think you’re not interested in farming? Read on.

Rebanks the farmer and shepherd is a beautiful writer, and whatever subject such a writer chooses is worth reading. My farmer friends (and those, like me, with an inner farmer) will learn from and love this book, but so will my poet friends, world-traveler friends, and anyone curious about the world who appreciates good stories well told. 

Those of us who live, as the author does, in a vacation paradise can draw more particular lessons from the book, because what Rebanks lays before the reader is an entire way of life. This part of England, he tells us, was unknown to the outside world until “discovered” by poets and hikers and made famous by Wordsworth, Thomas West, Beatrix Potter, and Alfred Wainwright. After these people came and fell in love with the region, they told others about it. The Lake District became a famous holiday destination. Outsiders came to buy vacation homes, and these outsiders loved the Lake District in their own way and wanted to “preserve” its wild areas but did not always appreciate livestock on the commons.

Sound familiar?

As a farm boy who had never thought of his home territory “as a place of books or for leisure,” Rebanks one day sat high on a fell neighboring his own family’s land with a Wainwright guide in his hands,

...looking down at the landscape farmed by my father’s friends, and cross-checking it against the guide. It struck me powerfully that there was scarcely a trace of any of the things we cared about in what Wainwright had written. Apart from the odd dot on the map for a farm or a wall, none of our world was in those pages. I am wondering whether the people on that mountain see the working side of that landscape, and whether it matters. In my bones I feel it does matter. That seeing, understanding, and respecting people in their own landscape is crucial to their culture and way of life being valued and sustained. What you don’t see, you don’t care about. 

 It is a curious thing to slowly discover that your landscape is beloved of other people. It is even more curious, and a little unsettling, when you discover by stages that you as a native are not really part of the story and meaning they attach to that place. There are never any tourists here when it is raining sideways or showing in winter, so it is tempting to see it as a fair-weather love. Our relationship with the landscape is about being there through it all. To me the difference is like the distinction between what you felt for a pretty girl you knew in your youth, and the love you feel for your wife after many years of marriage. Most unsettling was the discovery that the people who thought about this place in this way outnumbered us by many hundreds to one. I found that threatening to our very existence....

That’s a lengthy quotation, but I didn’t feel I could cut it any shorter, because it speaks of the shepherd’s life in all its aspects: the farm families, their committed attachment to the place and way of life, the invisibility of that way of life to holiday-makers, and the feeling that the newer kind of love threatens the survival of the older.

Readying Leelanau fields

I am not a farmer, as you know. (Farming is yet another youthful dream path, like music, that my life did not take.) People say, in the Lake District, that it takes three generations to make someone a local. Well, at that rate, I can hardly even call myself American. One of my grandfathers was born in Ireland! My mother was born in California, father in Ohio, and I was born South Dakota, growing up (insofar as I ever did) in Illinois, coming to make a home Michigan only in 1967.

A recent meeting of the village planning commission grew tense when an audience member pointed accusingly to “newcomer” faces on the board, prompting several of those “newcomers” to defend themselves with statements of how many years they’d been “coming up here” (i.e., on vacation or for summers) and how many years they had now lived in Northport fulltime. Native American people make wry faces over such discussions, as well as the common statement, “In America, we’re all immigrants.” I had a customer once in my bookstore looking for a book about “local Indians” but not, she specified, modern-day Indians. She wanted anthropology, history, legend, not current real life.

Who counts? Who is visible? Whose lives and ways of life matter? 

More than a few locals here in Leelanau County sport bumper stickers that read, “My home is your vacation.” (I think that’s how it goes. I always felt it would be punchier as “Your vacation is my home,” but we all get the point.) I remember a t-shirt from a couple decades back that warned, “Don’t mess with me – I’m a local!”

Bees at work in Leelanau orchard

I live here, but there have been a few winters (we can’t afford to do it every year) when my husband and I have fled to an easier clime. A couple of my farmer friends themselves (one a fourth-generation local) are world travelers. And here’s what I want to say. If we travel  at all – any of us -- wherever we travel (unless it’s to Antarctica, the only continent on earth home to no historical or traditional human culture) we will be visiting someone else’s home. And if we move to make a home in a new place, we’re going to live where other people had lives before we got there.

When the irate local at the meeting called newcomers on the commission “an invasive species, like star thistle,” I touched him gently on the arm (he’s a friend) and said, “That’s me, too. I didn’t grow up here.” “No,” he said earnestly, “you can be a transplant without being an invasive species.” His distinction, as I understand it, is between newcomers who try to fit in and those who try to take over. Like the shepherd in the Lake District, he feels his existence threatened. But those he perceives as a threat felt threatened by his anger and became defensive in their turn. They feel they are helping the local community -- bringing it "up to speed," into the modern world.

Must everyone, everywhere, be goaded into a faster and faster way of life – everything high-tech, “branded,” and magazine-slick in appearance – or shoved off to the side of the road?

It’s a touchy subject.

Not only in England’s Lake District, but in our own country, from Hawaii to Alaska and in all the forty-eight contiguous continental states, everyone’s vacation – or new home – or chosen retirement community – was already someone else’s home. Those who can afford periods (or lives) of leisure bump up against those working for a living. Because wherever you go, there will be people working, or life there would not be possible!

“Respect people in their own landscape.”

That sounds to me like nothing more than a particular application of the Golden Rule. If we think of it that way, it’s pretty easy to understand, isn’t it?

Beech buds in Leelanau woods

Well, I’ve barely touched on the wealth to be found in The Shepherd’s Life -- have only focused here on one of its many topics. Fathers and sons is another major theme. Economic vicissitudes and cycles. Livestock breeding. Schooling as preparation for life – or not. Oxford University. Town, gown, and farm. There’s plenty here for every reader’s interests. After all, the best memoirs present life much as do the best novels – in its particularity and its universality, through personalities never before encountered and yet familiar in many aspects, showing a way of life not experienced by the reader but shared by the writer. And this is one of those best.

I do want to say, lest you be put off by a shepherd’s resentment of invading writers, that James Rebanks came to an appreciation of Wordsworth and others, the more he learned of their appreciation for his way of life. His favorite, not surprisingly, was Mrs. Heelis, who also bred and showed sheep from her Lake District farms. You know Mrs. Heelis by her other name: Beatrix Potter.