By Bruce Allar
Photos by John Nation
Spirits and omens don’t normally reveal themselves to me, but on the first morning of last year’s late-summer journey to Michigan’s “Up North” region, I was paid a visit by the embodiment of that vacationland’s rugged-yet-cultivated appeal.
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I realize, of course, that noted fiction writer Jim Harrison did not show up while we were brunching at Kejara’s Bridge in Lake Leelanau to bless photographer John Nation and me as we began our explorations, which ranged from Sleeping Bear Dunes near the tip of the mainland’s western face to the doorstep of the Upper Peninsula at Mackinaw City. Yet the presence of a favorite storyteller of mine, one so rooted in the Michigan soil, signaled to me that we’d arrived in the right place at the right time.
A sometime food writer, Harrison is a man of huge appetites. Like northern Michigan, where he lived during his most productive wordsmithing and set many of his finest tales, he is at once in tune with the wilderness and in possession of a well-defined sense of taste. He can track down a bear or a stunning gourmet meal. He can fly-fish for trout or “nose” wine with French snobs.
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I took our encounter with Harrison, who was back for a brief visit with friends, less as warning about bad wine (some of the local varieties are quite potable) and more as a sign that we were being launched favorably on our travels by his relaxed presence. We would find in northern Michigan a beauty that may not astound at first blush, but one that quietly builds in splendor. And we would experience a culture suited to that understated landscape, one that achieves good taste and good sense with little apparent striving.
Traverse City is the prosperous hub of this area defined by bays off Lake Michigan and large inland lakes shaped like glacially carved fingers. This small city captured little of my imagination because, while it may present the most shopping and dining options, it has in some ways succumbed to the bustle one hopes to escape in the northland. Places to the east and north of Traverse City feel as though they’ve been developed longer, like the U.S. East Coast, while the countryside to the north and west, to continue the analogy, features more wide-open spaces and the wine-producing region.
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The sun sets over Lake Michigan from the Leelanau Peninsula |
From atop one of these giant sand mounds, I gazed out to the endless, open water and took in the oceanic proportions of Lake Michigan. The grass and shrub-covered bluffs at the water’s edge in the distance reminded me of some places I’ve been along the Northern California coast — minus the beached boulders and sunning seals, of course. That such a seaside-like panorama can exist in the landlocked Midwest freed my spirit, opened me to new possibilities.
Families — some from Louisville — have been summering in this Leelanau County area for generations. The days of dirt roads and wooden Chris-Craft runabouts are long gone, and many with second homes here lament the traffic and congestion that summer now brings. In spite of the development, however, a casual vibe sets the pulse. A tiny dockside area of tightly packed wooden buildings in Leland, called Fishtown, serves as headquarters for the charter-boat fleet that offers guided fishing trips out into Lake Michigan and transport to North Manitou and South Manitou islands. Carlson’s Fresh & Smoked Fish sells bounty from the lake, described by one local as “fish so fresh you’d like to slap them.”
 Burger haven at Art's Tavern in Glen Arbor |  Chris House crafts his fudge in Harbor Springs |
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You can drive past hundreds of million-dollar vacation homes winding your way from Leelanau County to the old port city of Petoskey, and you can contemplate extravagance for yourself at high-/files/storyimages/resorts or dining at Tapawingo. (This hideaway in the inland hamlet of Ellsworth is so revered that the man who is eating his way around the world for the New York Times, R.W. Apple Jr., has written that it “may be the best restaurant anywhere in the country that’s a four-hour drive from the closest major city.”) The choicest reasons to stop, though, are often the simple ones — like cherries.
On US 31, a few miles east of Traverse City, the unremarkable town of Acme is situated in a most remarkable environment for tart cherries — with lake-controlled cool winds, sandy soil and enough elevation in the nearby hills to warm a couple of crucial degrees during the day. Amon Orchards has a shop right on 31 in Acme that offers multiple uses for this explosively sweet fruit (including a hot cherry salsa), but the straight-up cherry jam is to-die-for. Pack a case in your vehicle; some of it may make it back to Louisville.
It’s a pretty drive north along the shoreline of Grand Traverse Bay to Charlevoix. You can choose with equal success to find lodging on this side of Traverse City, dipping if you like as far south as Boyne City on the inland extremity of Lake Charlevoix. My favorite, however, at least for a night, is farther up US 31 at Petoskey. This city on the hill has a mini-urban feel that takes you back to the era of sleeper railroad cars and Ernest Hemingway. The author of Big Two-Hearted River learned to fish in these parts and spent some time at the 1899-vintage Perry Hotel, which has been restored and provides a great sunset vantage over the big lake. Petoskey’s compact downtown of restored early- 20th-century buildings is a stimulating place to stroll and shop, or grab a meal.
 |  Traverse Lighthouse (left) and sailboats at the ready in Harbor Springs. |
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Directly across Little Traverse Bay from Petoskey, the fashionable community of Harbor Springs gives the well-to-do a quaint resort playground. Tethered sailboats bob in the harbor, fine homes line spits of land reaching into the bay and Main Street is a gallery-hoppers delight. It’s also the address of Howse’s Fudge, a street-corner shop in a two-story red-brick building. Second-generation fudge-man Chris Howse rolls and stretches the confection with a craftsman’s touch.
Fudge is ubiquitous in northern Michigan, and Howse’s, in business since 1959, has its fanatical fans — as do Ryba’s and Murdick’s from Mackinac Island, where the craze began. Its appeal to tourists is so enormous that the locals call people passing through “fudgies,” sometimes good-naturedly and sometimes quite derogatorily. In fact, in trendy circles in Leland, the term has been corrupted into a new sobriquet, perma-fudgie, which refers to the nouveau riche who are buying up property in that area and bringing questionable taste with them.
John and I ended our trip near where we started, on the Leelanau Peninsula headed to Northport and the Grand Traverse Lighthouse. There are many more picturesque lighthouses in Michigan, dating to the era when Lake Michigan was a commercial highway for the industrializing Midwest. This one did nicely as a final observation point, its solid brick construction with tiny arched windows built to withstand stormy blasts from across the deep waters. We walked down along a rocky point and looked futilely for fossilized “Petoskey stones” in the cold, clear shimmers. I glanced up and scanned miles of shoreline that looked unmarred by human activity. This giant lake, an inland ocean, really, still overwhelmed our presence.
As we headed out of town the next day, our guide for much of the trip, Cathy Fisher, a Cincinnati native who spent summers in Leland as a child and now lives there year-round, assured us that Petoskey stones were there for the taking at the lighthouse. We hadn’t yet learned to recognize their presence.
But we did, Jim Harrison to the contrary, head back to Louisville with a wine we liked — a Pinot Gris from Lake Leelanau’s Chateau Fontaine. I gave a bottle to friends.
