”Are you headin` up to The County this weekend?” ”The cherries and grapes in The County should be mighty good this year.”
In this corner of the Midwest, when people refer to The County, everyone knows they mean Leelanau County and none other, a northern peninsula where Lake Michigan meets Michigan, the state. Something in the air, the terrain, the angles of sunlight and the near-tribal sense of community distinguishes it from anywhere else.
Those who have a feel for the geography of physical, spiritual and mental rejuvenation believe this is the sine qua non of destinations. No need to say its name. No need to reveal location. They love The County as it is. They love it even better as it used to be. If you deserve the Leelanau, longtime residents imply, it will seek you out.
Anyone so blessed will find a land of giant sand dunes, cozy villages, storybook farms, sweeping orchards, scrappy little vineyards and snug harbors. A few islands, off in the distance and frequently blurred by mist, provide intrigue.
Cottagers, tourists and day-trippers discovered Leelanau County years ago. It was right there on their maps, a wedge of land some 25 miles long, ranging in width from 25 miles to walking distance, laced with lakes and protected on much of its western edge by Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
Census takers count 16,000 permanent residents; the odometer measures 280 miles from Chicago. The dreamy maunderings of some who cherish Leelanau County describe it as an Avalon, a fairyland, to the point where you can`t imagine why The County would have any measurable dimensions or vital statistics at all.
Infinite variety
”The thing around here that`s a winning thing is the incredible variegation of the land, the variety of shapes,” novelist Jim Harrison remarked one morning in the old granary that serves as his studio. Harrison lives with his wife and a teenage daughter on a 120-acre farm in the town of Lake Leelanau. He hikes twice a day through relatively isolated woods, beaches and orchards, never tiring of it.
”No part of The County in a sense resembles any other part,” Harrison said. ”I suppose that`s why a lot of artists like it. It`s that rolling land and the water.”
Harrison may be the most prominent of the many artists who inhabit the Leelanau. At his scarred desk in the granary and at another in an isolated Upper Peninsula cabin, Harrison has written such neo-classics as ”Legends of the Fall,” ”Dalva,” ”Sundog” and ”The Woman Lit by Fireflies,” plus numerous poems, screenplays, articles and biting magazine columns. Now and then with his one good eye, he takes an alarmed look at his surroundings and fires off an angry letter to the Leelanau Enterprise.
The issues that provoke him are those that might be expected in an area so attractive and yet so confined. The developers of a resort and condominium complex, for example, want to fill in some Crystal River wetlands for a golf course. They insist their project would be environmentally responsible. Opponents, including Harrison at his most dark and irascible, see it as desecration.
”The filling of those wetlands to build a golf course-that`s absolutely, in my view, a criminal act, and everybody involved should be put in prison. Period.” The hacking laugh that followed this pronouncement creased Harrison`s Pancho Villa features. He loves to lash out.
”My favorite thing is thickets,” he said. ”They obviously aren`t the most valued things anymore. Most people think a golf course is prettier than a thicket.”
Then there are housing developments, where the newly smitten try to put down roots.
Standing room only
Limited in size as it is, Leelanau County can be somewhat daunting to the casual visitor. On summer weekends, officials might as well put a Standing Room Only sign at the border. Those who hit the area on a whim often must settle for a motel room in the Traverse City metropolis and see the adjoining county as day-trippers. The bed-and-breakfasts, inns and resorts in Leelanau start filling their holiday reservations lists months ahead.
As everyone knows, Michigan entrepreneurs ply tourists with fudge, although there seems to be nothing indigenous about the product. The
”fudgies” who swarm the galleries and shops of Leland, Suttons Bay and Northport are looked upon by locals with a mixture of amusement and fiscal respect. When they stay and try to become locals themselves, however, the looks sometimes grow hostile.
”It`s not the fudgies who bother us so much, it`s the permafudge,” says Cris Telgard, owner of the Bluebird Restaurant & Bar, a renowned Leland institution. ”They come in, build their condos and start taking over.”
Old-timers and newcomers might unite on a wetlands issue, and the ones who have planted themselves are naturally inclined to prevent anyone else from doing the same. But when the permafudge tries to block traditional hunting, fishing, logging, farming and mining practices, when they regard the unkempt garden of a local craftsman as an eyesore, danders go up.
Even so, prosperity has been difficult to come by in Michigan, and people bearing money command a certain tolerance.
Painter David Grath, a newcomer himself 34 years ago, would like the development to slow down, but when he sees his expensive paintings float away in a tide of fudge during one summer weekend at the Main Street Gallery here, leaving him with a residue of cash, his attitude becomes more expansive.
”On one hand,” he said, ”I shudder a little bit at the number of condominiums and great big houses perched on hills, dominating everybody`s view. On the other hand, as a painter who needs a home for his work, I have to think that every one of those structures represents 10 or 15 empty walls just crying out for a painting by David Grath.”
During a quiet evening at the Bluebird Bar (in some season other than summer because the Bluebird is rarely quiet then), Grath might talk about the attractions of the Leelanau, which to him have little to do with the abundant supply of golf courses, boutiques, recreation sites, beaches and marinas.
Idyllic discovery
In the `50s, taking a break from a new marriage and his teaching duties at Western Michigan University, Grath aimed his VW toward Leelanau County. Late on the night of his arrival, he curled up in a huge piece of driftwood and fell asleep.
”I woke up to this absolutely idyllic, beautiful little village and wandered through it and felt like this was home,” Grath recalled. The village was Leland, and the particulary beautiful part was a section known as Fish Town, a collection of picturesque shanties and wharves, flanked by a waterfall.
”It was about 7 o`clock in the morning, perfect blue sky, calm water, and one of the fishing boats was chug-chug-chugging out into the lake,” Grath said of that fateful wakeup more than three decades ago.
”Fish Town then was basically as it had been for 100 years, I think. There were no boutiques; there were no shops flogging fish kites and doodads and trinkets from Taiwan. The concept of the printed T-shirt had not yet left its indelible pall over the nation. It was a very serene and beautiful place.”
Fish Town still can be serene and beautiful, especially late in the evening, when vestiges of sunlight illuminate the islands of North and South Manitou, some 10 miles distant, when the old net and tackle sheds fall into shadow and their fudge-souvenir functions are not so apparent, and when diners at the waterfront Cove restaurant squint into the crimson of a sailor`s dusk. Early in the morning, as passengers gather for the daily ferryboat rides to South Manitou and anglers untie their charter boats, Fish Town takes on the characteristics of a minor port. Those who mill about that early are the sort who like to put themselves somewhere: to explore, pull chinook from the deep, get up close and solve the riddles that a distant view poses.
The slow boat to South Manitou exposes the outer edge of the Leelanau, craggy and almost forbidding with its steep bluffs and imperious dunes. In the two hours the ferry requires to cross the treacherous Manitou Passage and dock at the island, the harsh realities of the past become evident.
Shipwrecks litter the shallows, including the immense bulk of the freighter Francisco Morazan, which ran aground in 1960 and rusts quietly in full view off the island`s southern shore. Now part of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, South Manitou has been allowed to revert slowly to nature. Modern cottages were bought by the federal government and torn down.
Remnants of old farms and commercial buildings remain. In the 19th Century and the first two decades of the 20th, a bustling community occupied the island. At first, the settlers chopped trees and sold the firewood to ships in the harbor. The Coast Guard set up a lighthouse and a rescue station; farmers supplied fresh meat and produce to the sailors.
Back to nature
If South Manitou is going back to nature, neighboring North Manitou is already there. Once a private hunting preserve, that island still holds a deer population introduced in the 1920s.
If nothing else, the islands are a reminder of the region as it was in the raw, deposited by the glaciers that dug the Great Lakes, whipped by winds and devoid of permanent human habitation. The feeling there, at times, can be bleak and rather frightening, a land of regenerating vegetation and ghosts.
Artist Grath visited the Manitous only once, years ago, and intends never to go again.
”I enjoy the enigma of the islands from a distance,” he said. ”They represent dreams, and in their apparent ability to change in that water and skyscape, they represent the demutability, the changeability, the flow of dreams. It`s not necessary for me to go to them anymore. I`d rather paint them in a way that represents the yearning people have for mysterious things.”
For others, Leelanau County simply may represent the fulfilled dream of pleasant recreation in a beautiful setting, no more mysterious than the lovely harbor in Omena, dune-banked Glen Lake and sprawling Lake Leelanau, the luck that comes and goes in the Ottawa and Chippewa-run gambling hall in Peshawbestown.
True natives
On a hot night under the bright lights in the Leelanau Sands casino, only the Native American features of some croupiers and bartenders remind visitors of a people who saw The County as it looked centuries ago, when it was theirs. Now, true natives and the later settlers share Leelanau County, and most of them agree the land and the water cannot support many more.
”The dark and frightening thing if you know the history of this area,”
said Jim Harrison, ”is the way they screwed the Ottawas and the Chippewas. They continue doing that when they get a chance, but the Indians are doing quite well now. The more you know about the native populations, the more it will drive you crazy. I know by Charlevoix this Indian family that lost a lake during the Depression for a sack of flour. These people were brutally exploited.”
But the dark days of shipwrecks and pillage seldom cast a veil over Leelanau County`s casual visitors. The adventurous must limit themselves to canoe and kayaking on secluded rivers, excursions on the tall ship Manitou out of Northport, hiking on Sleeping Bear Dunes and scuba diving among the sunken vessels in an underwater park. Exploitation by resort developers and purveyors of tasteless baubles meets with quiet but determined resistance.
Raise a glass
At Boskydel Vineyards, one of the five small but ambitious wineries that dot the area, owner Bernie Rink offers samples of his table wines in a tasting room with a stunning view of his grape arbors and Lake Leelanau. He naturally feels protective of what he has, and the walls are covered with signs that express his sentiments.
One says, simply, ”Say no to developers.” Another quotes Henry David Thoreau: ”A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it. . . . Such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes but poets and philosophers for the coming ages.”
In Leelanau County, these days, locals and visitors alike are inclined to raise a glass of Boskydel seyval blanc or a chardonnay from Leelanau Wine Cellars or similar offerings from Good Harbor Vineyards, L. Mawby or Chateau Grand Traverse. Last summer a winetasting party on the Northport harbor lawn drew scores of enthusiasts who jammed under tents in a drenching rain.
Wine tasting and gallery hopping overshadow antiques shopping as a summer sport for aesthetes.
”People get in their Lexuses and sashay around the county visiting galleries and having little lunches,” a local observes. ”It`s very nice. It`s civilized.”
A few restaurants catering to refined tastes have opened in recent years, most notably Hattie`s Grill in Suttons Bay, Le Becasse in Glen Lake and Windows in Traverse City. Such establishments never will replace hangouts such as rustic, informal Dick`s Pour House in Lake Leelanau, the boisterous Bluebird in Leland, the cozy Happy Hour and perpetually youthful Woody`s in Northport and the cordial Joe`s Friendly Tavern in Empire. All endure as community centers and repositories of regional character.
Reminders of earlier days
Deep exploration beyond the gallery circuit will reveal cultures reminiscent of Chicago neighborhoods. In tiny Cedar, Pleva`s Meats grinds out succulent Polish sausages. Tombstones, phone directories and a few bakeries clearly indicate that Serbian, Czech, Swedish and French-Canadian settlers carved out the farms that nestle so prettily beside the county roads.
The names of those byways are prosaic-633, 645, 641, 616, etc.-but a traveler can take any one of them at random and find enchantment.
”It`s almost as if they were laid out for pleasure, rather than the ordinary commerce that most roads were developed for,” Grath says.
John Elder, owner of the tall ship Manitou, guards roadside pleasures carefully.
”Those of us who live here don`t tell people all the secret places,” he confides. ”We just say, `Oh, that`s on 6-something.` ”
Recipients of vague directions like that may be seeking out a singular vista, a beach yet undiscovered by the crowds, a special orchard or simply the elusive quality of a land between a huge lake and a wide, blue bay called Grand Traverse.
Grath believes that the allure of Leelanau County has everything to do with its unique positioning on the Earth.
”Because of the large bodies of water on both sides,” he said,
”there`s a special quality to the light, very similar to the light in Italy.”
Sophisticated painters sometimes hoot at colleagues who continue to paint sunsets, but Grath, with no apologies, still faces his easel west in the evening.
”I don`t find anything corny about that beautiful lake and those islands with the sun going down,” he said. ”It`s endlessly rewarding and infinitely interesting to me.”
