Some places you go to. Some places you go back to. The Upper Peninsula is the second kind.
I've been making the drive north since high school. My mother's family has roots here, and my memories of this place are layered the way they only get when you keep returning year after year: the moment the trees get taller and the sky gets wider, the first glimpse of the bridge, the particular quiet of the Les Cheneaux Islands that doesn't seem to exist anywhere else.
I brought my husband here when he was still my college boyfriend, and now our kids bring their significant others. The trip has grown up alongside us. Some travel is about discovering something new, but this trip is about something better: the thing that keeps pulling you home.
A Different Kind of Michigan
People who haven't been to the Upper Peninsula sometimes think it's just more Michigan, the same lake towns and the same beach energy. It isn't. The UP is greener, rockier, more rugged than anything you'll find on Lake Michigan. Lake Huron is quieter in a way that settles something in you the minute you arrive, and the community we come back to every year has history that goes back generations. You can feel it in the old boathouses, in the boats themselves, in the limestone shoreline that looks like it's been there forever because it has. Grand Haven is the place I love and call home, but the Upper Peninsula is something else entirely, and that's exactly why we keep coming back.
Seeing It as a Painter for the First Time
As this trip gets closer, I keep thinking about that I only started painting last year. Every summer I've ever spent in the UP, I've seen it as a daughter, a wife, a mom, a person who loves this place deeply. This summer, for the first time, I get to see it as a painter.
Here's what I already know about myself as a painter: I'm not going to try to paint the whole lake, because that's not how I work. What I'm drawn to are the details. The branch of a cedar tree and how the needles cluster together in a way that feels distinctly, unmistakably UP. The hull of a Chris-Craft, that dark varnished wood the old woodies carry like a badge. The wonky lean of a boathouse that's been standing longer than anyone can remember. The Les Cheneaux Islands are full of things worth painting small, and that's exactly where I plan to start.
What a Place Like This Does to You
There's a reason this trip is the one our whole family shows up for every year without exception. It slows you down in a way that's hard to describe unless you've felt it. You sit and stare at the water and you don't feel the need to justify it, and that kind of quiet is worth more than most people give it credit for.
For a painter, that kind of slow is actually productive. When you stop rushing, you start seeing. You notice the color of the light at 7am on the water, the way the limestone looks after rain, the way the cedar trees cluster in a way that makes you want to reach for your sketchbook.
I don't know what's going to come out of this trip on paper. I have a sketchbook and a set of gouache that I've been quietly narrowing down to the colors I think I'll reach for up there, and the rest I'm figuring out as I go.
If you've been to the Upper Peninsula, you already know what I mean. If you haven't, I hope you get there someday. It has a way of pulling you back, and that's the whole point.
