"I don't think it is that special," my neighbor said, gesturing to the crowd gathered around us at the beach on Friday night. "What do you mean?" I asked, thinking perhaps I had misheard her. "I just don't think this is that unique," she said, "this happens in lots of places." She said this in response to the monologue I had just delivered, waxing poetic about the neighbors who gather at our local beach every Friday night and turn the parking lot into a makeshift community center.
On this most recent Friday night, it was raining, yet the parking lot was full. Dozens of us huddled under pop-up tents whenever the rain started again or escaped to the portable wood-fired sauna Vlad of Sleeping Bear Saunas had set up for anyone to use. Earlier in the evening, I sat in the sauna with my friend's nephew, who was six or seven years old and proclaimed excitedly, "It's a heater and a shelter!" as the rain pattered down on the canvas.
I returned to my conversation, trying not to feel offended even though what my neighbor said felt like an insult and one I couldn’t wrap my mind around. "This is the type of place people write about!" I said to further my point, wondering if my being one of the people writing about this place reduced the argument's validity.
Though not a personal statement about me, my neighbor's reduction of what feels so magical about this community felt like a light punch to the gut. Am I being naive? Have I been drinking the lake water?
But no, a handful of other conversations that night and further into the weekend proved that I am at least not alone in my obsession with what feels unmatched in this community. Unprompted, I stood under the pop-up tent Friday night and then in the open space next to our post office the following night as music filled the village, and I listened to others go on about how wonderful our community is. One conversation included a neighbor who moved away in the last few years and now drives forty-five minutes one way every Friday night to gather at the beach. "This is special," he said. "We are all entwined with this lake whether we know it or not."
In another conversation, my cousin visiting from Montana told me, "This feels like a coastal hippie town plopped down in Michigan. This is such a special place," she emphasized as we danced in a multi-generational group to the funky tunes of The Go Rounds.
In all reality, my conversation Friday night didn't make me second-guess that this place has a certain magic to it, but it reminded me that the magic that is here also exists elsewhere. My neighbor wasn't wrong in making me reconsider what I have held as gospel for years, and her point–that there are people deeply connected to each other and the place they live all over the world–is true.
I imagine that even as we stood in the rainy twilight on Friday night on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, there were groups of people doing the same on the opposite shore in Wisconsin, on beaches somewhere in the Pacific, perhaps even along the icy coast of an arctic body of water. Who knows?
This winter, while becoming more entrenched in the cult act of cold swimming, I loved learning about other people in other places who were doing the same. We found groups of women in England, Minnesota, and elsewhere doing the same thing as us. We didn't need further validation that what we were doing was meaningful. Still, it offered that, enmeshing us with other people in other places who had somehow come to the same conclusions as us–that we wanted to swim in the bodies of water near us year-round.
Friday night's conversation made me consider what we mean when we say, "This place is special," a statement that can feel reductive and trite, or at least non-specific. What I mean is that this place feels connective, and that being connected to the landscape around me somehow brings me into closer communion with what it means to be human.
Maybe what feels unique about places like northern Michigan is how they remind us of what is essential: the waves' cadence resonating with something deep and intrinsic in us. Indeed, anywhere there is a body of water, I imagine the people who live nearby are called to it like the people in our little community are. Perhaps they are bringing food and drinks together to end the week while watching the sunset together.
Ours may not be an isolated experience, but I think that is the very thing that makes it meaningful. And dare I say, special.
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Thank you for reading and connecting with this newsletter, wherever it finds you. I hope you all have a safe holiday, and that you are able to get your toes in the water.
Cheers,
Mae
Love this — longing to be connected to nature this deeply & I really only feel it up north. I think there’s something sacred about the Great Lakes, that bring everyone together. Can’t wait to have a home up there 🥹