Maybe my disconnect with Michigan started when I was seven and my brother was pushing me down the hill on my sled and I ran head-on into a birch tree, or maybe when I was up north at our cottage and was the only kid out of eight cousins that couldn’t get in the tree house, or even on the bike ride from the Upper Tahquamenon Falls to the Lower when I threw my bike in a ditch and said I was done riding. I am not sure when I became so set on leaving Michigan, but I have been dreaming of it for most of my life. My mom had left Michigan and lived in San Francisco, California for about a year when she was in her twenties, and since I have heard about her experiences and seen the city itself I have known it is where I belong. Reading and discussing Allison Swan’s book Fresh Water has made me realize that while I have spent so much of my life waiting to get out of Michigan, I have missed out on the state’s Great Lakes, four seasons, and its beauty. I had no idea that the Great Lakes were the largest source of fresh water in the world, that statistic to me is astounding.
Looking back on my experiences as a child, I was not deprived of nature by any means, in fact my parents went above and beyond spending family vacations and everyday events out in nature, no matter how much any of us resisted. We spent summers on all of the Great Lakes, and have pictures of us swimming in each one. We spent falls up north in the Upper Peninsula watching the leaves change. We spent winters outside skiing and sledding. We spent springs up north with our extended family in our cottage surrounded by the acres my Grandparents own. Still through all of these experiences I have somehow been able to see past the natural beauty and been distracted by my selfish desire to leave this state. Maybe it’s now time for me to reconnect. Michigan may not be where I belong, but I cannot let that fact allow me to see past the beauty of where I grew up.
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