Nightmare on Ice, Miracle on Ice

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Remembering a near-death experience on frozen Lake Michigan. It was Super Bowl Sunday of 1984, and the carefree 15-year-old girls wanted to find ice caves. Karen Gros and Bobbi Boos, students at the Leelanau School north of Glen Arbor, walked onto frozen Sleeping Bear Bay in search of tunnels and mammoth formations they expected to find on Lake Michigan. The girls suddenly found themselves on a chunk of ice that broke off from the pack and began floating away from the shore. Suddenly, the ice on which they stood began to disintegrate into smaller chunks.

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Leelanau Coffee’s journey from Empire to Glen Arbor

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John Arens reflects on the coffee company—and Glen Arbor mainstay—he and his brother Steve launched 33 years ago. They sold the company early this year to Grand Rapids-based Schuil Coffee Co. Leelanau Coffee opened in 1992 on Lake Street, sharing a 500-square-foot space with another startup called Cherry Republic.

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From one Michigan roaster to another, Leelanau Coffee stays grounded

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Thirty-three years after two brothers started the locally loved—and widely recognized—Leelanau Coffee Roasting Co., they sold it.  The acquisition officially took place on New Year’s Day when Grand Rapids-based Schuil Coffee Co. took it over.  Like Leelanau Coffee, Schuil is a specialty, Michigan-based roaster that’s withstood the test of time. In fact, when Garry and Gladys Schuil started the company in 1981, it became the first specialty coffee roaster in the state. Inside the Glen Arbor cafe, things feel unchanged.  “Right now, it’s business as usual and will be for the foreseeable future,” said Mara Miller, the cafe’s manager and one of its longest working employees.

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Meet Me at the Loaf: Leelanau Historical Society celebrates Sugar Loaf stories

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The Leelanau Historical Society, in partnership with Here:Say Storytelling, will present Meet Me at the Loaf: A Celebration of Sugar Loaf in Stories. The Jan. 29 event at Solon Township Hall near Cedar will feature memories and voices connected to one of Leelanau County’s most beloved landmarks: Sugar Loaf Mountain. Doors open at 5:30 pm, offering guests the chance to reconnect with old friends, neighbors, and fellow “Sugar Loafers.” The storytelling program begins at 6:30.

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Cross-country moonlight Sonata … at midnight

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This reflection on a nocturnal Alligator Hill ski was first published in our Winter 2000 edition. The alligator’s new look, following the Aug. 2, 2015, storm, prompted us to revisit these words.

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Afghans assimilate and contribute in Leelanau County

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One man returns home in his pickup truck from his job managing a fruit processing plant near Empire to greet his children as they step off the yellow school bus. Another shares a homemade dinner with his wife and kids, then naps before working the nightshift in the radiology unit at Munson Medical Center. A third man retreats upstairs and uses a hand-me-down sewing machine to mend a customer’s torn Christmas stocking—his side gig to make extra money for his family after he works daytime hours at Spectrum. These could be the stories of any hard-working men in Leelanau County. In fact, they represent the everyday rituals of three Afghan refugees who worked with the U.S. military and then fled for their safety after the Taliban took Kabul and seized power four years ago.

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Chronicling a history of Glen Arbor Township

When reading anything historical, while fascinating, it can be hard to connect to the information as it is not personally relevant or the idea that the historical event happened a long time ago creates a divide. The hurdle for the historian is how to bridge the reader to the past and make the information relevant? The newest release from the Leelanau Press, “Glen Arbor Township: A History to 1920” beautifully bridges the past for the contemporary reader.

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Devouring Jim Harrison: National Writers Series features biographer

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Jim Harrison returns to northern Michigan on Dec. 8. The longtime Leelanau County resident, widely considered one of the finest literary voices of his generation, died in 2016 after penning 21 books of fiction and 14 books of poetry, which influenced a generation of writers. Todd Goddard’s biography of Harrison, titled “Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Writer’s Life,” published on Nov. 4. He will appear at the National Writers Series at the Traverse City Opera House on Dec. 8. The Glen Arbor Sun interviewed Goddard in late October about researching and writing the book. Read and watch the interview here.

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The last of the Leelanau schooners: “The boat doesn’t sink and nobody dies”

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On the 50th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald—the most famous shipwreck on the Great Lakes—our story series celebrating songs inspired by Leelanau County and the Sleeping Bear Dunes continues with Paul Koss’s “The Last of the Leelanau Schooners”. Koss wrote his classic homage to the era of the tall ships back in the early 1990s when he was working with the Maritime Heritage Alliance preparing to launch the schooner Madeline. “I always had a love of sailing and maritime history because my Grandpa on my Mom’s side was a sea captain in the Merchant Marines,” Paul said. “The Madeline was modeled on a school ship moored in Bowers Harbor, and working on it planted the seed of an idea for a song. Not a song about “The Boat”—Gordon Lightfoot and Stan Rogers had already written those songs—but I wanted to write a song about the end of the tall ship era in our corner of the Great Lakes.” As Paul says when he performs this song: “The boat doesn’t sink and nobody dies!”

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The Witch of November: Recounting Fall Storms on the Great Lakes

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the infamous wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Nov. 10, 1975, we’re reprinting Jed Jaworski’s riveting account—originally published in The Betsie Current, our sister publication in Benzie County—of a dramatic journey on board the car ferry Viking across Lake Michigan during a November gale. “All hands on deck, we are leaving the dock!” shouted the watchstander. Moments later, the ship’s mighty horn sounded one long blast, followed by a short blast and another long one, to summon any of the crewmembers who had not heeded the captain’s request to stay aboard. The scene below, on deck at the loading apron, was tense. One of the steel cables holding the ship to the dock had snapped, and the others were straining as the 350-foot ship lurched at its moorings. The wind had veered enough westward to send storm-wave energy into Lake Betsie, long known to be the harbor’s failing. There was no way to keep the ship at the dock. We would be forced to cross Lake Michigan in a full-on November storm.

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