Glen Arbor local finds her Morel compass

Glen Arbor local Chase Edwards penned an evocative and beautiful story today for MyNorth.com, the website of Traverse Michigan. Edwards, whose mother is an editor at the magazine, is currently an outdoor instructor and guide out west. Here’s an excerpt from her piece, and please find the entire essay here:

“You can take the girl out of Northern Michigan,” I explain to my climbing partner, Geoff, at our campsite in Yosemite National Park. “But you cannot take Northern Michigan out of the girl.” He watches as I dance childishly around the picnic table with a spatula in my hand, the smell of butter, fried onions, and morels rising from the camp stove. Large granite boulders flank one side of the campground, a prominent rock band looms through the dense canopy of trees on the other side, and only a few campsites away, park rangers are shooing a black bear into the woods. But I’m lost, momentarily, in the sound of the mushrooms sizzling on the cast iron pan, and in the aroma, which is simultaneously making my mouth water and bringing on a landslide of childhood memories.