Meeting an old friend for the first time
By Tim Mulherin
Sun contributor
In the summer of 1994, I met a northern Michigan writer—though not in person—who made a lasting impression on me: Leelanau County’s own, essayist Kathleen Stocking.
Our family was vacationing in Leland in a house on Lake Street. Renting her home for the summer, the retired property owner relocated, staying with a relative in town. (This was years before the Vrbo- and Airbnb-influenced short-term rental market proliferated or, dependent upon your point of view, metastasized.) One early August afternoon, in need of vacation reading material, I took a stroll through the tranquil village to Leelanau Books. On a postcard-perfect summer day – a cool onshore breeze wafting through Fishtown’s harbor under an azure sky – I realized that Leland is a daydream come true.
Inside the quaint, something-for-everyone shop, books enticingly shelved from floor to ceiling, I was drawn to the extensive Michigan authors section, particularly interested in the nonfiction offerings. I had studied the art of nonfiction writing in college, my survey of the genre including distinguished essayists with a focus on nature such as Annie Dillard, Wendell Berry, Edward Abbey, and Scott Russell Sanders. But, like many with an artistic bent, I tabled that ambition early on to help support my family.
I soon came across Stocking’s first book: Letters from the Leelanau: Essays of People and Place. After examining the front and back covers and conducting my open-any-page-and-decide test, I had to have it. Here was a writer who grew up in Leelanau County, whose family had a remarkable history in the area (notably, the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is named after her father), and who, as I would read, captured the essence of this special place. Little did I know that this would lead to an improbable encounter nearly three decades later.
That day, my family was kicking back at South Beach, where the road ends on Reynolds Street. Back then in Leland, a busy day at the beach would be maybe 25 people, vacationers interspersed with locals, plenty of breathing room for all. In the introduction to Letters from the Leelanau, published in 1990, Stocking writes wistfully about her beloved homeland: “I grew up here, at a time when you could find Petoskey stones by the bushel on the beach, and then the peninsula truly was a pristine place… But since then it’s been discovered by tourists and condominium developers, and the beautiful, soft Leelanau of my childhood is gone.”
I could only imagine. Not having been here before and hailing from always amped-up Indianapolis, we found the area to be an idyllic getaway destination. As we do yet today, even with the rising number of visitors and the influx of relocators ushered here by the pandemic. As another homegrown and prolific Leelanau writer, Jim Harrison, wrote about northwest lower Michigan in his essay “Hunting with a Friend: On Good Friends and Foul Weather,” published in 1995, “There are a lot more people now, but there are still plenty of places where they aren’t.” As I’ve seen for myself, there still is. Of course, hope remains that the region doesn’t attract so many that it gets loved to death. Winter is a big help.
During our all-too-short two-week vacation stays in Leland in the ’90s, I became enamored with Leelanau County’s known and overlooked places that offered the precious solitude unavailable to me in Indy. Stockings’ writings—including her follow-up collection, Lake Country: A Series of Journeys – touched me deeply, providing a literary backdrop for my own Leelanau experience. And so, as admiring readers tend to do, I considered this author a dear friend.
Fast forward to the summer of 2021. My own nonfiction book of essays and stories in praise of northern Michigan (Sand, Stars, Wind, & Water: Field Notes from Up North) was published. This engendered a second book project, an interview-intensive effort exploring the impact of the pandemic- and climate change-inspired migration and increasing tourism on the region. During one such discussion Stocking’s early writings came up, and I shared how they had resonated with me. Small world that the region is, my interviewee just happened to know Stocking and offered to get a copy of my book to her.
A few weeks later, I received an email—from Stocking. And she complimented me on my writing; indeed, the universe works in mysterious ways. She also invited me to a memorial for her deceased friend David Grath, the well-known landscape artist from Northport, whose artwork had graced the covers of several of Stocking’s books. The event would be held at Leland’s Old Art Building on the evening of June 16. As she suggested, the drive out and back “would give us a chance to talk,” and I would get to meet some of her long-time friends in the local arts and letters community. Of course, I accepted.
As we traveled north on scenic M-22, Stocking wanted to hear about my current project. She listened attentively as I provided an overview of my research, revealed my concern about scope creep, and confessed my uncertainty as to how my findings would finally coalesce into book form. Her short-winded, radically simple guidance was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment: “Trust your instincts and keep going – you’ll get there.” Then I was moved to express how much her writing had meant to me, especially the timing of it so long ago as I first came under Leelanau’s spell. She accepted my regards with a humility that endeared me to her even more.
The Grath memorial took place on one of those sublime Leelanau summer evenings. The near-solstice daylight hangtime was a comfort and a grace, a fitting sense of never-ending. As people gathered, I watched as Stocking interacted with many of her long-time friends in a tender moment of reconnection and memory sharing. For me, it embodied the holiness of the occasion. Afterwards, she told me that “David’s paintings are, in some ways, a conversation with nature and with the natural beauty of the peninsula.” It’s a conversation that all of us who come to Leelanau have in our own unique ways.
Decades ago, Stocking, through her essays, welcomed me, an enchanted newbie, to Leelanau County. Her writing encouraged me to immerse myself further in the region, to delve into its countless ineffable qualities and to try, nonetheless, to put my observations and experiences into words. And now, years later, in an inexplicable reversal of circumstances, I was able to share my own book-length tribute to the region with her. Kismet, I’d like to think.
