“Nature” welcomes yoga, weddings, camping to forest oasis

Emma (Stoppani) and Bryan Cloninger, with their daughters, Iris and Ayla. Photo by Josh Hartman Photography

By Jacob Wheeler

Sun editor

Nature, the woodsy retreat and wedding destination near Glen Lake School, is branching out to the local community this spring, as the eco resort hosts Yen Yoga classes on Wednesday evenings from 5:30-6:30 pm in its “Great Nest” building and offers meals from Bill Dungjen’s food truck outside all week long.

“Nature: A Michigan Retreat” is the brainchild of St. Louis native Bryan Cloninger and his wife, France native Emma Stoppani Cloninger. The resort opened to weddings, camping and retreats two years ago on a tranquil 78 acres in Burdickville, east of the Glen Lakes. COVID-19 slowed business considerably last year, as Nature hosted only four weddings in 2020, following 12 in 2019. 

The global pandemic wasn’t the first major hurdle the Cloningers have had to overcome. Three months after they purchased the property, a dramatic storm with winds topping 100 miles per hour pummeled Glen Arbor on August 2, 2015. Bryan and his son Baptiste, now 12, stood on the property that Sunday afternoon and “watched half the forest fall in front of their eyes,” said Bryan. “I was worried that the whole forest would be leveled. I was worried that it might shut us down.” A logging team of a dozen men worked 365 consecutive days to clean up the forest, as 18-wheeler logging trucks hauled timber to Lake Ann Hardwoods Sawmill. The upside was that the Cloninger’s built their beautiful state-of-the-art Great Nest almost entirely out of fallen ash from the property. 

Built in 2018, the 2,800 square-foot main space is equipped to host wedding receptions, catered parties, and now yoga classes. The Great Nest can safely accommodate more than 25 people, at a distance, during COVID, and also has CDC-compliant HVAC ventilation systems. During normal times, the building can fit 220, or 150 with a big dance floor. Tall, southern-facing windows attract marvelous light. Prior to this venture Bryan, age 49, was a cinematographer with a movie studio in New York City: he worked on environmental films together with Leonardo DiCaprio and also Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Emma is from Nice, on the French Riviera, so good light was a requirement.

The building’s western wall is acoustically designed for live music and also has a 27-foot diagonal projection screen. The nearly 8,000 square-foot venue includes an assembly kitchen ideal for event caterers, a bar, a Silver LEED-certified woodstove that can heat the whole building to 65 degrees using only six logs, a locker room with electrical charging stations in each locker (for those camping on the property), a water bottle filling station, and a recreation room with pinball machines (for the groomsmen, who often dress for a wedding more quickly than the bridesmaids. The Cloningers currently live upstairs in an 800 square-foot apartment with their young daughters, 3-year-old Ayla and 8-month-old Iris, which will one day become the bridal suite when they build a house in the forest.

Next to the Great Nest is a small beach and 14-foot-deep manmade swimming pond which is stocked with goldfish and attracts wildlife. Bryan says he has identified 47 species of birds on the property. Deep in the forest of Leelanau County, Nature is unencumbered by the lights of Traverse City 20 miles away. During clear nights, the Milky Way reflects its timeless beauty on the pond.

Nature has four different wedding ceremony spots on its property, two of which are deep in the forest. A trailhead near the parking area leads north through tall trees to a forest sanctuary of bonfire rings, camping spots and a natural glade—surrounded by 11,000 acres of mature forest—where the Cloningers hope to one day host artistic events including storytellers, musicians, dancers, and actors. While weddings have been the big draw thus far, Bryan and Emma hope Nature will also appeal to meditation, yoga and writer retreats, family reunions and corporate getaways.

“We’re wedding-heavy right now,” said Bryan. “But we intend to be a resort-style place.”

“We have a lot of plans for the next 20 years, but there are so many ways to use Nature that we cannot even imagine. We are looking for people to reach out to us to dream and discuss what is needed. We are a sandbox of creativity to play, work, celebrate, connect, and bond.”

Future events they have considered could include Halloween hayrides, French- or Spanish-language evenings with food, music and movies, or First Nations storytelling and dancing around the campfire. Nature’s 20-year plan also includes plans to grow a community garden space and a sustainable food forest.

Growing community in Leelanau

Bryan met Emma in 2010 in France at a conference on ecology, where he had organized a 12-week film festival. They bonded over a mutual desire to launch an ecological project that focused on regenerative agriculture, sustainability, resilience, and social action. Googling those terms led them to Vermont-based Ben Falk, developer of Whole Systems Design, a land-based response to biological and cultural extinction and the increasing separation between people and elemental things. Bryan contacted Falk and hired him as a consultant.

The Cloningers also reached out to a friend in Madison, Wisconsin, who works as a NASA scientist, and asked him where he would recommend raising a family and growing roots, long-term, given the threats and worst-case scenarios of climate change.

“He came back and gave us a list of three places,” said Bryan. “One was in Leelanau County. We visited here for the first time in 2014 and stayed at The Homestead. We had been on the beach for five minutes, looking up and down the shore. We looked at each other and we both said ‘this is perfect!’” They purchased the property to build Nature the following year, and opened in March 2019 to host 30 people for a meditation retreat. The first wedding was in June.

The Cloningers have long wanted to host year-round community events at Nature. An opportunity arose when Yen Yoga, the popular studio in Traverse City, closed its brick and mortar location on Front Street this past fall, as COVID-safety protocols made it difficult to attract enough customers. Yen has transitioned to offer virtual classes and occasional community classes in spacious locations such as the Cathedral Barns at the Grand Traverse Commons and “yoga in the vines” this summer at Mari Vineyards and Black Star Farms. Bryan and Emma had been members at the studio, and they contacted Yen Yoga director Sara Harding to offer their space.

“Emma and I always had a secret agenda to get people out here,” said Bryan. The first Wednesday evening class was on April 7.

Bryan also contacted Leelanau County planning and community development director Trudy Galla and asked how Nature could help with emergency preparedness during the pandemic. “She said I was the only person who called and asked how we could help, instead of asking how the county could help them,” he said. Together they developed a plan where Nature could house emergency workers who needed to stay somewhere and self-quarantine if they were exposed to COVID.

“It never got to that point, but we came close a couple times,” said Bryan. “If things really went off the rails—like they did in northern Italy in early 2020—we were ready to host a Red Cross-style pop-up facility. Those plans are still in place. … For me it’s a way to support the community with the space we have.”