Stick it to Leland

By Jess Piskor

Sun contributor

Viva the Stick!

The Leland Stick hung on through blizzards and windstorms. For more than two years, a humble stick came to symbolize the spirit of Leland.

Once hanging from a powerline crossing M-22 just south of Leland, the Leland Stick is no more. Around 3 p.m. on May 12, a tree crew clearing limbs removed the branch and almost certainly reduced it to undifferentiated chips. For many, it was the unofficial Welcome to Leland sign.

Dan Lisuk, who lives in Leland, described it as, “A wishbone stick, probably six feet long with the fork two feet from the top.” Never properly measured, it appeared to one observer as just under an inch in diameter at its widest.

“It would move across the road from shoulder to shoulder, with the wind,” Lisuk recollects, “like it was having a good time up there.” It provided a sense of calm each time he passed underneath it. “When you looked at the Stick it was all you were thinking of. For 100 yards, that was it.”

“I always wondered how it stayed up there. But it was an upside down ‘Y,’ so I always thought to myself, ‘Why? Why not?’ Perfectly balanced things happen in nature. And it was on the 45th parallel…” said Lisuk.

Like many local legends, the origin story is disputed. The precise arrival of the Stick and even the species of tree are hard to trace. Everyone interviewed agreed it was there by fall of 2024. “I recall the trees were bare and wondering how long it had already been there,” Elizabeth Sweeney said. Others online speculated it first became hung up as early as 2021.

Certainly a hardwood branch, the stick was most likely from the American Beech trees that line M-22. Beech trees have been in rapid decline over the past few years as the once majestic trees succumb to Beech Bark Disease.  Road and trail crews have been kept busy clearing away dying trees.

Sweeney, who starred in Northport’s musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last summer, was concerned for the Stick earlier this spring. “I had noticed the tree work and wondered if they were going to take it down or if they knew to leave it up for us,” she said.

“It’s one of those things that I expect everybody quietly noticed. It’s almost like you wanted it to fall, but at the same time would cheer it on every time it survived a storm.” said Rachel Tompkins, who regularly drove under the Stick while transporting her kids to school.

On May 12, things changed. “I remember driving to pick up kids from school and it was still there.” Tompkins said.

Her daughter Clementine, a fifth-grade student at Leland Public School, remembers what happened next. “After school, my mom and I and one of my friends got stuck in a traffic jam because of a construction crew on the way home. We started to talk about the Stick and apparently my friend had never heard about it. We explained how long it’s been there, how it has held up through harsh weather, and just about it in general. The Stick was an anomaly! Nothing could make it fall.”

“My mom had made a joke about it saying ‘I hope they didn’t take the Stick down’ and as we were going down the road, we didn’t see it.”

Tompkins laughed at the memory. “We were all sorta pissed and we rolled down the window and jokingly shouted to the tree-workers, ‘You put that back!’” She then immediately texted her husband Dan to tell him the news.

Word of the Stick’s removal traveled quickly. Julie Stevens was working in Leland when she heard and reached for her phone to share the news with a friend. Her phone was already blowing up with messages about the Stick. “I just got off work and drove over there. And like a crazy person I got out of my car and started looking for it on the side of the road. The workers were out in hard hats and probably were wondering what I was doing,” she said.

Lisuk was at the Bluebird with friends Jim Redmand and Jeane Creighton when he heard, “I remember saying. ‘No, it can’t be!’

Online, the response was swift. A dashcam picture showed an empty wire with the wistful headline, “If you knew, you knew.” One cheeky individual posted a stick for sale on Facebook Marketplace, but astute observers quickly identified it as an imposter. Others have taken to recreating the iconic drive by scrolling Google Street View where the stick is still depicted.

Sweeney wishes she had gotten more pictures of the stick to submit to Stick Nation, an online presence that National Public Radio has described as a collection of “irreverent, fantastical and downright wholesome descriptions of sticks and the people who rank them.”

While fondness for Leland Stick is shared a little tongue-in-cheek, sometimes the unlikeliest inside jokes become lasting testaments to friendship and belonging. Stevens has history with the Stick. She and her friend Ana Spencer have made it their unofficial symbol.

Spencer remembers Stevens asking, “‘Have you noticed that stick,” and I immediately knew what she was talking about. ‘Oh my god, you mean the one on the power line?’” Stevens created a Leland Stick sticker with an image of the iconic branch with the words “Stick it to’em.”

Spencer, who spends her winters in Chicago where she is an art teacher, would often receive updates on the stick. “If I was having a bad day or needed some connection, (Stevens) would send me pictures of the stick, to reassure me it was still hanging in there. Now, all my students in Chicago know about the Stick.”

The Stick also served as an ephemeral landmark that defined a time and place. Like the Suttons Bay Turkeys or perhaps the Grawn Tire Fire, it became another way of marking the passage of time and defining what it means to be part of a local culture.

“It takes a certain community and place to want to connect. Something about Northern Michigan makes things like this happen. Julie and I have been best friends for 20 years and when she called me saying, ‘It’s gone,’ I kinda wanted to cry a little – a part of me wants to believe it’s still there,” said Spencer.

Spencer and Stevens both independently brought up a moment they treasure, when they passed each other on the road, just under the stick after not seeing each other for a long time.

“I’m gonna miss the Stick, but I’m thinking of getting a friendship tattoo with Stevens. It could look like the Stick. It’s us, it’s who we are. Hang in there, like the Leland Stick,” said Spencer.

“I miss it. The wires look empty,” Lisuk reflects. “It’s a good private memory, and it made me feel like I was part of a club. Still, it will be remembered every time someone cooks a hotdog on a forked stick.”

Clementine Tompkins has this to say: “I still can’t believe it’s gone. Now what are we supposed to look for on the way to school? RIP, Stick!”