Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is planning something new this winter for their free ranger-led snowshoe hikes. Whether you are an experienced snowshoer or have never tried snowshoeing, the National Lakeshore invites you to join a ranger-led snowshoe hike to explore the park.

The Glen Arbor Arts Center’s Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program is now accepting applications for its 2020 program. A program prospectus and an on-line application can be found at GlenArborArt.org. The deadline for submissions is February 5, 2020.

The clinking of bottles fills the air as I sit down with Larry Mawby, founder of Mawby Vineyards in Suttons Bay, and Mike Laing, who, with his brother Pete, has taken the reins from Larry and is now running Mawby Vineyards as well as their still wine company Big Little Wines.

Joyce Harrington began working as the late Jim Harrison’s aide-de-camp in 1979 following a handshake in the granary and writing studio behind the author’s house in Lake Leelanau. She was his literary assistant, business manager, and guardian, freeing Harrison to lead a prolific, international writer’s life that would produce hundreds of poems, novels, essays and screenplays. Efforts are underway to keep Harrison’s work alive and to share it with a new generation of readers, poets and writers—across the United States and the world.

Empire resident Mae Stier has released a collection of writing and photography highlighting the region in her self-published book Lake Letters.

After a year of high water, seiches, and the Leland river seeping into the old wooden shanties in Fishtown, the historic village is beginning to get the makeover it needs. Before Christmas the Cheese Shanty and Morris Shanty will be lifted off their foundations and temporarily moved to the parking lot to make way for sheet metal pilings and poured foundations.

Northwest Michigan residents know when “that feel is in the air,” a sense that an epic and timeless battle between the north and south winds will soon be taking place here on the Lake Michigan coast—when “the witch of November come stealin’,” as singer Gordon Lightfoot relates in his ballad “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”.

During this season of giving, we reached out to Rick Reece—a Maple City native and member of Coach Don Miller’s 1977 Glen Lake state basketball championship team—who nearly 20 years ago founded Village Focus International, which empowers communities in Laos. Reece lives in Laos with his Lao wife Nalin (whom he married in 2001 at a ceremony at Old Settlers Park in Burdickville). They have two children, Alan and Annabella.

The Moraine Shop & Studio is Suttons Bay’s new spot for holiday shopping, and its mission is to not only curate local art, but to also support the process of local artists and makers as well.

Elves tall and small are invited to take part in the second annual Christmas Miracle Mile/Ugly Sweater Dash on Saturday, Dec. 21, at Cherry Republic in Glen Arbor.