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Meeting an old friend for the first time

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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. 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.

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Kathleen Stocking’s “Long Arc of the Universe”

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Writer Kathleen Stocking wants to change the world. The acclaimed author of Letters from the Leelanau and Lake Country has just published her third book of essays, The Long Arc of the Universe: Travels Beyond the Pale. In it, she takes readers along on her incredible journeys from her home in seemingly peaceful, picturesque northern Michigan to some of the world’s most unstable and terrifying places. Like a modern-day Scheherazade, she brings her skill with words, language and storytelling to protect herself, as well as teach an incredible range of students: from hardened criminals in maximum security prison to the offspring of Central American despots; from poor African-American children traumatized by gang warfare in their urban neighborhood to Third World children in Thailand and Romania.

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Letter from San Francisco

The first time I visited the California coast was in 1920. I know, you’re thinking, Wow, I never knew Kathleen was that old. So, let me explain. My father gave me a book for my 10th birthday called, Keeper of the Bees, by Gene Stratton-Porter. The story is set on the California coast of the 1920s where a First World War soldier is in a veterans’ hospital. Told he’s going to be moved to a rehabilitation center, one rumored to be infested with tuberculosis, he leaves the hospital, thinking that if he’s going to die he wants to be surrounded by flowers and the sound of the ocean.

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Letter from Amsterdam

I’m sad to be leaving Amsterdam. Not just because I love my niece and her family and they live here, but because Amsterdam is one of the best places in the world. People are happy here. You only need to walk down the street to feel it. On an overcast winter day with intermittent rain, the buskers in the center of town are playing great music while all around them people are laughing and talking and strolling with their families. You’d think the sun was out.

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Letter from Romania, by a Leelanau native

I was busy teaching in the Peace Corps all year, but school just ended. I’m writing to you on the Fourth of July. It’s weird to be in a place that’s a holiday only for me. I’m thinking of the Fourth of July on the Leelanau Peninsula, the families with their picnics, the bonfires on the beaches, fireworks in the night sky over Lake Michigan, dancing in the park up in Northport. I’m thinking of all the carpenters I know who loaded up their trucks and drove to New Orleans after Katrina.

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