On a bay of Lake Michigan, there’s a city where it snows in May, one week before the streets bloom pink with cherry blossoms. The masts of a hundred sailboats line its marinas; its every other building is a brewpub. This sounds like somewhere “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average,” but it’s a real place, and one to which I’ve struggled to say goodbye.
Had I not attended a reading the day I arrived, I’d not have met my mentor; had I not gone to services the next day, I’d not have met my friends. But I was in the right places at the right times, and the people of this city welcomed me. The tech giant, his huntress fiancée, the author and the journalist, the sailor with his dogs, the yogi who facilitates a space,the masseuse reading Infinite Jest, the scholar, the counselor, the conservationist—everyone who made my summer.
I loved this town. Its trails over dunes and through forests. Its inland oceans, their frigid waters. Its restaurants: Frenchie’s, which made a pastrami sandwich to rival Katz’s; Stella, with burrata that was a pleasure almost sexual; The Boathouse, whose pairing menus were perfect. Its orchards—rows of cherry and apple trees growing to the tips of the Old Mission and Leelanau Peninsulas. But what I loved most of all about this place was the sense of belonging. I’ve lived out of a backpack for more than a year now, but here was somewhere I felt welcome, somewhere I could have stayed.
I am, I hope, done roaming. And though I did not stay in Traverse City, a part of me will always miss it—the sunrises and sunsets over its shores, its cherry blossoms blowing in the wind.
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