A cautionary tale

As a lifelong fan of The Lorax, I’m thrilled by the story of Singapore, Michigan. Once a richly forested lakeside settlement, Singapore became a raging boomtown following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which fueled a massive demand for fresh lumber to aid in rebuilding. The citizens of Singapore knew a good thing when they saw it and promptly began chopping down every tree in sight – including the straggly pines and junipers growing on the sand dunes separating Singapore from Lake Michigan.

Well, as every student of the Lorax knows, you should NOT cut down the last tree. But they did, and not only did their lumber industry screech to a halt, but soon the prevailing west winds began to pile now un-tethered sand onto the streets of Singapore. Much of the town was moved or recycled over time, except for a large hotel. It seems that a fisherman named James Nichols was the last person living in Singapore, moving up through that hotel floor by floor until finally sand began blowing in to the top level through the chimney.

There’s nothing left of Singapore today except a historical plaque. Today we’re in Saugatuck, just upriver from where Singapore used to be. Saugatuck is flourishing. It’s the self-styled Fire Island of the Midwest, and they are crazy for rainbow flags, rainbow sidewalks, rainbow sparkling wines, rainbow Goldfish…

Despite 20 years in NYC we’ve never been to the original Fire Island (except Ho-Hum Beach, thank you Nathan and Missy!!), so can’t speak to the comparison, but the town is lovely, full of galleries, wine shops, fancy kitchen gadgets and the full complement of bars and restaurants. Plus boats. There are gorgeous boats EVERYWHERE: private docks all along the Kalamazoo River and various marinas surrounding Kalamazoo Lake, where we’re currently tied up. We’ve talked to several boat owners, because boat people are friendly and everyone likes our boat, and they’re all somewhere in the process of getting their boats out of here for the winter (either snowbirding south or pulling out of the water into storage for the season). They mostly live in Chicago, or Detroit, or somewhere else a few hours away – not here.

So what is Saugatuck like during the winter? Do city people still come to spend the weekend, shop for oil paintings and maybe enjoy the river view tucked in by a fireplace? Or do the locals settle into a tighter, deeper rhythm all their own? It’s a question you could ask about countless summer vacation spots and one we don’t intend to answer for you, because we’re headed south in a few weeks. But it has us thinking about the meaning of summer vacation, what we collectively choose to do with our leisure time, and what it means when that time abruptly comes to an end.

Based on travel through NY, PA, OH and MI so far, I would break summer vacation down into eating (fried foods, ice cream, fudge), drinking (craft beer, spiked seltzer), and re-imagining a prior golden age of Americana (vintage cars, soda fountains, horse-drawn carriages). These are all things that I like to do on vacation too, so any hint of judginess you may sense here is only because we’re NOT on vacation and it’s simply not possible to eat hot dogs and fudge for dinner every night, but try telling Felix that.

But now that it’s past Labor Day, there are no more gazebo concerts or Friday night fireworks. T-shirts are selling for 40% off. The ice cream shops are shutting down. (On the plus side: we just stocked the freezer with BOGO gelato from a shop that’s closing for the season tomorrow!)

For the past 2+ months, everyone around us has been on vacation while we’ve been trying to hold together work and school and figuring out how to maintain a boat.

Suddenly now, everyone around us is all business, and we’re still cruising around on a boat.

I will miss the elongated energy of summer here in Michigan, which – I should have mentioned this earlier – is absolutely GORGEOUS, the west side just a lovely as the east though in a different way. I would come back to Traverse City any time, and anchoring off of South Manitou Island gave us seemingly exclusive access to windswept dunes and spirit-lifting sunrises.

But I’m looking forward to getting a sense of the normal routines of the towns we’ll pass through heading south. I hope to spend more time in libraries and coffee shops and science museums. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for, but there are a whole bunch of stops between here and the Gulf of Mexico to hopefully figure that out.