I think it’s a safe assumption that most northern Michiganders are experienced hosts.
Alongside hotels and rental houses, we make up guest beds with clean sheets and welcome a revolving parade to the paradise that is northern Michigan in the summer. The guests visit because they love us, sure, but also to swim in the lake, fish off the dock, and sit by an outdoor fire in the late twilight of an up-north evening.
We hosts are all a bit exhausted by September, but I feel grateful to live in a place where people want to spend time in the summer.
February is a tougher sell.
Still, it’s one I’ve been pitching to my family for years, and I’m happy to say they finally took the bait. This past week, we had the pleasure of hosting my mom and sister from New Jersey. My sister, niece, and nephews from Grand Rapids came up for a couple days, too.
All we had to do was deliver on the promise of an up north winter.
I prepared a shared document full of ideas for our guests to choose from. There were hikes along Lake Michigan and through snow-covered hemlock groves. There was snowshoeing, skiing, sauna, tubing, skating, curling, sledding and pickleball. I offered the Dennos Museum Center, cocktails at Aerie, meals at Farm Club and Hop Lot, and the casino.
What they all chose was perfect.
The outdoor activity they selected was walking on our frozen inland lake. The ice fishing shanties have been present for weeks, along with below-freezing temperatures. And we intended to give everyone a safety talk first, as an extra precaution.
Instead my sister marched straight out, fearlessly heading toward a far shore rendered invisible in a snow storm. Like Moana, she was drawn by the thin line of light where the ice meets the sky. When we caught up to her, and finished a now rather moot “what to do if you fall through the ice” discussion, we gals took pictures, marveling at the white expanse.
My nephews were more concerned with sliding on the ice, breaking the ice, throwing the ice, lying down on the ice, and writing their names in the snow on the ice. My husband earned shrieks of delight when he kicked an angular jut near the shore and broke off a clean-edged slab larger than my nephews’ heads.
“We can make lemonade!” my younger nephew said, which somehow made perfect sense, so we did. He didn’t seem to mind that we used the ice from our freezer.
Indoors, we embraced coziness. Board games, trivia, and hot chocolate abounded. We enjoyed four fires in the span of three days, at our house, Bonobo winery, the library on Old Mission Peninsula, and the custom Swedish fireplace at the Delamar. At night, we listened for our neighborhood barred owl, and my sister took pictures of the woods lit by snow-reflected moonlight.
Perhaps the biggest hit of the visit was the Music House Museum. In fairness, someone we all know was giving the tour, but everyone from my youngest nephew to my mom was enthralled. I have been on this tour five times in the past year, and every time, it is magical.
Our guest room is reset now. Another snowstorm has already filled in the footprints of my family. The ice will break up, and in a few months, we will swim in the lake whose surface we walked on.
The winter wonder we shared will last.