MEASURE of a place
- MILWAUKEE
- MUSKEGON
- LUDINGTON
- ST. IGNACE
- TAHQUAMENON
- MUNISING
- MARQUETTE
- PORCUPINE MTNS
Across Lake Michigan, over the bridge, west along Superior.
Straits
Munising
Union Bay Cabin → Straits → Rivermouth → Munising → Porkies
11.SEP
2026 Labor Day, then a working week.
Warm sand. Pine · iron ore · falls
THE VAN
Starlink Digital · wheels · a dish on the roof
Good dog. Every beach, every falls
The lake came first. Milwaukee at midday, the Lake Express out past the breakwater, Blue below deck in the van. Muskegon by late afternoon, then north along the shore to a cabin at Ludington. After that, one rule: work where the van stops. The Peninsula would decide what the evenings were for.
from the notebook, Ludington, 6.IX.
Five miles of bridge laid between two peninsulas. Camp sat five minutes from the water, close enough to keep it in view.
One dog, every shoreline.
The Peninsula doesn't keep office hours. It keeps daylight.
Eight days, cut to two minutes. Lake to lake to lake.
Last morning. Superior at first light, flat as slate. The workday could wait.
Out of Minneapolis at four, in the dark. An hour's sleep at a Wisconsin rest stop to burn off the lead. First in line at the Milwaukee terminal. Two and a half hours across Lake Michigan, the wake unspooling white off the stern, Blue below deck in the van. She took the crossing better than the driver did.
An outdoor range in the Ludington pines, the kind Minnesota never seems to have. Sand berms, paper targets, brass going gold in the afternoon light. The Sig, the .22, then Joey's AK, handed over. More rifle than it looks. A good day, measured in magazines.
Joey's family cabin sits right on Lake Michigan. Sunday asked nothing of anyone. Coffee at the waterline, dune grass, the lake doing all the talking. Blue ran the beach end to end, then back, then end to end again.
A day taken back from the laptop. West along Superior on M-28: Marquette and its ore docks, Bond Falls stepping down in terraces, the long run into the Porcupine Mountains. Union Bay by late afternoon, five hours from home and somehow never visited. Lake of the Clouds in the last good light, the valley holding still below the escarpment.
The Peninsula sends you home with a list. Boats out of Munising. A week in Marquette without a laptop. The Porkies, in spring. Five hours from home, and it waited this long to be asked.