Petoskey State Park

My family had one tradition we stuck to every year until I went to college: my dad forcing my mom, my sister and me to participate in the Mackinac Bridge Walk on Labor Day, or when tens of thousands of Michiganders wake up before sunrise to march five miles across the bridge to Mackinac Island. The current governor of Michigan always leads the pack, and the finisher’s reward usually consists of free hot chocolate and donuts. 

 

Nobody besides my dad, our family’s sole early riser, enjoys this tradition. In theory, it sounds like a wholesome community-building activity, but waking up to my dad smacking on our tent, whisper-yelling “wake up, governor Granholm will be there!” was far from pleasant. But the Mackinac Bridge Walk weekend wasn’t all bad. It also meant we spent the weekend camping at Petoskey State Park, a public recreation area on the coast of Little Traverse Bay. I constantly referred to it as my northern Michigan neighborhood, since the 180 campsites connected by paved roads felt like a dreamy subdivision.

 

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Although I didn’t know it back then, the land’s small-town layout pays homage to its history, since prior to the 1970s, it hosted “the Kegomic village,” a neighborhood of factory buildings owned by the W.W. Rice Company. For over 50 years, the village produced shoe leather products. 

 

In its peak, the factory expanded to over 135 men and an ever-growing number of village buildings. Outsiders started to become concerned with the Rice company’s large industrial presence on Petoskey, and for good reason. In 1951, once the Kegomic village finally shut its doors and the land was sold to the city of Petoskey, severe environmental violations were found. The factory was secretly dumping waste products in the water for years, and the newly-purchased beach was toxic and unusable for city residents. 

 

It took years for the bay to heal itself from the Rice company’s exploitation. But with patience, time and environmental restoration efforts, it’s been rehabilitated into a proud area of Petoskey. One where Michigan families can come for summer vacations and Labor Day bridge walks, and where cherished traditions can form . 

 

This was the first time I learned the background of the land I’ve been going to for my entire life. And although it’s not as pristine as the others, it reminds me of the many stories these places can grow through — just like us. And in this version, it’s the location where my dad and I began forming our long-lasting friendship. 

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When we arrived at our campsite for the weekend, the first order of business was to find a flat area to set up our four-person tent. Here, I’d hear my dad’s first rule of camping: if you can’t find a perfectly flat area, always pitch your tent uphill rather than downhill. Therefore, if it rains, the water won’t saturate the bottom and soak into your sleeping bag. 

 

Next, we’d scavenge the woods around us for bonfire materials. My dad’s second rule of camping: make three to four piles of sticks with different widths. This includes twigs (also known as kindling), sticks slightly larger than twigs, and sticks that are half the size of our $4 firewood bundle. Once we gathered our ingredients, we kneeled around the steel fire ring to start the building process. 

 

“You always want to start with a good base,” my dad lectured. “Crumple up some newspaper and set it in the middle.” 

 

We’d peel apart the pages from that day’s Detroit Free Press and scrunch them into balls. After setting them in the center, he’d continue on with the lesson.

 

“Now, we’re going to make a teepee structure starting with the kindling.”

 

He’d grab a few twigs at a time and carefully place them at an angle around the newspaper crumbles. Once we ran out of kindling, we’d move on to the second stick pile. Slowly but surely, we’d construct our tall, triangular campfire. We left a few small pockets in between the core and crust for oxygen flow. These would soon become our marshmallow ovens. 

 

As my sister got older, she stopped partaking in my dad’s lessons on campsite etiquette — which he annually repeated, despite us being able to echo his wisdom word for word. But even when I thought I knew everything at seventeen, I listened to his teepee tutorial and clapped when his fire successfully went ablaze. I could tell how happy it made him to teach us something, and the gift of four daughters sometimes put him at a loss for bonding activities. So every year, we’d master the assignments together. And the repetition paid off — after building many thriving bonfires throughout the past year, my roommates now label me “Fire Master.” 

 

Once it was dinner time, we’d pile into my dad’s Honda Pilot and pick up two Hot-N-Ready pizzas from Little Caesars. I was a devout vegan for six years of my teenage life, but the comforting routine of our annual camping trips gave me the urge to cheat with cheese. Sometimes I did, and my family — who reminded me they had no one to tell — promised not to tell anybody. We’d eat in our assigned foldable chairs and stay perched around the fire until it was nothing more than hot ashes, blinking with burnt tangerine embers every now and then. 

 

Sunday morning, when the Mackinac Bridge Walk was finally behind us, my sister and I would wake up hours after my parents. We’d crawl out of the tent’s opening, squat into our sandals and join my mom and dad in our chair circle. They’d be reading the newspaper and sipping on coffee my mom brewed from her portable coffee maker. If the year was between 2007 to 2012, I’d take a joyride around the campsite on my Razor scooter before we packed up to leave, admiring the unspoken goodwill all the campers had for each other. I loved my temporary neighborhood that coexisted every Labor Day on the lake. 

 

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The camping lessons with my dad sparked my initial childlike wonder in the outdoors. They were the building blocks for our special father-daughter relationship, bonded together through exploring the woods of Petoskey and talking over how to pitch a tent. As I grew older, so did my marvel for my dad’s connection with nature. He claimed the spot as my number one role model, and I longed to carry on his love for the outdoors.

 

The two of us eventually graduated from northern Michigan camping trips to international backpacking excursions, hiking to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Mt. Elbrus in Russia. But no matter how far across the globe we go, my passion for experiencing the outdoors is grounded in the moments with my dad at Petoskey. 

 

The most beautiful part of an annually-visited location is the understanding that it has seen many versions of you, and preserves a shadow of each one in its soil. It remembers the 8-year-old that rode around smiling on her scooter. It remembers the 13-year-old who spent hours listening to her dad’s stories about his through-hikes and mountain climbs. It remembers the 17-year-old that was desperately trying to set aside her sadness so she could be present with her family, even though she wasn’t successful. 

 

That’s the commonality between my parents and Petoskey. They both offer the comforting realization that they’ve seen every version of me, even the ones I try to forget, and are always there to remind me of who I am and where I’ve been when I get lost. No matter how flawed and weighed down I may feel. They’ll keep letting me come back and recover in the same love I’ve been given since I was kid.