For three days in September, during a blustery summer-fall seasonal transition, I drove south to the town of Manistee to spend precious time with my father. I brought my boards to capitalize on the forecasted North swell and perfect wind, hoping to score some surf in West Michigan’s less wave-ridden coast.
Manistee is a small, blue-collar fishing town; one of the many rural American towns with a decreasing population and a pride for holding on to traditions. It’s a community with low pretension and a laid back lifestyle. This is also the town I spent seven years of my childhood in. This recent trip was an important one for me. The last day of summer was approaching and I wanted to spend it with my eighty five year old dad, talking about family, life, and as always food. In the evening, after our early dinner and conversations, I checked the cams. It looked good and the swell was supposed to be rising. I stepped away from him for a few hours and drove to the lakeshore.
I pulled into 1st street beach. The parking lot was empty and there were no surfers in the lineup. I was feeling like coasting, “pretty surfing” as my friend Lenny would say. So, I took out my rocket fish. The green 4” thick, 20” wide, 6’4” long Clyde Baity original — the Santa Barbara classic that I brought to Michigan — smoothly cut through the small yet clean freshwater canvas. Waist-high, consistent waves broke in between swimming buoys next to the jetty. I was alone for the entire session. I looked back towards the beach. The familiar sand-dunes, the rocket-shaped childrens slide, the bbq pits on the sand; I remembered coming here as a child with my grandmother and everything seemed to exist just where I left it all those years ago. Between each wave, each turn, I’d look back at the beach. There in the sand I could imagine a five year old me, running into her arms after jumping into the breakers. I started to miss her. Knowing that after my last wave I’d be coming home to my father delighted me.
The next day the forecast was epic. The wind on Lake Michigan was blowing over 20 knots from the North throughout the night. I packed my boards, including my 5’10” Proctor, and ran out the door. The night before I surveyed the map and found a place that looked like a freshwater Skeleton Bay setup, complete with endless moving sand and deep offshore channels. Sometimes, ocean surfers unfairly project their expectations and the Great Lakes often cannot deliver. An hour drive and a bucket’s worth of pent-up adrenaline later, I pulled up to a blown out mess. The wind, projected to be from the North, was in fact blowing hard on-shore. Skeleton Bay was more like a blown out Cadiz.
I had one more spot in mind before I drove back home. This secret spot was tucked in enough to protect it from the relentless winds, or so I had hoped. As I drove up I noticed there were no cars and nobody in the water, yet the waves were decent and clean. I suited up and paddled out. If the wind was a little more offshore it would be perfect, I thought to myself. The shoreline at this spot is quintessential Michigan: dunes, weathered maritime structures, woodlands, and an azure horizon stretching infinitely to Wisconsin. The blue fractals along the water surface morphed with each passing wave. Sand blasted the pine forests along the shoreline. A lone tanker trudged south several miles off-shore, violently rocking and banking with the North swell. Alone, I was enthralled in the rough conditions and surfed until the sun went down. A couple of people came to scope out the historical buildings nearby and screamed when I came out of the water at night. Seeing a person emerge from the dark in this less-visited stretch of coast must have been eerie.
Heading back to Manistee I passed by derelict ferries that once shuttled passengers from Manistee harbor to Wisconsin. Today, only fishing boats and the occasional industrial tanker enter the channels. The days of packed passenger ferries are long gone. Manistee was built on hauling people across the lake, commercial fishing, lumbering, and shipbuilding. Now most of those industries have vanished and the skeletal remains of its glory days are left as tributary museums and downtown residential palaces. This is very much “old Michigan,” as my dad would describe it. Spending time with him here has given me the opportunity to explore and surf this often overlooked region. Of course, seeing family and being immersed in the town’s seafaring charm are the highlights. Surfing empty lineups however, is an obvious bonus.