Words and photos by Matt Dursum WARNING! DO NOT TREAT THIS AS A MUSHROOM HUNTING GUIDE. PLEASE DO NOT EAT WILD MUSHROOMS UNLESS YOU ARE 100% SURE YOU IDENTIFIED THEM PROPERLY This October, my friends inundated my social media inbox with photos from their fall hiking trips in Michigan. They included every mushroom they found, knowing that I would be obsessively trying to identify them. The same weekend, I saw my favorite vlogger Alexis Nikole…
This year, I had the honor of helping my friend Barry O’Brien in his vineyard in Grand Traverse County’s Old Mission Peninsula. We worked our way through the growing season of 2021, bearing unpredictable elements, wildlife, and the demanding needs of the grapes themselves. As a beginning vine worker, I documented the changes, hardships, and peculiarities of the grapes and the land they grow on while learning about the hard work that goes into farming…
As the weather in Northern Michigan turns gloomy, what could be better than learning how to make beer on a farm? This year, my housemates, who are experts in homebrewing, showed me how to concoct two styles of brew. With some experimental extra ingredients and a lot of love, we succeeded in our mission and had a ton of fun while doing it. My Lesson in Sanitization Beer is more like making tea, or so…
The Anishinaabek people spoke of a legend in which three bears, one mother and two cubs, swam across the big lake to flee a calamity in Wisconsin. The mother bear reached the land first, only to witness her two cubs drown right before her eyes. The mother slept on the shoreline, waiting for her cubs to return. In their place, the great spirit amassed sand, forming two islands and a large sand dune covering the…
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…