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…
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…
Michigan is not just about heavy water and shipwrecks. Much of the state’s aquatic charm comes from its inland lakes that are teeming with fish, wildlife, and forageable morsels close to shore. For a hungry sportsman with a kayak, a day circling the lake to fish and forage is all that is needed to take in the true spirit of the region. This August I took a kayak out to explore Duck Lake in Grand…