Excerpts

Onekama

With that first successful vacation in the books, a storied tradition of Onekama adventures began for Sheldon and me. I wanted Sheldon to be a part of my experience in a place that means so much to me. My love of the Onekama region runs deep, all the way back to my childhood. I vacationed there for the first time when I was just three months old, and while I have no actual memories of that first experience, my innermost self absorbed the sensations around me like a sponge. My parents dipped my toes in the waters of Portage Lake and Lake Michigan. My tiny nose took in the mingled scents of pungent pine, musky earth, and deep, spring-fed water. I heard the sound a crystalline stream makes as it washes across stones within the banks of a spearmint-laced, sandy-bottomed bed in search of Portage Lake, its ultimate destination. Eventually, my little hands and feet knew the feel of the soft, wet sand that I played in for hours along the lake’s reedy shores. I may have been a baby when I first experienced this haven, but isn’t that when we are the most vulnerable and impressionable? My heart and soul became intrinsically bonded to that place at a time when I couldn’t even pronounce the word Onekama. The Augusts of my most impressionable years—childhood, adolescence, those tumultuous teenage years—were spent in Onekama, and there I experienced all the changes of life those tender years provided. Those memories and sensations are ingrained into every fiber of my being; my annual trek to Onekama is not just a vacation but a deep-seated need. Naturally, it was important to have Sheldon join me there, to continue sharing good times, times that would become more beautiful memories set in a place that, so many years before, claimed my heart and soul—just as Sheldon had in more recent times.