Lake Stories

Linda Hundt’s passion for “changing the world, one pie at a time” was sparked in childhood by an Easy-Bake Oven and the homemade goodness of her mother, grandmother and aunts.

On a Sunday afternoon last March, my wife Gail and I followed photographer Ken Scott onto frozen Lake Michigan and discovered that we had the Leelanau ice caves to ourselves.

Built in 1945, the brick-and-stone cottage we bought as newlyweds was the first of two fixer-uppers we owned before our only child was born. Six years later, we moved with our son to a brooding 1920s’ English Tudor with drafty leaded-glass windows. Staying rooted in suburban-Detroit, we happily renovated or repaired vintage kitchens, crumbling plaster, haunted basements and antique toilets.

Preparing the family cottage for a son’s upcoming summer wedding, a father finds a foothold in small-town roots.

Marked by diversity, Michigan’s rich literary heritage is rooted to place.

Sunlight glints off a faraway jet filled with travelers going who-knows-where. They all have agendas. This is mine.

The realization makes tears shoot straight from my eyes like ammonia from a spray bottle. Christmas is in two days, and this is the first time I’ve even thought about a tree.

Beer and spirits may not be the most important things in the world, but they changed my life.

All these years later I still can’t cast a lure into big water without expecting something extraordinary to happen.

One day as smooth and silver as a mirror, churlish and wild the next, the bay is what anchors me firmly to this place.