Summer on Lilac Island

Mackinac

Winter months found the island a barren tundra. Snow spitting across empty streets, winds careening in from Canada, tangling

on the knob of land between Michigan’s lower and upper peninsulas. “Closed for the Season” signs dangling from boarded-up

windows of Main Street shops. The Grand Hotel dormant, encrusted with icicles.

Along the perimeter, the eight-mile lakeshore path buried by the latest blizzard. The island’s iconic horses (no automobiles

allowed) wintering on farms downstate, only a handful of mares left to deliver mail and transport workers. Scarcely five hundred

residents in total, sequestering behind curtains, quilts, and coffee mugs. Venturing outside only to shovel driveways, haul

groceries home on snowmobiles, or traipse to the Mustang Lounge, the island’s only year-round bar, for oatmeal stouts and

human contact.

But summer was a different story, had a different narrator altogether.

Unadulterated views of the Great Lakes, thawed and tamed and Caribbean blue.

Sailboats bobbing happily on the harbor to the beat of an old acoustic hit, the kind of tune that finds revival each generation.

Fresh paint gleaming from gingerbread trims of cozy Victorian abodes.

Horses clogging the streets with boisterous traffic jams. Ferry boats depositing up to fifteen thousand visitors each day.

Long queues for freshly made fudge, carriage tours, and bicycle rentals. Tourists mispronouncing the island’s name. Other

tourists loudly correcting them. “The c is silent, didn’t you know? Mackinac Island is pronounced like Mackinaw City across the bay—the French and English versions

of the Native American name Mitchimakinak, meaning ‘Great Turtle,’ for the island’s shape.”

More history (or some loose descendant of it) atop the hill at Fort Holmes, peppered with reenactment actors. The Grand Hotel’s

preppy guests slurping down the sunset from the nation’s longest front porch. Children walloping croquet mallets on the hotel’s

flawless lawns. Seasonal workers passing joints around an illegal beach bonfire, enraging locals once more, twice more. Off

the coast, the Mackinac Bridge connecting Michigan’s lower and upper peninsulas, draping over the horizon like an heirloom

necklace.

The high season was when Mackinac Island came alive. Shimmering and showing off, shrugging off its loner status like an unruly

illusionist, exhausting herself with her own excess. The island reeled people in, hooking them with her old-world charm, only

to release all but the heartiest hearts in November, when Mackinac again retreated into her shell, hunkering down for the

off-season.

Yes, in a place like this, summer and winter were as different as night and day, as oil and water. Or in the case of the Jenkins

family, as far apart as mother and daughter.