This summer I returned to Mackinac Island, MI, working for the state park and focusing on the side on song. I visited here when a child and worked here for a summer when I was 19.
Where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron connect, the Straits of Mackinac feel wide open, and they hold history, from indigenous sacred usage and military conflict and takeovers to the annual policy conferences held here today. Today, this tourist destination showcases seething and converging consumerism, militarism, and nationalism colliding with immigration, racism, and rural poverty. Here I am with my heart open . . . grateful for the constant birdsong, bright yellow snails, trillium, and earth inhabiting this island as well.
C
Claire Bates Music 