The real reason we summer at Torch Lake
Northern Michigan huh? That’s a long drive!
I get this all the time from friends and neighbors around our home-base in Maryland. Why do I pack up and move my family to Northern Michigan every summer? Most assume it's for the cooler climate, and that lake life is preferable to city living during the hot summer months in DC.
Both are true - summer on the lake has load of benefits (and some costs), but the REAL reason we summer at Torch Lake runs much deeper than the cool blue waters, fiery sunsets and endless ice cream cones.
My children are the fifth generation in our family to spend summers at Torch Lake.
My great grandparents came to Torch Lake nearly 100 years ago to set up their summer cottages. Back in 2007, my husband proposed under the stars on the dock of the log cabin that my great grandfather built with his brother, just steps away from where he proposed to my grandmother. We married a year later, in a lakeside ceremony at my parents house. My aunt and all of my cousins were married here too. My son, Alden, is named after the town where our family settled. And now, our babies swim in the same blue water, and run barefoot on the same rocky beaches that I did, and that my dad's, and my grandmother's generation did when they were little.
Our family roots are deep, and strong.
I may have grown up in Chicago, but Torch Lake is home. Not just for us, but also for so many families with a similar lineage. Watching our kids play, swim and sail together on the same shores as our grandparents is something magical that you can't go out and find just anywhere.
This photo was taken at my Grandma Lynn's birthday party 3 summers ago, just as I was getting Glimmer Images off the ground. It’s a perfectly imperfect capture, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Just look at Grandma Lynn - full of joy and laughter, celebrating another trip around the sun and another summer at Torch Lake, surrounded by her great grand babies - or GGBs as she liked to call them - and all the love, laughter and tradition of our family's Torch Lake homestead. And even though her time on earth has come to an end,
I feel her presence when we laugh in the blue waves, and her warmth in every afterglow.
I'm so incredibly grateful to my ancestors for bringing us here. My heart is full knowing that my babies (and their babies’ babies) are a part of this extraordinary family legacy.