Why the hell I moved to Michigan

By Andrew Bogaard  On  September 1st, 2008

If you had seen me driving home to California last week, swerving slightly on the Iowa highway through teary-eyed convulsions, you would have told me to get off the road and pull it together. I left Michigan. And sunny California at the end of my journey seemed a bleak prospect in comparison.

Two years after moving from Los Angeles I quickly declared Michigan residency so my drivers license wouldn’t attract so much attention at the bar.

“Why the hell did you move here?” is something I heard up until the week I left. At first, my answers were meek: good school, new crowd, et cetera. It took a couple years and a few Michigan natives to help me dig into this state in a way that a four-year degree will allow if you’re up for exploration.

Now, hindsight setting in, I can answer the question. Michigan is a secret. And in California, its reputation is unfair. Please don’t take offense at my early understanding of Michigan, after all, you probably think “SoCal” is just full of surgically modified compulsive shoppers. Or maybe you don’t, as Midwesterners are just so nice.

Either way, coming to Michigan I expected conservatism, boring topography, ice and frostbite and drinking and depression and subdivisions and no jobs and Detroit and Flint and “Roger & Me.” But I also looked forward to a social change, to four seasons and to a well regarded university.

The attractions that brought me to the mitten state delivered. And in a strange turn of things for a California native, I now would be happy to move to Michigan permanently. Julie, my boss at the University, lives a few miles out of Ann Arbor, off a dirt road on countless acres of land where she can hunt deer, cultivate a huge vegetable garden and let her kids, Claire and Clarke, get their feet dirty. The same goes for Mclean’s place in Rochester, Sarah’s in Pentwater and the whole of the Upper Peninsula. My folks’ home in California is nice—for a fenced-in and deliberately-landscaped half acre. That’s large by Los Angeles County standards and the price tag shows it.

The Michigan outdoors is beautiful, albeit lacking in mountainous mise en scène. Though I was disappointed by the downhill skiing (usually a landfill), my friends swear by the cross-country skiing on the trails that I enjoyed hiking in the summer. All without leaving Washtenaw County, I went mountain biking on frozen trails in Bird Hills Park in the winter, road biking down Huron River Drive in the summer and swimming in the Huron as soon as the ice had melted.

I’ll also miss driving Britten and Brian’s canoe to the lakes near Pinckney State Park (lakes to remain unnamed for selfish possessiveness). On several occasions I went north to backpack with bright stars and soft dunes near Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, and once made it sailing in the Detroit River.

Amid nature, there are the good people. Ann Arbor has room for interested newcomers to take part in the community, and become regulars. I feel like I belonged there. I was lucky enough to witness the start of the East Quad Bike Coop, where the University and Ann Arbor community can participate in bike education, recycling and maintenance (all free).

I was around for numerous Ann Arbor Brewing Company seasonals, and daily chance encounters with friends on the street. I was around long enough to hit two squirrels on my bike (they lived) and take back two stolen bikes.

But Ann Arbor is a quickly changing place, and while those squirrels may still be there, the people increasingly are not.

Many of my college friends are moving to Detroit, a city where people of our (modest) means can live our own American dream of sorts: independent living in beautiful houses with space enough for large gardens and workbenches and brewing biodiesel and beer. And while the soil is often contaminated with residual chemicals of Detroit’s heyday, I know Avalon Bakery, the Detroit Institute of Art, and Detroit’s active community makes up for it. If I had more time, I would explore Detroit, revisit Heidelberg Street and sneak more clay into the kilns at the College of Creative Studies.

When I park in Los Angeles this time around I doubt anyone will question my most recent move. But I’m asking myself, “Why the hell did you leave Michigan for California?”

Printed from www.michigandaily.com on Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:05:38 -0500