Blueberry Sacrament

Making a blueberry crisp is like a southern Michigan tea ceremony. The act of "eating dessert” can be secondary to following the steps from a grandmother's recipe. Kids hover at the kitchen door in anticipation and ask, "How long before it's ready?" It's one of many rituals -- a sacrament that blesses the summer.


Clear water runs cold through your fingers and over the fat blueberries you hand-picked at DeGrandchamps a few hours ago. You squeeze a quartered lemon and your mouth waters of its own mind. Butter and oats and brown sugar take on a new texture as you knead them in a white ceramic bowl. You've set the timer, but still you peer through the oven window to watch as the blueberries tire of playing hard-to-get and give themselves over to marry with the buttery crumbles. Vanilla ice cream sits on the counter to soften.

It's been nearly a decade since you were last here in these wooded dunes where your family spent the summers. Just this side of South Haven, you turn off the two-lane towards the cabin at Palisades and drive west toward a lake as big as a sea. She asks, "What do you remember?"

The memories rise and come into focus. They're disordered... the memories of a 16-year-old self, a 10-year-old you, from you at 25. Other memories will arrive only tomorrow.

The Blue Star Highway fades in the rearview, and you leave pavement behind as you enter the shaded and hard-packed sand roads that meander through the hills. The air cools and time slows. The 16-year-old feels the giddy hope of adventure and the possibility of summer romance. The 10-year-old will shortly be absolved of any need or duty to wear shoes.

The screen door creaks and you go into the cabin, the woodsy smell of knotty pine and candles and last year’s magazines. You and your brothers and sisters will soon add the smell of sunscreen and sweaty kid and morning bacon and wet beach towel. A jigsaw puzzle is spread on the coffee table, half-finished. In the days to come, the puzzle may coalesce, a piece here and a piece there. But there's no hurry, no obligation.


Somehow, newspapers find their way into the cabin, but they're valued not so much for their news, but for their crossword puzzles, or for their usefulness in starting a beach fire at sundown. The day long, kids roam freely in woods and dunes and on beaches. Just be back in time for dinner.

One of those evenings, you might all pile into the station wagon for a trip into South Haven for a burger at Clementine’s or shrimp tacos at The Idler. On the way back to the cabin, make a stop at the IGA to restock burger buns and hot dogs and Cheerios and gallons of milk. The trade-off for these excursions is that, for a time, you must leave the quiet and the refuge of this place.

An afternoon leads to the water, with beach grass against tanned calves as you take the boardwalk toward the Brandywine. There's sound and color. The quiet lap of Lake Michigan, the distant screech of gulls, and beach umbrellas flapping in the breeze. Coolers full of Old Style and Leinenkugel's give way to the crack and hiss of a cold beer being opened, usually at a chapter break in a paperback novel. 

Kids drift on inflatable rafts. They land their rafts to dig holes to China, peals of childlike laughter while they throw shovelfuls of sand into the air. Small boats hug the shore, their sails emblazoned with a yellow sunfish or orange swordfish. Off toward the horizon, an ore ship steams south toward Gary.

They'll make their way to the old-time soda bar, with its ceiling painted in red and white stripes like an awning. High-school kids work their summer jobs dishing out Rocky Road or Blue Moon ice cream, or burgers and dogs and fries served in plastic baskets lined with wax paper. Bells ding and lights flash as a barefoot and tanned kid stands on his toes at a pinball machine, slapping away at the paddles.

A memory surfaces from an older you: there's a pony keg next to a beach fire, a bottle of wine being passed around, and someone with a guitar strumming the chords to “Hotel California.” 

You're 50 now, and the kid memories mingle with the smoke of the cigars you and your brothers have lit, a ceiling fan stirring the memories with the night air. This cottage will wake slowly tomorrow. The first adult to rise will start the first pot of coffee, and quietly move last night's dishes from the drying rack to the cupboard.

The days follow a theme, and often end with families making an evening pilgrimage down to the beach or to the top of a dune. They walk at leisure, as if strolling to church. At home, sunset is noticed in passing, if at all. Here, sundown is an event on which to reflect and to savor, like a Merlot or a Malbec rolled across the tongue.

Your brother says you can’t really describe the feeling of summer here in these dunes. You say you're willing to give it a try.