Less than 20 miles east of Sleeping Bear Dunes and Lake Michigan’s eastern shore, in rural Leelanau County, one hardly notices the inconspicuous intersection of East Lincoln and County Route 641, distinctive only for its lack of notoriety as a destination spot or reference point for anything else. Passing through, one would unlikely pause to notice the land that lies around and beyond these crossroads; the subtle sublime of antiquity, not the awe-inspiring, terrifying “sublime” of the Hudson River School or the drama of the great American West and Southwest. Rather, one finds here in remote Leelanau County a transcendent beauty, as sublime in the classic sense as anything on earth.

The landscape, rust and gold, pocked by its gentle, rolling dunes and textured by earth-toned grasses and random, marcescent beech saplings — pavement aged gray, an intermittent pole and wire adding dimension, the only evidence of civilization — all united in the evocation of a melancholic longing for another time, another person perhaps.

Year: 2009
Location: Leelanau County, Michigan
Collector’s Edition of 10
Dimensions: 13" x 19.5"