This farm was one of the silver linings I found while sorting through old images. A photograph and memory, past, forgotten, rediscovered; with time and broader perspectives a few transform and endure.

After all these years, I still haven’t attempted to identify the farm’s true owners — an arrogation, I confess, to my errant notion of “title/ownership by discovery.”

Early winter arrived in the Great Lakes a couple of weeks ago and as Robert Frost mused in his poem, “Reluctance,” it is difficult “… to yield with a grace to reason and bow and accept the end of a love or season.”

Such was my own sentiment with this image, my forever favorite rural farm a few miles east of the small town of Leland, lying along the shores of northern Lake Michigan.

It was not until the year 2000, thirty years after my affair with Leelanau County began, that I discovered this farm as I finally explored more fully the dirt and gravel roads (some, trails only) that crisscross this tiny peninsula — a narrow protuberance of land with its labyrinth of back roads separating the large lake (Michigan) from Grand Traverse Bay by never more than a few miles. Here I found a trove of farms sharing the space along an ancient glacial moraine that “birthed” the sand dunes over 10,000 years ago and now have tethered its occupants to the land for almost two centuries. The farm, cosseted by trees and undulating terrain, creates a natural aesthetic though I have wondered if the owners and their forebears recognize the role of their own hand in its creation.

Every season I’ve found myself returning, frequently before sunrise, at sunset and throughout the day to experience the changing nature of the farm. This scene reminds me of autumn, the psithuristic whisper of wind through dried corn and the inerrable fragrance of October afternoons.

Year: 2015
Location: Leland, Michigan
Collector’s Edition of 10
Dimensions: 16" × 24"