The Huron River

It’s July in Michigan: A roasting 
sun hangs high over the Huron 
River while lazy, college students 
stretch out on the rowing docks. 
They sip on Oberons and blow up 
inner tubes. The river is murky, but 
it still glistens in the sunlight and 
is a temperature that is just perfect 
enough for a swim. Ann Arbor 
wouldn’t be Ann Arbor without 
this place.
Located two miles from the 
Diag are the well-known docks 

of the Huron River. Home to the 
University’s and many Ann Arbor 
high-school rowing teams, the 
docks are a vital place for these 
students. Surrounding this spot on 
the river are parks like Bandemer 
Park, Longshore Park and Beckey 
Park. Here, people can access 
hiking trails, kayak rentals, bike 
paths, disc golf and serene woods.
But what makes the Huron 
River special is not just the array 
of activities that it produces, but 
rather the magic of the river itself. 
Flowing over 40 miles, dressed 
with trees and roads along its 
edges, the river invites those who 
are tied to the city to escape. This 
lure is what led me to rely on the 
river in order to get some peace of 
mind.
I started going to the docks as 
a break from my summer job, for 
it served as a place to tan, swim 
and catch up with friends. But as 
summer turned into fall and long, 
breezy days turned into brisk nights 
with tough deadlines, the magic of 
the river and summer faded.
One night in the fall, a close friend 
of mine from the summertime 
needed a private place to vent. We 
both lived with many housemates, 
so we decided to take my car to the 
river to retreat from the hustle and 
bustle of a college 
town. We sat on 
the docks, with 
hats and scarves 
on, and we poured 
our 
frustrations 
into the moonlit 
river. It was here 
where I realized 
how 
easy 
this 
place was, how 
non-judgemental 
it is. Its natural 
emptiness 
and 
simplicity 
allowed for me 
and my friend to 
release all that we 
had bottled up.
The 
river, 
although 
not 
immensely 
clean, 
holds 
an 
emotional 
enchantment that 
I’ve been lucky 
enough 
to 
feel 
and understand. 
It’s a place where 
romantic 
nights 
watching 
the 
stars 
happen 
and where tiresome runs occur. 
Capable of seeing the city lights 
and skyline from the docks, the 
Huron provides a vantage point 
that makes one feel pure isolation: a 
tranquil getaway just close enough 
to home and far enough away to 
gain some perspective.
I’ve 
begun 
to 
bring 
more 
friends to the river when they 
are emotionally distraught. As 
someone who studies and feels 
serenity through nature, I hope 
to show others the power that is 
held in the Huron River and its 
encompassing woods. I hope to 
show them that by merely taking a 
step back from the crowded city — 
by literally seeing it from afar —it 
can put their mind into a better 
state of understanding: hopefully, 
one of peace and relaxation.

Whenever I need to meditate 
on an idea or seek solitude to listen 
to an album, I drive down to the 
river. I watch the push and pull of 
the waves along the shoreline and 
listen to the silence that looms over 
the park. No matter if I run, walk, 
swim, drive or sit down there, I feel 
a natural sense of freedom that the 
city just doesn’t serve.
Although there are a number of 
special, nature-based places that 
Ann Arbor provides (like the Arb 
or the Botanical Gardens), it’s the 
Huron that calls me from the city, 
drawing me into its groundedness 

and vastness, it’s easiness and 
comfort. The Huron serves as a 
nucleus of community, collecting 
Michigan’s 
natural, 
minuscule 
wonders and the people who make 
up this town. Without that river, 
my mind would be suffocated, my 
emotions would be drowning and 
the decisions I’ve made would still 
be unclear.
But the moment I sit on those 
docks under the stars, sipping on an 
Oberon and laughing with a good 
friend, I know that somewhere in 
this constricting city I’ve found a 
place to call home.

— Erika Shevchek, Daily Arts 
Writer

Luther Co-op

When I think of my home, I 
think of the floorboards. I think of 
the weight of all the shoes they have 
creaked beneath. I think of every 
place those shoes have journeyed 
to, and how lucky they are to have 
ended up here.
When I think of my home, I 
think of the stains. My home has so 
many stains. I think of the stories 
that caused them. I wonder who 
spilled what, and what they were 
doing when it happened. I wonder 
if anyone was there 
to see the incident. 
I bet someone was. 
My house is always 
full of people. People 
laughing, loving and 
spilling. A perfect 
mess.
When I think of 
my home, I think of 
my bedroom. How 
the ceiling concaves 
into itself because I 
live right below the 
roof. I think of the 
single window, and 
how the light that 
comes from it dances 
with the sun as it sets 
in the evening. My 
own private ballet. 
Feeding the flowers 
my roommate and I 
have gathered over 
time.
When I think of 
my home, I think of 
the porch. I think of 
how silent it is in the 
morning, before the 
wear and tear of the 
day makes it loud. 
I think of how well it pairs with 
coffee; it’s the perfect substitute 
for sugar. I think of all the secrets 
the porch has heard and how well 
those secrets are kept. I wonder 
if it knows any of mine. I think 
of the late August evenings the 
porch has been witness to. Filled 
with strumming guitar strings, 
summer’s favorite lullaby. I wonder 
if the porch has a bedtime. I don’t 
think it does.
I’d like to fall asleep in the 
floorboards of my home. Have the 
aged wood keep me safe. I’d like 
to tattoo the stains onto my skin. 
So if anything’s ever too clean, all 
I have to do is look at my arms to 
be reminded of beautiful messes. 
I’d like to pack my bedroom in a 
suitcase. So I can impress all my 
long distance friends with the 

dancing light. I’d like the porch 
to forgive me when I write one 
of its many secrets on this page: 
The people who live here, leave 
changed.

— Alix Curnow, Daily Arts Writer

A place to run

I am struggling to locate my 
favorite place in Ann Arbor. 
Perhaps this is because the whole 
city is my favorite place, it’s ins and 
outs, late night pizza places and 
sticky booths in diners and ancient 

movie theatres and snowy streets. 
Perhaps this is because it is easier 
to associate physical places with 
times of more specific heartbreak, 
instead of the thousands of times I 
am lucky to have felt content here. I 
sometimes think my favorite place 
in Ann Arbor is the dining hall in 
East Quad where I met my best 
friend, the lecture hall where I met 
my boyfriend, the yoga studio I go 
to leave my doubts, surreptitious 
study spots I won’t mention for 
fear they will become less secret, 
newsrooms on Maynard, wooden 
benches in the drama building 
— drowned in pools of sunlight 
coming in from the floor to ceiling 
windows, restaurants on Detroit 
Street. But these places are favorites 
not because of the spaces they 
occupy specifically, but because of 
the people, memories and moments 
I attribute to them.
To think of my true favorite 
place in Ann Arbor, I head toward 
a semblance of something solitary. 
I love to be overwhelmed with 
socialization, with human contact, 
with friends old and new, this 
bubbly and bright outgoing city 
never runs low on energy, but this 
is an Ann Arbor that is in reach, it 
is an Ann Arbor that is easy, it is 
the Ann Arbor I know and love. 
But the reason I fell in love with 
our city was not for the clatter and 
the whirlwind, but for the places 
in which I can find fragmented 
moments of silence. A place to 
rest my mind, a place where I can 
be utterly alone in my thoughts. I 
think of places that are soundless, 
confidential and exclusive. I think 
of places I can revel in the beauty 
and the sentimentality of this town, 
without distractions, without the 
hustle and bustle of a busy college 
campus. These places are rare and 
in short supply around us, with a 
campus crawling with students, 
education 
professionals 
and 
townies. I believe I’ve managed to 
discover the best of all.
People always ask me how I 
managed to train for a marathon in 
Ann Arbor — a city that most people 
imagine can’t be interesting or 
thrilling for 10 mile runs, let alone 
18 or 20 mile runs. But for me, every 
run in Ann Arbor is as present and 
new as morning. My favorite place 
in Ann Arbor is a place where I can 
run.
On mile 16 of a twenty-mile 
workout, I find myself in Nichols 
Arboretum, a place that takes me 
out of this pulsing, bright college 
city and onto a trail. Lush greens 
grow around me, spilling onto the 
edges of the earth and twisting 
up the trunks of trees. My tired 
feet pad along a dirt path one 
after another, a constant. This 
is my favorite noise. Normally, 
as I venture down the Arb’s first 
downward hill, I pause my music, 
giving my ears the gift of nothing 
but my sneakered feet against 
dirt and soil. This is my favorite 
sound of all. Everything about the 
headspace this running sanctuary 
creates for me can completely 
alter my mood, turn a bad day 
into a spectacular one, push me 
toward moments of serendipity in 
the mundane and provide the well 
needed break I so often crave in a 
city that never seems to stop. Ann 

Arbor is a runner’s city and I know 
all runners will agree. Despite the 
fact that many of us don’t leave 
campus much, I have a lot of pride in 
knowing I’ve traversed every inch 
of our Midwestern college town on 
foot. During my marathon training 
I found home in Gallup park’s 
shaded concrete sidewalks, and I 
picked up the pace to the sounds of 
rushing water to my left. I ran into 
people I didn’t know, running the 
opposite direction, and we’d always 
smile and wave — the runner’s nod, 
in solidarity with one another, we 
both get it. I found myself getting 
lost in suburban pockets on the 
edge of town, admiring homes 
and 
appreciating 
unexpected 
downward slopes. As the sun came 
up, I ran around the Big House 
once, twice, three times, watching 
as the sun reflected golden against 
bright maize columns as autumn 
came to a close. I flew down E. 
Liberty as breakfast places opened 
early on Sunday mornings, the air 
smelling of crisped bacon, warm 
maple syrup and mugs of coffee. I 
jogged down the narrow road of 
Kerrytown on Saturdays, watching 
students groggily saunter down the 
roads. I ran through an empty Diag, 
and then an hour and a half and 
twelve miles later, a diag bursting 
with life. I wrote poems in my 
head as I ran down Main Street as 
businesses came to life, spent half 
a 20 mile run and hours in the Arb 
— time passing faster than ever. In 
months that felt like weeks, these 
special running spaces propelled 
me to a start line I’d never imagined 
making it to. And alone in my 
race, as I ran 26.2 miles through 
Detroit and Canada, thousands of 
people cheerings me on, runners 
surrounding me like oxygen. I held 
the memories of my solo adventures 
in Ann Arbor’s runner’s oasis by my 
side.
When I made it to the finish 
line I had so many people to 
thank, so much support around 
me. My mother called me crying, 
my brother jumped up and down, 
reminding me how much I needed 
them to make it to the finish line of 

my first marathon. But the biggest 
thanks of all I owed to the roads 
that led me there, the roads I’ve 
run everyday for three years and 
yet, in their intricacy and beauty, 
manage to show me something new 
every day. The roads of Ann Arbor, 
their stories and their memories, 
their tradition and their kindness, 
always there for me — awaiting me 
to need a break, need solace, need 
to lace up my sneakers and run.

— Eli Rallo, Daily Arts Writer

The basement of 
Literati

My life has been marked by one 
constant: the ache of my hands. 
While working on a farm in Oahu, 
Hawaii last summer, my hands 
were named “writing hands.” 
They are inherently and exactly 
that – soft and clean, but aching. 
They eventually blistered and hurt 
in a way that only weeding and 
shoveling can do. After I returned 
home, they returned to their 
familiar, but perpetually aching, 
selves.
Reading is my place of refuge; 
writing 
my 
place 
of 
release. 
These two places are the source 
of the aching. I’ve always kept 
these places of asylum secret. 
Letting people into these places is 
dangerous and scary because they 
are my own.
Release, however, is terrifying. 
I write creative nonfiction. I write 
about what unfolds before my eyes. 
I write about people who’ve raised 
me, who’ve slept in my bed, who’ve 
kept my secrets and who’ve broken 
my heart. My world exists on paper. 
To share with others my perception 

of my own life and who composes it 
terrifies me.
My first year of college was a 
lot of things, but, mostly, it was 
shocking. Everything I knew was 
no longer there — a hard thing to 
grasp for someone 
introverted 
and 
perpetually 
nostalgic. 
My 
childhood 
bedroom 
existed 
only 
on 
some 
weekends, 
and 
otherwise only in 
my memory. The 
bookshelf on my 
bedroom 
wall, 
lined with all of my 
favorite books and 
yellowing journals, 
was empty. The 
books sat under my 
lofted bed, stripped 
of their home. I 
barely looked at 
them. I didn’t touch 
a novel that wasn’t 
assigned and didn’t 
write anything that 
I wasn’t told to.
I was far away 
from myself. Maybe I didn’t know 
this, or maybe I didn’t care. All I 
knew was that it was painful.
My second semester of my 
freshman year I took my first class 
on creative nonfiction. I hadn’t 
considered myself any type of 
writer because I hadn’t written in 
months. I started to write again, 
and to read a little, too. A little 
became a lot, and a lot became 
every waking moment in which I 
wasn’t doing schoolwork.
Almost all of this reading was 
done in the basement of Literati 
Bookstore, on the bench in front of 
the memoirs. On that bench, I read 
a lot of things that I didn’t pay for. I 
still feel guilty. I owe that basement 
a lot. That basement may have 
saved me.
There I found all of my favorite 
writers, the writers who inspire 
my bravest writing because they 
are strong and wonderful and 
heaven-sent: 
Claudia 
Rankine, 

Joan Didion, Melissa Febos, Lidia 
Yuknavitch, Maggie Nelson, Mary 
Karr and Sylvia Plath. There are 
hundreds more, I promise. That 
basement brought their stories to 
me. That basement gave courage 
and wit and intelligence to a lost 
freshman who is now a junior and 
more sure of herself than she ever 
thought she’d be.
On any given Saturday, you 
can find me reading in that 
basement. If I’m not there, I’m 
writing in the coffee shop, likely 
at the table against the window. 
To spend a week without visiting 
that basement gives me a deep, 
unshakeable feeling of forgetting. 
Rightfully so.
Literati made me feel safe during 
a time when I’d forgotten what 
safety was, and continues to do so 
today. That basement is the sun on 
my face in a bleak January. That 
basement has reminded me that I 
am, and always will be, a writer.
Literati, if you’re reading this, 
thank you. Also, I’m sorry. I 
promise I’ll do my best to buy more 
books from now on.

— Jenna Barlage, Daily Arts 
Writer

The nook under 
my bed

When I first arrived at the 
University of Michigan, the extent 
of my knowledge of Ann Arbor 
was my dad’s route to the football 
games and his friend’s tailgating 
spot. Back in Grand Rapids, I had 
plenty of places that provided 
my home away from home: The 
Starbucks across the Beltline, the 
backroad path to school, the Meijer 

book section. But when I moved 
to school, I lost those places. All at 
once I was thrown into this new 
home without a place to anchor 
myself. But the one place I felt truly 
comfortable was the nook under 
my bed.
The nook under 
my bed was where 
I sat and listened 
to my “calm songs” 
playlist when the 
first week of school 
was overwhelming. 
The nook under 
my bed was where 
I 
had 
a 
movie 
night 
with 
my 
new 
friends 
on 
a Saturday night 
instead of going 
to a frat. The nook 
under 
my 
bed 
was where I took 
naps in between 
Intro to Ballet and 
PoliSci 
because 
getting all the way 
up to my top bunk 
was way too much 
commitment. The 
nook under my bed 
was where I had deep talks with 
the first best friend I’ve ever really 
had. The nook under my bed is my 
safe space, my calm space, my place.
My nook has everything I 
need: My books and notebooks, 
outlets, chargers, food, water and 
mountains of pillows. Why go 
anywhere else when all I need is 
right here? I don’t have to spend 
money. I don’t have to dress up. I 
don’t have to put makeup on or do 
my hair. The nook under my bed 
takes me for what I am. If I want to 
curl up in my PJs with my hair in a 
towel, my roommate might judge 
me, but my nook certainly won’t.
With having a roommate for the 
first time, it’s comforting having a 
space that’s just mine. The rest of the 
room is a common area, it’s open to 
the public, but under my bed is like 
a separate room. When I hang my 
coats up, I can’t even see the door 
from my desk. When I’m sitting on 
the ground, I’m completely hidden 

from view. Friends stopping by can 
see the whole room — everything is 
on display. They can walk around, 
grab a chair and settle in. But they 
can’t see my nook unless they come 
into the room, they don’t go under 
my bed unless they ask.
In college we are expected to 
be social all the time. Not only to 
be social, but to go out, to party or 
do something Instagram-worthy. 
We are expected to be active every 
Thursday night, Friday night, 
Saturday night, even Sunday night; 
to talk to a million people and forget 
their names the next day. To look 
like we’re having the time of our 
lives when sometimes all we want 
to do is relax in our dorm in the 
comfort of our nook. But sometimes 
it’s okay to stay in, by yourself or 
maybe with a couple friends, all 
sitting under your bed talking or 
watching movies. Sometimes it’s 
okay to not be constantly social. 
Sometimes we just need some alone 
time.
I haven’t been in Ann Arbor long 
enough to establish a special place. 
I don’t have a coffee shop that I 
regular (though that’s my goal for 
the second semester), I don’t have 
a bookstore I visit every Sunday 
(though I would like to), I don’t even 
have a special spot in the library I 
like to study. What I do have is the 
nook under my bed. I now plan to 
go out by myself or with friends 
on the weekend, exploring those 
coffee shops and bookstores and 
the sights of Ann Arbor. But I also 
know it’s okay to spend a night in 
the nook under my bed, laughing 
with friends, relaxing by myself 
and making memories.

— Dana Pierangeli, For The Daily

What makes our hidden places in Ann Arbor special?

MIKE ZLONKEVICZ / MICHIGAN DAILY

EMMA RICHTER / MICHIGAN DAILY

I wonder if 
anyone was 
there to see the 
incident. I bet 
someone was. My 
house is always 
full of people. 
People laughing, 
loving and 
spilling. A perfect 
mess.

A place to rest 
my mind, a place 
where I can be 
utterly alone in 
my thoughts. I 
think of places 
that are soundless, 
confidential and 
exclusive. 

5 — Thursday, January 31, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com