A Nostalgic Lens • Photographs & Essays From Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

By Robert E. Martin

Ernest Hemingway once said, ‘Michigan is the truest part of my memory and I never want to contaminate that’. 

Indeed, it was Hemingway’s experiences hunting, fishing, and tromping in the woods between Walloon and Charlevoix lakes, as well as knocking about with lumberjacks, boxers and well-heeled summer people that he mined for many of his first stories, including his second novel, The Torrents of Spring, which was set in Petoskey and exuded a resonant yet concise and laconic writing style driven by the infinite details deeply lodged within his rich museum of recollections.

With A NOSTALGIC LENS, which is the sixth book published by Michigan author Peter Wurdock, the pristine and untarnished memories of his own experiences as a youth roaming the open and uncontaminated terrain of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula flow full circle with pristine clarity as an adult in this poignant and thoughtfully rendered portrait; which is a blend of starkly shot and panoramic  black & white photographs and family photos spanning the decades, woven together and framed  with short and deeply moving essays detailing his life in the Upper Peninsula after leaving the hustle and bustle of Metro Detroit three years ago.

“Moving to the Upper Peninsula was something I’ve thought about since I was a kid,” Wurdock shares.  “But it didn’t happen until I turned 55. An unexpected chain of life events unfolded and the next thing I knew I was here. The UP has been a place for me to contemplate thoughts, ideas and visit places that I have always wanted to but couldn’t during short trips.”

Readers are given a ringside seat in Wurdock’s journey, as he reveals how life in the UP with his beloved Greyhounds has reconnected him to a way of life that has enabled him to experience magic in the seemingly mundane, while infusing his sensibilities with a fortified sense of purpose. 

“When I first arrived here I lived in the woods and had more wildlife outside my window than I had neighbors,” he continues. “Then I moved to a small village where the pace was slower, the streets were quieter and the people less concerned with America’s obsession with speed, convenience and youth. Being able to share all this in this book is exciting and fulfilling.” 

Born & raised in Royal Oak, Wurdock attended Albion College and was later accepted to the renowned Berklee School of Music in Boston, where he studied music theory, arranging, composition and performance, returning to Michigan to work part time as a professional musician. He worked briefly in Nashville as a promoter with some of the top country artists of the 90s, until he returned to Michigan to help Detroit music legend & Saginaw native Stewart Francke run Blue Boundary Records, where he played an important role in each of Francke’s 15 award-winning releases. Since moving to the U.P, he currently writes for the Newberry News in the Eastern Upper Peninsula.

“Northern Michigan has always inspired me and I’ve been going there since I was born,” he continues, “staying at a family log cabin whose only upgrade over 75 years has been electricity for a light in the kitchen, as well as a coffee maker; and a light over the supper table & poker table. Everything else is as it was when it was built, though we replaced the outhouse after a fire.”

Wurdock cites his pivotal influence as fellow-Michigan writer Jim Harrison. “Discovering Harrison in 1998 was like learning to cook with garlic. I’ve been hooked on him ever since. If you’re familiar with him you’ll know he had a place in Grand Marais, which is not far from where the family cabin was on Muskallonge Lake. We’d go to Grand Marais every year and as I got older I had a romantic notion that it would be so cool to live there and be a writer, having no idea that Harrison had been doing that a long time and continued until he sold his place and his home near Traverse City and moved around 2005.”

As an author, Wurdock’s writing carries a resonance that forges long gullies and travels broad expanses, making significant connections through an economy of style that does not sacrifice any  grandeur or grace to his descriptive passages.

“I am blessed with a fine tuned memory and often draw upon details I remember from the house I grew up in or the summer vacation, to wherever it was when I draw on some minute detail which can become a lynch pin in a story later on. My friends and family are always amazed at how many details I remember about my youth, from license plate numbers to who ordered what for dinner and turning it into something useful when it seemed like nothing at the time.”

Since its release the critical reviews for A Nostalgic Lens have been impressive: 

“At this point, I forget whether Pete Wurdock is a photographer who writes or a writer who takes great photographs. But I know I love the way he combines words and images to bring to life wise birds, Pine Stump Junction and so much of what makes the Upper Peninsula our state’s North Star,” opines -Neal Rubin from the Detroit Free Press.

“Peter Wurdock’s photos and words capture the ineffable in this lovely collection. That he knows and loves the UP—along with the human heart—is clear from page one. His book will have a special spot on my mantle,” states Ellen Airgood, two-time Michigan Notable Book award winner, UP Notable Book Award winner, Midwest bestseller, and recipient of Michigan’s Great Places, Great Reads Award.

From the beginning of this masterful collection, where we are imparted a history lesson about how the State of Michigan was ‘awarded’ the Upper Peninsula as a consolation prize after the Toledo War in 1833, which was a political boundary war without troops or bloodshed, navigated by a gutsy and determined 22-year old Michigan Governor named Stevens T. Mason, to the end of the book where Peter reflects upon how each time he selects a new path to take with his prize-greyhounds for their daily 30-minute walk becomes a fresh journey worthy of a Bard’s tale, the visual and verbal treasures contained within this work are abundant and well-worth harvesting.

As he so beautifully sums up the experience: “Living in this small town doesn’t give me everything I want but it provides everything I need.”

Copies of ‘A NOSTALGIC LENS’ are currently available at: www.Blueboundarybooks.com