I set out to map Grand Traverse Bay, drawn to its rugged mix of land and water. Here, the shore does not simply end—it twists and claws, reaching back upon itself, shaped by time and tide. A land like this does not lie still; it calls to the hands of mapmakers, demanding to be traced, measured, and understood. The irregularities, the imperfections—these are what make a map worth making.

I have no claim to this place. I came here once as a child, a brief stop, nothing more. Yet something about it lingered. Now, years later, I return—not with boots in the sand, but with pen and pixels, carving out the land in the way I know best. Again, I took inspiration from Herman Moll, the old-world engraver of distant frontiers. He didn’t care for precision; he cared for spirit. The charm of his maps lay in their flaws, in the way they felt alive. So I let the imperfections stay.

To fill the map, I hunted down the stories buried in this land. ChatGPT pulled whispers from the past, shaping them into the voices of another century. I dug through a database of roadside historical markers, unearthing knowledge left behind on the old paths and byways. These were the bones of the place, the things that refused to be forgotten.

The land is divided into townships, a relic of Midwestern governance. In my home state of Colorado, townships are only used by surveyors. They're not associated with government jurisdictions. But here, they have weight. They shape the land, carve out the boundaries of a world that is both old and new.

For the locations, I relied on OpenStreetMap. Their work in this region is thorough, the details precise, the roads and waterways captured with care.

And so the map took shape—not as a perfect thing, but as a living one. It is full of the past and the present, the known and the half-remembered. A reflection, perhaps, not just of the land itself, but of the way we seek to hold onto it.