Why Northerners Lie to Out-of-Town Reporters

Petoskey — I’ll never forget those storied days down at ol’ Mama Lake. Grandmother and grandfather coming into our room, waking us up and telling us it’s time to head over to Sleeping Bear Dunes and look out over great Mama Lake, just like we’ve always done.

Of course, the venomous snow snakes will never leave my nightmares either. Traipsing through the snow on a cold February evening, running from those snow snakes hot on our tails. And, last but not least, we all remember the seemingly blood-stained fingers that remain all summer when one sets about consuming any number of cherries whilst visiting Grand Traverse Bay.

You remember all that don’t you? Oh, you don’t? Good. Because none of it is real.

No one calls Lake Michigan Mama Lake, no one fears snow snakes in February, and there is not single person on God’s green earth who suffers from cherry-stained fingers after eating cherries in Traverse City.

But if you are a New York Times reporter, an Atlantic correspondent, or some other writer from some other coast, you might think all this lore from this strange and distant northern land is true. That’s because the locals you talked with over the 36 hours you visited wanted to mess with you and you didn’t take the time to confirm if any of it is real.

Recently, the Atlantic ran a piece on Pete Buttigieg titled “Pete Buttigieg in the Wilderness.” Nothing says real heartland wilderness like Mayor Pete in Traverse City, hunched over a cup of Joe, hands clasped around a diner mug with a dour look on his face and a tidy, short beard. In this unintentionally hilarious piece, the writer tells us about Traverse City.

“The local attraction is the region's cherries, and if you visit in cherry season, you can see tourists walking around with bags of them, their hands stained red, as if they have recently committed gruesome crimes.”

I know what the writer is trying to do. He’s trying to make Traverse City fun and exotic for his readers in some other state, and he’s adding a little gritty humor, but the problem is it’s not true. No one’s hands are red from cherries. Everyone—both local and tourist alike—knows you bite and spit the pit. There are no red fingers involved. If the writer claims he actually witnessed this, it could have only been a 4-year-old who hasn’t exactly mastered the art of eating yet.

Elsewhere in the article he reflects on the locals and their reaction to Mayor Pete.

“At a local bar, I asked an employee to name the city's most famous resident, and he struggled to name anyone. ‘Madonna's brother used to be a homeless guy here,’ he said. I told him that a former secretary of transportation had moved to town six months ago, and instead of continuing the conversation he found urgent barkeeping tasks to attend to.”

This part is obviously true, funny, and instructive about the kind of attitude that leads to reporters coming to Northern Michigan and leaving with fake facts or a short collection of avoidant remarks.

A lot of people Up North—real locals Up North—have a somewhat dismissive opinion about people not from here. You see it with tourists, of course. We all hate on the tourists in the summer, even though we know we need the tourists. Tourists don’t get any cred or respect because they only come when it’s warm, so they are dismissed as kind of wimpy by the people Up North. A similar thing happens with reporters, but with a few layers added on top.

There is a healthy dose of skepticism about motivations and inspirations. “Why are you interested in this?” “Where are you from?”

There’s also a kind of irreverence due to the fact that most people Up North know that if someone from far away and with no connection here is writing about anything here, they are probably gawking or trying to spin up some kind of exaggerated portrait of the residents or the place for readers who won’t ever visit and don’t even really care.

It’s also just kind of fun to pull people’s legs. They are searching for a dose of “hokey sensationalism”, so why not give ‘em what they want, and have a little fun and an inside joke while we are at it?

This is how the New York Times ended up publishing a piece about Traverse City in 2024 in which they claimed that some locals refer to Lake Michigan as “Mama Lake.” I grew up in a small town on the big lake and not once have I ever in my life heard someone refer to Lake Michigan as Mama Lake.

This is how the rumor of allegedly dangerous snow snakes came to be. During the National Cherry Festival, reporters sometimes get fed playful exaggerations—such as claims that residents measure snowfall in “cherry crates” or that lake-effect snow improves cherry sweetness.

No, I am sorry to burst the bubble because I know it sounds kitschy and quaint, but the people of Northern Michigan are not measuring snow in “cherry crates.”

Northern Michiganders kind of like messing with people not from here. It’s not necessarily a trait unique to Northern Michigan. It’s perhaps a trait shared by all peoples from places where most don’t venture, places that are generally challenging to live in.

“Don’t come in and think you’re going to get it in a day or two.”

That’s the message and that’s the moral of the story. We’ve got the internet, we’ve got cross-country flights, and we’ve got AI, but it’s hard to write honestly about a place unless you live there.