Essential Listens from the Door County Pulse podcast

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Essential Listens

Door County Pulse Podcast puts the news in your ear

If you’re not listening to the Door County Pulse Podcast, you’re not getting the full story.

Each week Andrew Kleidon, Myles Dannhausen Jr. and guests bring you two episodes featuring the movers, shakers and just plain interesting people that make the peninsula community what it is.

Get the story behind local news and the issues everyone is talking about. Learn about what’s going on each week, the shows you can’t miss and the places you need to go. And meet the people toiling in our kitchens, attacking our problems and creating the next Door County scene.

Need a place to start? Check out one of these six great listens from the summer of 2021.

1Tourism in Door County: How much is too much?

Andrew Kleidon and Myles Dannhausen Jr. put this ageold Door County debate into context and discuss the pros and cons of tourism growth for the peninsula.

Scan for the Pulse Podcasts doorcountypulse.com/podcasts The Debate Over Short-term-rentals

For some, turning a home into a vacation rental is a way to get a foot in the Door. For others, it’s the very thing that is changing Door County for the worse. We look deeper at an issue tourism communities nationwide are struggling with.

2The Story of the Pulse Part VII: It Takes Two

Peninsula Pulse co-founder Tom McKenzie stopped by the office to reminisce about the paper’s early, not-socertain days with David Eliot.

3Tad and Coburn on Making A Great Photograph

The father/ daughter photography team joins forces to judge this year’s Hal Prize for photography. They sat down to talk about what goes into a great photo, and what they’ll be looking for in this year’s contest.

Affordable Housing and NIMBYism

The housing crisis is nothing new to Door County, where NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) voices have thwarted efforts to create affordable housing for at least 25 years.

4Author Dan Egan Talks Tourism, Water Levels, and How Climate Change Threatens Chicago

One of our favorite guests, acclaimed author Dan Egan, returned to the podcast to discuss the state of the lake, and his recent article for the New York Times about how climate change is impacting Chicago.

CAPTURING AUTUMN

THROUGH THE LENS OF BRETT KOSMIDER

text and photography by Brett Kosmider

The Hotz Trail loops on the narrow stretch of land between Europe Bay and inland Europe Lake and is a popular fall hiking spot for Northern Door residents.

No season in Door County ushers in change that’s more palpable than autumn. Hot, humid air gives way to crisp, dry breezes. The lushness of summer surrenders to blazing fall foliage. Beaches go quiet, and days get shorter.

Photographing a Door County autumn can be described as “hurry

up and wait.” With the jet stream plunging south from Canada — and bringing lowpressure systems and their related soggy, windy weather with it — being in the right place at the right time becomes a greater challenge in the fall.

(Left) Tamaracks are unusual conifers that lose their needles every fall, leading many to think the trees are dying along the peninsula’s roadsides. The name for the species in the Algonquian language is “akemantak,” which means “wood used for snowshoes.” (Above) Fall means apples in Door County. The crew at Seaquist Orchards hand-harvests more than 30 varieties of apples from orchards throughout the northern peninsula every year. (Below) Looking down the length of Detroit Island from Rabbit Point — so named because it had once become infested with rabbits. The privately owned island sits at the entrance to Detroit Harbor and can be seen from aboard the Washington Island Ferry.

Every day in October, I check the weather almost hourly. It’s part science and part intuition, this mix of chance and process that makes my pursuit so exciting. It’s not the perfectly clear and calm moments that make the most stunning photographs, although a crisp, clear golden hour sure helps to make a subject pop. Instead,

the best photographs are most often made on the edge of daylight, or just before storm clouds roll in or after the snow squall passes. Those are moments that make you feel alive.

More than the stunning

autumnal colors, it’s the mercurial moods of the season that are my true muse at this time of year. Sometimes I get lucky. Some years I get rained out.

(Left) Ephraim is picturesque any time of year, but that’s especially true when the white buildings nestled below the bluff pop amid the autumn colors. (Bottom left) The change of season is especially poignant as the leaves fall on the headstones of Blossomberg Cemetery in Peninsula State Park. Those stones feature the names of some of the county’s most influential residents. (Below) Little Lake on Washington Island is part of a 32-acre Door County Land Trust preserve that includes 1.25 miles of hiking trails and 5,500 feet of Lake Michigan and Little Lake shoreline.