MICHIGAN TO MAILIBU

Michigan to Malibu by: SOPHIA BOYCE editor-in-chief

photos courtesy of: G. Schroeder

“I belong in the water,” is how Grace Schroeder explains her love of surfing. The 18-year-old was a competitive swimmer in her childhood and spent the majority of her life on boats. She has always felt a connection to the water; it’s where her “state of being is most aligned.” Schroeder started surfing back in fifth grade. One of her mom’s student’s family owns a surf shop in Empire and runs a freshwater surf camp. Her mom encouraged her to give it a try. She fell in love and continued to pursue surfing after moving to Los Angeles. Her middle school in California had a year-long contest where they encouraged students to be innovative. During seventh grade, Schroeder programmed the school’s laser cutter to make wooden surfboards with dierent fins to test which worked best for surfing. In Eighth grade she started her surfing photography blog — Michigan to Malibu. “Not to flex or anything… but I won both years,” Schroeder jokes. She took her camera with her every time she went out surfing and would work on the posts over the weekend. While Schroeder had been into photography for a while, sporting a Hello Kitty camera all the way back in 2010, her blog was the first time she actually applied her photography skills.

Luckily, she upgraded to a handme-down Nikon before she started her blog. Photography is a big part of her blog, but the most important part is surfing. “It was the first thing I chose to do myself. It was my own thing,” Schroeder explains. There aren’t a lot of surfers in Northern Michigan so she felt she had something no one else had. Surfing, while giving her an escape, also strengthened her connection to the water and her fellow surfers. “There’s a general notion to look out for one another because surfing is very dangerous, especially in the ocean, and I think that builds a sort of trust in a community built around the sport, so I think that is really special too,” Schroeder said. Since she moved back to Michigan, Schroeder hasn’t uploaded as much on her blog because, “there isn’t as large of a community, and the weather and wave patterns are super iy so it’s hard to produce as much content.” Saying that the blog is more of a hobby, and she never forces herself to post, but you can always catch Schroeder with a camera if she’s going out. Michigan to Malibu itself does not have a huge following, but Schroeder connected it to “another hub of surf blog sites,” and after she did that she began to receive actual feedback. Since she talks about Great Lake surfing as well as ocean surfing, her blog opened up a dialogue between dierent surf pods from all around the world. Sourcing her content also opened up the opportunity for her to be a surf coach in Brisbane, Australia for a year, which Schroeder thinks, “its inane and I never thought that would happen from me posting.” Ultimately, what Schroeder likes best about her blog is that it’s not “a source of surf media, it’s just [her].”