A:  Though C. S. Lewis never traveled to the United States, local interest in his life and writings reflects a national trend that includes films such as the PBS documentary The Magic Never Ends: The Life and Work of C.S. Lewis, co-produced by Petoskey resident David Crouse. But beyond local interest, northern Michigan itself—with its beautiful coastlines, rolling hills, undeveloped wilderness, and snowy winters—is a kind of Narnian paradise that reflects Lewis’s own fascination with what he called “Northernness”: “a vision of huge, clear spaces…the endless twilight of Northern summer, remoteness, severity.” [1] Readers of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe recognize a kinship between Lewis’s vision of another world and the wooded coastlines of our local landscape. Can you glimpse the castle Cair Paravel through the trees? We can, hence our tagline, “To Narnia and the North!”

[1] From Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, by C. S. Lewis, p. 73.