I have been to many extraordinary places in the world. I have been to the Musée D’orsay in Paris. I have visited the top three on this list of the most beautiful waterfalls in Iceland. I have eaten bánh mì at this stall in Vietnam. I have been to this bog walk in Maine. I watched the first sunrise of 2016 on Mt Takao outside Tokyo. Some of these places and experiences are widely known, some are obscure. But none of these places, for me, compare to the Huckleberry Explorers Club Museum and General Store and Gardens in Detroit.
The Huckleberry Explorers Club isn’t just a place, it’s a community of people who gather to care for the gardens or drink tea in the general store or watch movies in the microcinema. In some ways the entire institution is an art project but this implies something static or authored. The Huckleberry Explorers Club is not static. It unfolds under the influence of everyone who shows up and participates. If it is a work of art, then it is uncommonly open. One does not witness it without entering into it. When I tell people about the Huckleberry Explorers Club, I often say very little. Only: You must go there. And it’s true, you must go. But I don’t want to describe it, because I want you to experience it for yourself. After all, it might be different for you than it is for me.
Finding it isn’t hard, though they don’t have a website. (They do have a weekly email though! Power to the newsletter!) The hours are quite irregular, but they are posted on Google Maps—check before you visit. If you go, you might meet the proprietor Stefany Golberg, aka Shuffy, or possibly her partner in shenanigans, Morgan Meis. You will, I hope, ask to see the museum (drop my name for VIP treatment) which is a highlight of any visit. But if the weather is good, you will also, I hope, spend some time in the garden. You might buy some knick-knack from the general store. You might linger on the premises and get to know Shuffy and Morgan or whoever else is around that day. I went last weekend, and there was a concert in the garden. We listened to music, and with the music we also listened to birds and insects and trees. We ate strawberries growing in the enormous strawberry patches in the garden, and we even made homemade sorbet out of them. Every time I come back to the Huckleberry Club, it has evolved. There are new structures and new people. And also the people I know and love.
That was a week ago when I was in Detroit, but I’m in London now. Last night I went to see Brian Cox and Patricia Clarkson in Long Day’s Journey Into Night at the Wyndham Theatre in the West End. The production certainly did its job, taking you on a journey into deepest darkness. Cox and Clarkson were in fact “tremendous” as the pull-quote out front promised. I was also moved by Dylan McCormack as the oldest son Jamie. The emotional climax of the play came with his breakdown in the final few minutes.
It was the final performance of the run, and Brian Cox and Patricia Clarkson embraced sweetly during the curtain call. Brian Cox called the staff onstage to take the curtain as well. I like knowing that the theatrical experience that moved me was also a special night for the performers. And the Wyndham Theatre is a beautiful space in which to see anything at all.
