While I loved living in Chicago for many years - having come from a small town - I found it occasionally suffocating. The city expanded endlessly across the flat midwestern landscape and the coasts of the lake were thick with joggers, bikers, and tourists. Especially during the later winter months, there seemed no place to escape.

One day I borrowed a friend’s car and drove around the edge of Lake Michigan, searching for solitude and calm. Past the industrial rot of Indiana, I found myself in the little coastal college town of Holland, Michigan. Small dunes, peppered in light grass ran along a white beach.Tiny sailboats and parks, unkempt during winter months were swallowed up by windswept sand.

I would go back to Holland a few more times, just to sit on the beach until I felt my shoulders relax a bit. I wanted to bring that feeling back to the city with me, so I brought my camera and sound recorder and tried to capture what I appreciated most about it: the calm and simplicity of everything. Everything isolated just as I craved to be.

On days when my anxiety spiked and I couldn’t make the time to travel back around the lake, I would sift back through the pictures and listen to the waves through headphones as I rattled along the Blue Line train to wherever I was going. It still remains in my mind as a reminder of how fulfilling peace can be.