Ottaway Landing
A place you’ll know as Home.
Forty acres along the Boardman River in Northern Michigan.
A private place to stay, retreat, and gather just outside Traverse City.
House and bunkhouse. Sleeps up to 14. Heated pool. Hot tub. River. Woods. Room.
And a long table waiting for everybody to sit down.
Forty acres.
And a river running through.
Ottaway Landing sits along the Boardman River just outside Traverse City, Michigan.
The house and bunkhouse sleep up to 14.
There’s a heated pool, hot tub, river access, fire pits, a chef’s kitchen, game room, big tables, open fields, woods to wander, and plenty of places to disappear for a while.
Room for everybody to be together.
Corners to disappear into when you’ve had enough of everybody.
Coffee in the morning.
Fires at night.
And forty acres that refuse to become an amenity.
Explore the placeNotes left behind
That window is extraordinary.
Stay. Retreat. Gather.
Stay
Bring your people.
The house and bunkhouse sleep up to 14, with plenty of room to eat, swim, wander, play, talk, nap, and stay up considerably later than planned.
Book a stayRetreat
Sometimes you need to leave the usual arrangement for a minute.
We host intimate retreats created around whoever is actually coming—not a predetermined package of what you’re supposed to need.
You bring the reason.
We’ll help make room for it.
Begin a conversationGather
Weddings. Dinners. Ceremonies. Workshops. Reunions. Music. Milestones. Celebrations.
And things without a category.
Some things deserve a place.
Tell us what you’re imaginingA Garden where reunion happens.
With yourself.
With the people you came with.
With the land beneath you.
With the part of you that maybe wasn’t missing after all.
We call Ottaway Landing a Garden.
Not because we planted everything here.
Quite the opposite.
The Garden was here first.
We’re learning how to live inside it.
We came for the weekend and accidentally stayed at the table for three hours.
Notes left behind
Come for a while.
A family weekend. A wedding. A retreat. A birthday. A reunion. A few days with people you haven’t seen enough of lately.
Something you’re celebrating.
Something you’re grieving.
Something you’re making.
Or absolutely nothing.
You don’t need a reason that sounds important.
Sometimes you just want to get everybody in the same place.
We think that’s important enough.
We make magic in the way we make the beds.
We warm the pool.
We stock the kitchen.
We tend the land.
We stoke the fire.
We set the table.
We think about the light, the coffee, where everybody might want to sit, and where somebody might want to disappear.
We make room.
And then something happens that has very little to do with us.
People exhale.
They stay at the table longer.
They take their shoes off.
They remember they’re tired.
They remember they’re funny.
They tell the truth.
They get in the river.
They look up.
We don’t take credit for that part.
We think it’s the Garden.
Nothing particularly extraordinary happened here. I think that was the extraordinary part.
Notes left behind
Nothing doing everything.
When we say Garden, we don’t only mean what grows outside.
We mean the original arrangement:
Soil feeding root.
Root feeding tree.
Tree feeding bird.
Bird carrying seed somewhere nobody planned.
Nothing doing everything.
Everything belonging.
We tend the conditions.
Then we get out of the way.
This place is still becoming.
Residencies.
Gatherings.
Things with foundations.
Things still on paper.
Things that haven’t occurred to us yet.
Ottaway Landing is alive.
We intend to let it remain that way.
Maybe you don’t need to get away.
Maybe you need to get here.
To the table.
To the water.
To your people.
To yourself.
To whatever becomes audible when the noise gets quiet enough.
Not a better life.
Not a new you.
This one.
Right here.
Be Home.
Come stay awhile