The Hemingways spent large portions of every summer at their cottage on Walloon Lake in Michigan. There, young Ernest learned early the joys of hunting and fishing. On his third birthday, his father took him fishing for the first time. The expedition proved hugely successful. "He knows when he gets a bite," his mother reported afterward, "and lands them all himself." But the Michigan summers gave Hemingway something beyond his lifelong love of field and stream. Out of his memories of Walloon would come the settings and characters for some of his finest short stories.
Young Hemingway fishing, summer 1905
Unidentified photographer
Image courtesy Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts
