Except for a single night in 1947, when Hemingway passed through Michigan on his way out West, he never saw Petoskey again after his Horton Bay wedding. The thinking from scholars is he didn’t want to ruin his memory of a place he loved so much. With him, intimacy increased with distance. I can relate. Sometimes the impulse is to keep things encased in glass, to cling to the memories that are your starting point.

When Hemingway Was a Young Fisherman in Michigan, NYTimes