Trail over the Dunes (Sand, Sea and Stars, (2))
Another entry of our adventures Up North. Enjoy. :-)
It wasn't just the sand, stretching on for miles, rising and falling in waves that could -- and in times past, had -- swallowed multi-story buildings. It was that, even as we hiked up and down and around the lips of sandy vales and ridges as deep and tall as a ten story building, in the midst of all that sand you could clearly hear and smell the waves of the sea...
Geologically speaking, it was only a blink of an eye -- just over ten-thousand years ago -- that sheets of ice miles thick streched unbroken all the way down to the southern coast of Ohio. Sheets of ice so massive, so heavy, that even today the solid bedrock of the Great Lakes still rises almost a foot a century in elevation, simply from isostatic rebound upwards now that the weight of the ice is off of it. Those sheets scoured out the mighty Great Lakes, and left behind spectacular geological features, of which the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes was one.
Mackinaw Island was once a national park. The Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes still are. And whereas I had expected simply a line of large sand dunes, instead over the course of a brilliantly blue afternoon we treked our way across miles of sandy rises and falls just to travel in a straight line from entrance to seashore. It wasn't just that the Dunes were much huger than I had imagined, it was the juxposition of endless blue waters with desert-dry dunes, and the interplay between. And this entry seeks to share this special place dreamsquirrel and Jesse and I had the happy chance to explore the 2nd full day of our journeys to the north. Enjoy. :-)
The south-eastern corner of Michigan is covered by the sprawling metropolis which is Detroit and it's even larger surrounding suburbs, in which more people live than in the city itself. On the exact opposite corner of the Lower Peninsula, in the north-western corner of lower Michigan, roads wind through miles of rolling hilly forests and farms, only occasionally encountering tiny two-block towns. It is near the tip of this sparsely populated region that a sixty-kilometer chunk of seashore the size of the city of Boston was preserved as Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes National Park.
Mackinaw Island I had visited with my family as a young boy long ago, before I had the happy opportunity to share it with dreamsquirrel and Jesse. But for all my nearly-quarter century living in Michigan, I had never been here to Sleeping Bear, knew it only by reputation. So I had little idea what to expect when we set out from our car for the Dune Climb which was laid out over one of the few passes through the dunes from inland to sea...
- Most of the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes actually ride right up to the shoreline, plunging almost their full height straight down to the water in a crazy greater-than-forty-five degree angle for hundreds of feet in elevation. The Dune Climb trail is aimed through a pass over the Dunes where a more manageable approach to the shoreline exists. But the name of the trail had set up the image in my own mind of a single, albeit large, dune that we would crest and then come down. And indeed, when we first reached the ranger's station at the head of the trail, what one saw was a single great wall of sand, towering over the parking lot and the park buildings on the grassy picnic greens. To our happy surprise, once we had scampered our way up the first, more than ten story tall face, we discovered we were on the lip of a place far larger from the inside than it appeared from the out...
We climbed high up the first rise, with the waters of Glen lake behind us. As we crested the rise, ahead was not the endless waters of Lake Michigan, but instead a flat plateau of sand many football fields in size. And in the distance, still higher ridges of dunes to explore, blue-tipped wooden guideposts taller than a man marching off in a line through the expanse. All three of us are big fans of hiking and adventure through new places, and so it was with excitement we journeyed onwards.
It was not all featureless sand; in many places, grasses had taken a tenuous hold over the shifting sands. In others, shrubs and even trees were taking root. Back and forth along the length of the straight-line trail green and sand did battle. In some places blooming with greenery such that the sand was barely visible. In some places the bleached-white, sand-blasted hulks of dead trees and "ghost forests" admist sandy expanses showed where the sand had retaken territory. We followed the trail around the lips of sandy bowls; we travelled through cuts in ridges. We laughed, we joked, we sang song after song. Jesse and dreamsquirrel kicked off their shoes and went barefoot through the sands. And eventually, after one last set of rises, we saw the lake and the islands offshore in the far distance, and the trail ahead winding down to meet them.
- Through one more cut through a sand ridge and down the other side, and there lay a beach that stretched as far up and down as the eye could see. Waves as high as one's knees roared ashore one after the next. Up we pulled our pants and into the waves we skipped, the early-May waters still so cold they almost burned. Wriggling toes in the warm sand, skipping flat rocks in the flats between rushing waves, exploring curiosities and hunting for pretty smooth stones washed up on shore, we spent a lazy, silly hour or more on the beach, before a jewel-blue lake reflecting a bright, cloudless sky. It was as perfect weather as could possibly be asked for. A perfect end to a facinating hike, following the trail over the dunes.
