Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

The area west of Traverse City, Michigan, I was very happy to discover earlier this month, is as spectacular as I remember when I visited in college. Back then there was energy to burn, to climb the wall of sand at the Dune Climb and hike in 3 miles to Lake Michigan, up and down over the dunes. I believe my party even slept out under the stars, without a plan for rain.

Almost 40 years later, we are not so adventurous but more appreciative. We slept in a comfortable bed, ate better than burgers and beans, took showers. Nonetheless, progress on a large scale has largely been thwarted at Sleeping Bear, leaving wind and sand and water and woods and dunes that at their highest point are nearly 500 feet above the lake (and the angle down is nearly 90). What towns there are are minuscule. It's very dark at night. Not so different in kind from Maine, one might say.

Except that it is, and not just for the immense dunes. It starts with Lake Michigan. It is of course freshwater, and swimmable all summer and into September, and large enough that, like the ocean, you can't see the other side. But I've never felt power and majesty as I do on the North Atlantic, not even when we were in Grand Haven during a wonderful blow.

The obvious difference is the tide; most of the time, the Great Lakes are quiet, sending small, consistent waves always hitting the same part of the shore. Most of their shores are sand, not rock. Because of the sand, the water color is a light blue, almost green in spots, almost tropical. I don't ever have the sense that monsters lurk beneath the surface. If there were monsters around, one didn't discuss them.

In many ways I'm happy I grew up in the Midwest, for the calmness, the placidity, a more phlegmatic approach to life. But when I'm in Maine, especially on a day like today (blustery, cold, whitecaps on the water, soft grey-blue the color of the clouds, hard slate-green the color of the sea), I find in the serene turbulence and sharp beauty of the place the sense of spiritual energy that the adversarial training of my childhood had no chance of instilling.