Loreen Niewenhuis - A 1,000-Mile Walk on the Beach

Other Books

by Loreen Niewenhuis

A 1,000-Mile Walk on the Beach

A 1,000-Mile Great Lakes Walk

A 1,000-Mile Great Lakes
Island Adventure

Best Lake Michigan Hikes

For more about
Loreen Niewenhuiss adventures,
writings, and availability as a speaker,
visit:

www.LakeTrek.com

Praise for A 1,000-Mile Walk on the Beach:

Her adventure is told with verve and boldness, and she is a clear-eyed observer of the lake and its beautiful and sometimes ravaged shore.

Jerry Dennis, author, The Living Great Lakes

Niewenhuis took a rather long stroll... in fact, a 1,000-mile hike... [and] has memorialized the experience in a fascinating book.

Chicago Sun-Times

With sensitivity and humor, Loreens writings give a gentle message to the reader to care for the great natural resource we have here.

Pam & Dick Haferman, Black River Books

A 1,000-Mile Walk on the Beach

One Womans Trek

of the Perimeter

of Lake Michigan

by

Loreen Niewenhuis

Crispin Books is an eBook imprint of Crickhollow Books of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. For a catalog of all titles:

www.CrispinBooks.com

www.CrickhollowBooks.com

A 1,000-Mile Walk on the Beach

Copyright 2011, 2013, Loreen Niewenhuis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief quotation in an acknowledged review.

Cover photograph and design is by Philip Rugel.

Crispin Books, eBook, 2013

ISBN 978-1-883953-59-1

Crickhollow Books, Trade Paperback, 2011

ISBN-13: 978-1-933987-15-6

Table of Contents

Introduction

My earliest memory of Lake Michigan is of a six-year-old me running full speed down the mammoth sand dunes at Warren Dunes State Park, on the eastern shores of the great inland body of water. Id race my siblings up the shifting hill, one step slipping back for every two taken. At the top, wed turn and look down on the lake.

The Lake.

Blue water, on and on and on. There was no way to see the other side. It stretched left and right and forward till it met the sky. The breeze off the lake blew up the dune, warming and lifting from the hot sand.

Lifting.

There was so much rising air that hang gliders would launch off the top and glide high over the foot of the dune all the way to the waters edge, banking and stalling and turning. You could fly off that dune if you had the right wing.

We did the next best thing: we ran.

We ran so fast that our legs could not keep up with our bodies; wed pitch forward, heels-over-head, and end sprawled on the warm slope. Once we caught our breath wed continue the downhill race.

That exhilaration, that rush followed by a plunge in the always cool lake marked me, and I have been constantly drawn back to the shores of Lake Michigan.

When I turned 45, I felt something pull at me, goading me to take on something bigger than myself, to challenge myself in a big way. I considered long hikes on some mountain trail, but every time I contemplated weeks in the woods, I thought, I will miss the lake. Then it occurred to me: why not take on the lake? Why not walk its shoreline day after day until I had walked all of it, captured it in my muscles, recorded it in my body? Begin the adventure in Chicago and walk until the Windy City skyline disappeared behind me, then months later see the same skyline appear as I approached it from the opposite direction having fully encircled this Great Lake.

So, it was decided. In the fall of 2008, I told my husband, Jim, Next year, Im going to walk all the way around Lake Michigan.

He paused for a moment, then asked, Well, shouldnt we discuss this?

I simply said, No.

It had been decided. It was the adventure that I must have.

I am a wife and the mom of two boys, Ben and Lucas. They were both teenagers when I decided to undertake the Lake Trek. I had worked in medical research when they were little, but was able to stay at home with them when my husband got his first job after residency. I enjoyed the privilege of being there for my boys, to pack their lunches, drive them around, be the mom who volunteered for things at their school. Now Ben had just gone off for his first year of college, and Lucas was driving himself to school. The nest was emptying.

It was time to take on something that would challenge me physically, emotionally, mentally. To take on something that could be completed instead of the household chores that never ended. I didnt think my husband would understand the need to do this. Hes a steady guy. He has cold cereal every morning, and stirs it the same way. The sound of the spoon scraping the side of the bowl, lifting the cereal, then the bowl turning an exact partial turn on the countertop until it has made a complete revolution greets me every morning as I wait for the coffee to brew.

No, I didnt want to discuss it to death. Hed want me to justify it, to have it pass his test of being necessary.

I thought about the piles of dishes and laundry, the meals I cooked almost every night, the taxiing of kids that I had done for years. I did not regret doing these things. But years of constantly giving can chip away at who you are, and it seemed like a good time in our family life for me to launch out on my own. I wanted to test and push myself, and to make sure I still knew who I was apart from my identity within my wonderful family.

The Lake Trek called to me.

That fall, I began jogging several times a week until the snow started falling. Through the winter, I trained at the gym. I built up muscle mass and dropped a few pounds. My stamina increased, and I began to feel stronger in my body.

Through the winter, I studied maps and satellite images of the lakeshore, the beaches, steel mills, oil refineries, major and minor cities, stretches of parks, the wild expanse of the southern edge of Michigans Upper Peninsula. I decided to map out the coming journey in segments, sections to walk over four seasons.

And I decided to always keep as close to the water as possible.

I would begin and end in Chicago on the tip of Navy Pier, an urban peninsula that reaches over a half mile out on the lake. I would trek around the lake counter-clockwise, the lake always holding my left hand.

This is my journey that became A 1,000-Mile Walk on the Beach.

Walk with me.

Segment 1

March 1620

Chicago, IL to Union Pier, MI

72 miles in 5 days

Total Trek Mileage: 72 miles

Heading to Chicago

To begin my hike around Lake Michigan, I rode the train into Chicago. Usually, when driving into the city, I pop in a CD of Carl Sandburgs poem Windy City as I approach the Chicago Skyway. The skyway is an elevated 8-mile section of highway that rises over the Calumet River south of the city. It is from here that I get my first glimpse of the Chicago skyline across the lake.

Sandburg is known for shorter works the six-lined Fog (about fog and cat feet) comes to mind but his poem about Chicago is over fifteen minutes long. The recording I have is of Carl Sandburg reading his poem. When he says the name of the windy city, he intones it: Chicaaaooogoooo. He sing-songs the name, pulls it like taffy. The poem chronicles the rise of the city by the lake, the building and breaking down, the people, the neighborhoods, the stockyards and steel. And the jazz.

Chicaaaooogooooo.

A large part of Chicagos appeal is that it sits on the edge of Lake Michigan. The city has gone to great lengths to preserve its relationship with the lake. The first map of Chicago drawn up in 1836 had Public Ground A Common to Remain Forever Open, Clear, and Free of any buildings, or Other Obstruction whatever written along the lakefront land. This phrase set forth a precedent to preserve Chicagos shore.