Lake Michigan
By Loreen Niewenhuis
My earliest memory Lake Michigan is of a six-year-old me running down a towering sand dune in the shimmering summer heat, flipping heels-over-head to land sprawled on warm sand. I ran into the cool lake, jumped through the shallows. The water grabbed at my belly, and I threw myself into its cool embrace. I felt completely alive that day, as every part of me connected with the lake formed by the mile-high glaciers ten thousand years ago.
The shores of Lake Michigan are a place that I continually return to in order to feel connected, to feel whole and centered. When I turned 45, I needed to break my routine, to push and challenge myself, and the lake once again called to me. I pulled out a map and planned to get to know the lake step by step, to record its shoreline in my body, to be as much a part of the lake as the lake was a part of me.
When I decided to take on the challenge of walking all the way around Lake Michigan – a journey of 1,000 rugged miles – I trained hard to get in shape. I ran outside until winter, then continued on an elliptical at the gym through the cold months.
Running has never been enjoyable for me. Yes, I can crank out a couple of miles at a respectable pace, but when my running friends talk about ‘the bliss of running,’ I think, Oh shut up! I usually mix my running with sports so I’m able to concentrate on something other than the sound of my feet hitting the pavement.
The first few hundred miles of my Lake Trek were tough. The weather varied from below freezing to above 70 degrees, and the terrain ranged from the industrial hellscape of Gary and Whiting, Indiana, to sandy beaches, to rocky shoreline, to mountainous sand dunes. I struggled to keep going, and I bargained with myself to make it the next couple of miles, to that river, over that sand dune.
“Get there,” I told myself, “and I’ll take a break and pull out the chocolate.”
Finally, I reached a point where bargaining was no longer necessary. The physical pain from hiking on sand and rock, up and down dunes, and along the side of roads for hundreds of miles finally fell away. I could walk all day while the waves reached toward my boots, and the ground seemed to flow beneath me, the world turning as I hovered above the shoreline. I let go of sore muscles and blisters and the heavy pack on my back. And I opened myself to the moment as I walked around the fifth largest lake in the world.
Around this time, I saw my first bear tracks. I placed my hand in the sand next to the depression left by the enormous paw and studied the deep, narrow gouges at the top left by long claws. I have a large hand, but it looked petite next to the mark of the bear.
I was walking where bears walked.
In the shallows, large salmon swam, and I walked with them, too. Deer were startled by the sounds of my boots through the brush and they flashed their tails at me as they high hurdled into the dense forest. At night, I listened to the hooted messages of owls and coyote howling after a kill. I splashed the cool lake water on my face and neck to cool me.
By this time, several of my toenails had popped off and I had nursed epic blisters. But with each mile, I grew stronger and my muscles complained less. Just up the shoreline from my visit with the tracks of the bear, my body and mind stopped struggling and clicked over to being able to fully enjoy the adventure.
Although many long and difficult days and miles loomed ahead of me, I had liberated my mind from pain, had toughened up enough to keep walking all day without negotiation. Hiking the shoreline became my home, the movement almost restive to me. The pulsing waves set the rhythm of my strides.
My hike all the way around Lake Michigan was 1,019 miles total. It was a wonderful escape, and it was also the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. It was joy swirled with pain. It was both isolating and connecting.
And, yes, it finally brought bliss.
The book about Loreen Niewenhuis’s adventure, A 1,000 Mile Walk on the Beach: One Woman’s Trek of the Perimeter of Lake Michigan, was published by Crickhollow Books this year and has been featured on the Heartland Indie Bestseller List. It is available wherever books are sold. Learn more about me, my work, and my book tour at http://LakeTrek.com. Please “Like” Loreen Niewenhuis’s Facebook page to keep current on issues affecting our Great Lakes.
