submitted by Loreen Niewenhuis
My earliest memory of Lake Michigan is running down a sand dune. And not just any dune, the ones at Warren Dunes. When I was a kid they looked insurmountable. My sister, brother and I would scramble up the shifting hill, one step slipping back for every two steps taken. The sand was hot from the sun. At the top, we’d take a moment to catch our breath and look down on the lake.
The Lake.
Blue water on and on and on. There was no way to see the other side, and 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 lift that hang gliders would launch off the top and glide high over the parking lot and to the water, 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. The angle of the dune was such that we ran so fast our legs could not keep up with our bodies, and we would fly, pitching forward, heels over head, over and over until we ended sprawled on the warm slope, panting, flinging the sand off our sweaty arms, digging it out of our ears. It was a blast, so much fun that once we got our breath back, we began to run downhill again.
That exhilaration, that rush, followed by a cool plunge in the fresh, always cool lake marked me, and I haven’t been able to stay away from its shores for long ever since.
When I turned 45 years old, I felt something pull at me, goading me to take on something bigger than myself, to challenge, push, and try myself in big way. I considered long hikes, something epic, some rustic, mountain trail. But then, every time I contemplated weeks in the woods, I thought, I would miss the lake. And then it occurred to me: why not take on the lake? Why not walk its shoreline day after day after day until I had walked all of it, encircled it, captured it in my muscles, recorded it in my bones. Why not begin in Chicago and watch the skyline recede behind me, then so many days later, watch the skyline enlarge as I approached it from the opposite direction.
So, it was decided. In the fall of 2008, I told my husband, Jim. “Next year, I’m going to walk all the way around Lake Michigan,” I said.
He paused for a moment, then said, “Well, shouldn’t we discuss this?”
And I simply said, “No.” It had been decided. It was the adventure that I must have.
I am a wife and mother of two boys, Ben and Lucas. They were both teenagers when I decided to do the Lake Trek. I had worked in medical research when they were little, then was able to stay at home with them when my husband got his first job out of residency. I enjoyed the privilege of being able to be there for the kids, to pack their lunches, drive them to school, be the mom who volunteered for things at their school. Things were changing now. Ben had just gone off for his first year of college, and Lucas had started driving himself to school. The nest was emptying, and I needed to take on something that could be completed.
I think most everyone can relate to this: taking on a task that has a clear beginning, middle, and end. There is a much deeper satisfaction that accompanies this compared to the myriad things we take on daily that are never, truly, complete. Just about every aspect of housework – grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking, the laundry! – is eternal, never ending, relentless. And many jobs out of the house are the same. The work just goes on and on out to the horizon.
It was time to take on something that would challenge me: physically, emotionally, mentally. And to take on something that could be completed.
In the fall of 2008, I began jogging several times a week until the snow finally started falling. Then, through the winter, I trained at the Y. 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 lake shore, the beaches, steel mills, oil refineries, major and minor cities, stretches of parks, the wild expanse of the southern edge of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. And I started mapping out this trip in segments that I would walk over one four season stretch, always keeping as close to the water as possible and, if the day was warm enough, allowing the waves to lap at my bare feet.
I would begin and end in Chicago on the tip of Navy Pier which reaches over a half mile onto the lake. I would trek around the lake counter-clockwise, the lake always holding my left hand.
I began my journey on March 16, 2009 and finished it on September 26, 2009. I hiked the lake in ten segments spread out over 7 months for a total of 64 days hiking 1,019 miles. It was quite an adventure.
Read about Loreen’s entire journey over at her blog at LakeTrek.Blogspot.com
