My family ushered in the summer Memorial Day weekend with a day trip to Kelleys Island in Lake Erie. We closed it out Labor Day weekend with a day trip to Toledo and the National Museum of the Great Lakes. My takeaway from the visit: Immense respect for the role the Great Lakes region played in economy and nation building during the industrial era of the late 19th and first half of the 20th century. The work that happened here was dirty, dangerous, and with hindsight there are plenty of criticisms to lay at the feet of industrialization. But it was an era of ambition and sacrifice and this region, with a variety of rich resources, drove much of the growth and evolution. It was iron ore, coal and limestone that shifted the arc of the industrial age and the Lakes provided the means to move raw material as well as the steel that would build vehicles, railways, infrastructure and eventually skyscrapers across the United States. 

The museum has exhibits on exploration and settlement of the region, expansion and industry, safeguard and support, shipwrecks and safety, and maritime technology. Topics that particularly caught my interest and are worthy of their own posts: the history and role of the U.S. Coast Guard in the region; icebreaking in the Lakes to preserve shipping channels; and the Great Lakes most famous shipwreck – the SS Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior in November of 1975. Stay tuned!

By coming in the summer months, we could also tour two boats docked in the Maumee River next to the museum – the Col. James M. Schoonmaker and the Ohio. The Schoonmaker particularly makes an impression. It’s enormous, austere, and stalwart. At 619 feet long and with a carrying capacity of 12,200 gross tons, it’s not hard to imagine the cavernous cargo hold filled with coal, grains and minerals as the boat plows through Great Lakes waters on routes from Duluth to Detroit to Toledo and back.

Before heading home we had a late lunch at the nationally famous Tony Packo’s Cafe. The restaurant is known for its Hungarian food and over 1,000 hot dog buns signed by celebrities and politicians over the past 50 years that adorn the walls (spoiler: the signed buns look real, but are fake). The restaurant was originally made famous by the character Corporal Maxwell Klinger in M*A*S*H, who referenced Tony Packo’s six times in the series (the actor Jamie Farr was from Toledo). 

The Midwest is often the brunt of jokes, overlooked, or underappreciated. It’s a region with numerous challenges of a wide variety. But it is a place – one with character, heart, and a rich history that I want my girls to know, analyze, and respect. 

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In an earlier post on the impact of climate change on the Great Lakes, I shared very real challenges that the Great Lakes and region will face in the years ahead. I closed the post foreshadowing this post on a different question: Will the Great Lakes be a climate refuge?

The International Economic Partnership estimates that 1.2 billion people will be displaced by climate change by 2050. In the United States, access to water is starting to impact growth in places like Arizona where earlier this year Phoenix had to slow housing construction due to lack of water resources. In the past 20 years over 5,000 people have been killed by major hurricanes. Tornadoes, heat waves and major wildfires have become routine events across the country. There will be a future of climate migrants, “climigrants”, driven to seek new places to live.

withered ground
Photo by James Frid on Pexels.com

There are reasons that climigrants might choose the Great Lakes region:

  1. Fresh water access. Sharing my often repeated fact: The Great Lakes hold 84% of all surface freshwater in North America.
  2. Less extreme weather events than some areas of the country. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has an interactive natural disaster risk map that shows the Great Lakes region as remarkably free of threats compared with much of the country.
  3. Moderating climate. Those famous, frigid Great Lakes winters? They still happen, but temperatures are rising and snow and frost days are declining. By 2050, average temperatures in the region are expected to increase by 3 to 5 degrees since 1951. The number of frost-free days increased by 16 days between 1951 and 2018. This National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) page summarizes Great Lakes region climate change headlines.
  4. At present, more affordable housing than many places in the US. According to Zillow, the average current home value in the Great Lakes region ranges from a high in Minnesota of $307,000 to a low in Ohio of $219,700. Most all Great Lakes states are ranked between 20th and 40th among US states.
body of water under blue and white skies
Photo by Matt Hardy on Pexels.com

There are also reasons that the idea of a climate haven or refuge might be too hyped:

  1. Per my past post, negative impacts of climate change on the Great Lakes. And some threats may grow faster or differently than anticipated – e.g. this summer’s Canadian wildfire smoke.
  2. Climate politics. This varies state to state in the region. Unfortunately, here in Ohio, policies from the current statehouse and governor have not been climate-friendly including a bill the governor jammed through in December 2022 redefining natural gas as a “green energy”.  
  3. Decaying infrastructure. Drinking water, sewer and stormwater management improvements are needed in many places. Illinois and Ohio lead the list of states with the largest number of lead water lines still in use. Investment is needed in properties to make them livable and strategy needed to keep housing affordable proportional to regional jobs.
  4. Economics. To attract new people who will stay, a wide range of job opportunities need to exist. Growing remote work opens up new avenues for some demographics but some Great Lakes economies remain fragile with the decades-long decline in manufacturing in the region.

I am grateful to live in this geographical region. There is an opportunity to attract a new generation of people seeking a stable, safe, livable place to settle. But for this to happen, there will need to be the vision, plan and political and popular will to prepare for it and reinvent ourselves and our way of living. I hope we find the courage to make this shift.

worms eyeview of green trees
Photo by Felix Mittermeier on Pexels.com
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When we moved to Cleveland in 2014 and I saw Lake Erie up close, one of the things that took me by surprise was the color of the water. Standing on shore and looking out in the summer months, in many places the most visible stretch of water has a gorgeous blue color – it can be close to a turquoise. I’ve now seen this color in Lake Michigan, and memorably in Lake Superior, as well.

The color of Great Lakes waters varies tremendously of course – season to season, day to day, even hour to hour depending on weather and lake conditions. It can have a steel color, a deep green-brown, a dark blue.

But the turquoise, gem-like blue is something that many people notice and comment on – usually with enthusiastic disbelief.  People who grew up on the shores of the Great Lakes in past decades describe returning to one now and finding clear water in remarkable shades of blue. 

People flying cross-country might even notice it from an airplane. A cousin of mine flying between the west coast and New York City described looking out the plane window and being completely disoriented.  “We didn’t know where we were!  It didn’t make sense that we were above the Carribbean!”

I’ve been reluctant to share with people what I have learned about that bright turquoise blue.  Unfortunately, this striking color and clarity is not a sign of lake health as we would be inclined to think.  Instead, as Dan Egan writes in The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, it’s a sign that “the life is being literally sucked out of the lakes”.

A write-up from a 2019 segment on Chicago’s WGN 9 TV station summarizes a number of key points.

Many people think that water appears blue due to the sky. There is an element of light and refraction that can impact the appearance of a body of water. But it’s also the case that water radiates blue.

Water color is impacted by things in the water. Algae, decaying material and sediment can all be churned up in the water causing a color to shift. 

It’s also impacted by things not in the water. In the case of the Great Lakes, it’s the absence of healthy algae that used to be omnipresent in the water that has lightened or made many of the lakes “more blue”. The criminals in this storyline are the zebra and quagga mussels that arrived in the lakes sometime around the late 1980s and have since spread relatively uncontested. In a stunning statistic, scientists say there are so many mussels in Lake Michigan that they can filter the entire volume of the lake in four to six days, and they have reduced the amount of light-absorbing algae by over 50%.

So now when I look down into the lake and see clear waters and white sandy bottoms, I feel a tug of mixed emotions: a socialized response of what is thought to be beautiful waterscape and an ecologist’s gut feeling that all is not as it should be.

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A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times had an article proposing five alternative, less crowded national protected lands to consider in place of some of the most visited national parks. Their proposed substitution for Acadia National Park in Maine: Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan.

Last summer we spent three days on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We rented an Airbnb in Marquette, a college town (home of Northern Michigan University), and a terrific base for a family vacation in the UP.

One day we drove 40 minutes east to Munising and took a 2.5 hour boat ride with Pictured Rocks Cruises and saw the lakeshore from the waters of Lake Superior. Written into federal law in 1966 and opened in 1972, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore was the first National Lakeshore. It is named for the 15 miles of cliffs rising out of the lake but the full park is over 71,000 acres of land. If our girls had been older, we would have considered the spectacular option of seeing the lakeshore from a kayak; there are a number of companies that offer different types of paddling packages. 

The lakeshore is nothing less than stunning. Sandstone cliffs display layer upon layer of geologic time while mineral seepage creates the multitude of colors that give the “pictured rocks” their name – red and orange from iron, green and blue from copper, black from manganese and white from limonite. The cliffs have been shaped over millions of years by land, water and wind resulting in varied formations – arches, caves and edges that look carved with specific force and intent.

There is one particular sandstone outcropping that has gathered attention for decades. It is known as Chapel Rock. The rock pillar has stood away from the mainland shore since 1940 when the natural rock bridge that once attached it collapsed. On top of the pillar there is a singular, steadfast pine tree standing proud. Get closer and you will see that the tree remains connected to the mainland by its root system. The sight has tremendous impact both visually and emotionally: The strength and endurance, but also fragility, of nature all bound up together. 

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On Thursday June 29th, we left Cleveland, bound for a long weekend in Northern Michigan to visit with friends and drop my older daughter off at summer camp near Traverse City. The day was one of several poor air quality days that we’ve had this summer in Northeast Ohio as the Canadian wildfire smoke made its way to our skies as well as those of millions of others. As we got in the car I paused for a minute wondering if I should dig our KN95 masks back out.  

The drive was unsettling. My younger daughter described it as “foggy” but it wasn’t a wet, grey mist. It was a dry haze with an orange tint. It felt sinister. The smoky air persisted the whole route across I-90 in Ohio and then as we turned and headed north into and across Michigan. 

white smoke wallpaper
Photo by Rafael Guajardo on Pexels.com

Luckily, the air quality improved on Friday and through the weekend, but we know that the smoke will return.

And while we’d all like to pretend otherwise, we’re all thinking the same thing: Will this be the new normal? Is this another dimension of our climate crisis that seems to be accelerating ever faster and faster? 

Let’s just say it: It’s a dark thought, and it’s hard to sit with. But by saying it aloud, we acknowledge that this frightening challenge is part of our shared reality. And by recognizing it as such, maybe those of us who feel despair surrounding climate change can lessen our individualized emotions and know the burden is shared.

On Saturday morning we drove to Frankfort, on Lake Michigan. We headed for the public beach where children poured out of our cars and gleefully headed for the shoreline and sand play. Childhood joy was on display.

The air was much clearer, but there was still some smoke lingering. It was enough that, when looking out at the lake, that bright horizon line I often mention wasn’t bright. The horizon wasn’t actually visible much at all, just gradations of blue between water and sky. 

What lay ahead in the distance was unseen and unknown.

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For centuries before the arrival of explorers and traders from Europe and the Far East around 1615, Indigenous peoples of many different tribes lived in the Great Lakes region. They were economically self-sustaining in their woodland and water environment. The earliest interactions with explorers and traders were dominated by fur-trading, and for over a century these interactions were mostly transactional. It was around the American Revolution that relations began to deteriorate as white settlers encroached on Indigenous lands. The power of disease and weaponry that white settlers brought killed and disempowered Indigenous peoples and eventually rendered most of the region under white authority.

It would be a disrespectful effort for me to try and acknowledge broadly the Indigenous peoples of the entire Great Lakes region; it would lump together an enormous swath of diverse peoples and histories. For more information on specifically acknowledging the Indigenous peoples of Northeast Ohio where I live, I turned to one of the most outstanding institutions in this region: the Cleveland Museum of Art.

I think that their Indigenous Peoples and Land Acknowledgement page along with the Q and A they include is thoughtful, respectful and directly states the obvious: land acknowledgements are often rightfully criticized for being too little, too late. However, for me, given a choice between saying “It is important to acknowledge those who lived on this land before me, many of whom lost their lives with European arrival and subsequent conquest of the land,” or saying “A land acknowledgement is an insincere, meaningless woke gesture”, I will choose the former.  I will choose it because it is the right thing to do.

The legacy of the people who lived on the land here for centuries prior to European arrival is omnipresent and yet often unrecognized. The name Ohio comes from an Onondowa’ga’ (Seneca) term meaning “beautiful river”. The Miami River and Miami University in Ohio are a direct reference to the Myaamia (Miami) peoples who lived in the region before forcibly signing away the right to their land.  

Here is my land acknowledgement, with credit to the Cleveland Museum of Art for the final two paragraphs: 

While today it is me standing on the shores of Lake Erie and looking out at the water and dark horizon line, for centuries prior there were others who stood and looked out at the same inland sea. Many of the Indigenous peoples who lived on this land were eventually dispossessed of it. Their existence has often been diminished to a short chapter in the arc of North American history, as it has been told by those with the power to craft the story. With my whole heart and mind, I acknowledge their own stories.   

These are the nations that signed Ohio treaties in the 1700s and 1800s: the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi of the Anishinaabeg; Delaware; Seneca and Cayuga of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois); Myaamia (Miami); Kaskasjia, Piankeshaw, and Wea, today of the Peoria; Shawnee; and Wyandotte – along with the Erie and ancient Whittlesey peoples.

These are the Indigenous peoples who continue to occupy land and urban spaces in Northeast Ohio today: the Choctaw, Dine (Navajo), Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), Lakota (Sioux), Odawa, and Ojibwe nations as well as others.

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When I started this blog, my Uncle Mike wrote to me and said: I don’t know a lot about the Great Lakes but I have read about the famous wolf and moose study on Isle Royale.  

I had never heard about this study and frankly was only peripherally aware of Isle Royale National Park. Lo and behold, about six weeks later, I’m at the library with my girls, and on the shelf in the young adult nonfiction section is a book titled The Wolves and Moose of Isle Royale: Restoring an Island Ecosystem with text by Nancy Castaldo and photographs by Morgan Heim.  

I’m sharing the book cover text because it’s a great layperson overview and I couldn’t do a better job summarizing – all credit to Nancy Castaldo and Clarion Books:

“On Isle Royale, a remote island national park surrounded by Lake Superior, a thrilling drama is unfolding between wolves and moose, the island’s ultimate predator and prey. For over sixty years, in what has been known as the longest study of a predator-prey relationship in the world, scientists have observed the importance of wolves to Isle Royale’s unique ecology. But due to illness and underlying factors, the population of wolves on the island has dropped while the number of moose has increased, putting the Isle Royale ecosystem in jeopardy. 

In order to restore the island’s ecological balance, scientists are stepping in… If scientists are successful in growing the island’s wolf population, they can potentially restore the island’s balance and explore ways to repair other damaged ecosystems.”

A couple takeaways from the book:

Isle Royale is the real deal when talking about a remote island wilderness ripe for a living ecologic laboratory. 278 miles from Ontario, 61 miles from Houghton, Michigan and 40 miles from Grand Portage, Minnesota, it is the least visited of all the United States’ 63 national parks. There is little human presence on the island (one lodge, one food establishment, no cell service and close to no Wi-Fi) and it closes for over six months in the wintertime due to inaccessability. 

As always, the facts of the story illustrate the interconnectedness of the natural world, of which we are a part. On the island, the wolves eat the moose.  If there are not enough wolves, the moose overpopulate. The overpopulated moose overeat the trees and bushes on the island, eventually causing the moose to start suffering from starvation and destroying food and habitat for other animals. The ecosystem becomes imbalanced and unhealthy. 

The predictable debate that occurred on whether to reintroduce wolves to the island is really part of bigger questions around environmental ethics. What is wilderness? What are the reasons that humans should intervene in ecological management of wilderness?

creek in a forest
Photo by Andrei Tanase on Pexels.com

In the end, the argument that resulted in the wolf reintroduction project that started in 2018 and that continues at this time rested on the words of the famous naturalist Aldo Leopold: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

The book itself feels very accessible in its design – a photojournalistic structure with gorgeous pictures supporting text that is broken up well with headings and boxes. The book left me hopeful that our young generations might still see benefits of a physical book versus just online content. It was such a joy to find the book sitting on the library shelf that day. It felt a bit like it was there waiting for me. 

This post is dedicated to my Uncle Mike and his enduring love of the natural world.

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What makes an island special?  A couple things come to mind: Given their geographic distinction, islands are sometimes home to rare species or specialized ecosystems and for that reason can be important places of ecological research. They are often rest stops and nesting sites for birds. Islands may, due to their isolation, develop specific cultures among people who live or spend significant time there. And finally, their defining feature – land completely surrounded by water – can provide people with a place of rest and respite.

flock of white birds photo during sunset

There are approximately 35,000 islands in the North American Great Lakes. Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron is the largest freshwater island in the world at 1,068 square miles (it’s 100 miles across!).  This past weekend we spent a day on  a much smaller one – Kelleys Island in Lake Erie (4 square miles). 

It was all the things you want for a day trip – easy drive (90 minutes from our house), easy parking (in Marblehead, OH), and easy ferry ride (22 minutes). The ferry itself was a sensory experience for my girls – wind whipping hair around, the smell of fuel, the sound of the water as the boat cut through it. The famous Cedar Point roller coasters in Sandusky could be seen faintly in the distance, steel curling and arching like ribbon loops.

Upon arrival, we rented a golf cart and puttered north to Kelleys Island State Park. Our first stop was the Glacial Grooves Geological Preserve, the most widely known attraction on the island. In fact, the preserve is home to the most famous glacial grooves in the world and it was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1967. They are really quite stunning. Deeply and smoothly carved, the grooves look human-made and not the product of an ice sheet that retreated from the region approximately 14,000 years ago.      

After the grooves, we strolled over to the North Shore Loop Hiking Trail and down to the beach where you can rent kayaks and paddleboards. The girls were very excited about the golf cart and so we took a drive, first circling the eastern part of the island. We ended up finding the Kelleys Island Wine Co. and purchased lunch from the KI Cantina there. We settled into a brightly colored picnic table in the shade. The girls enjoyed looking at the cows and goats in adjacent pastures and watching people play horseshoes. We then circled the western part of the island and landed back at the main commercial area where we popped in some shops before heading back to the mainland. 

A Great Lake + an island + a golf cart + saltwater taffy from Missy Magoo’s Candy and Gift Shop = a solid start to summer.

top view photo of sliced watermelons
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I shared in one of my first posts that it was a solo retreat in January 2021 that launched a deeper relationship for me with the Great Lakes. I still seek that alone time on Lake Erie as a retreat from this complex and sometimes bewildering world.  

Eighteen months after my cottage in Geneva, Ohio, I returned east to Madison in September 2022 to stay at a tiny Airbnb right on the lake (for $95 a night!) called the Lemon Drop Cottage. Cuteness alert: despite being a sour fruit, cottage decor could not have been more sweet and cheerful! During this 36-hour retreat, I started writing content for this blog, read, and walked along the lake at Lake Erie Bluffs and Lakeshore Reservation, both Lake County Metroparks. 

I love walking generally – I find it tremendously restorative.  While I’ve never been able to truly get into a meditation practice, I find walking to be meditative.  The rhythm of the body in movement, feet cycling, and outdoor air flowing through the nose and lungs sets a cadence for my thoughts and emotions as they run their course. This feeling of self in the world – of presence – is especially the case if I can walk along the lake.

In her book 52 Ways to Walk, Annabel Streets references an expansive 2019 study that looked at the well-being effects of spending time by the sea. A dataset that included over 26,000 people living in England concluded that those living within a mile of the sea had better mental health and greater happiness markers than those inland. But from my read, the saltwater doesn’t appear to be the key variable. Things like environments with a sensory rhythm (waves), specific light patterns, and ambient sounds (birds, water) come up in descriptions of why the sea makes people feel good. I would argue that if it’s these things, then our inland seas offer them all (the wave action is real on the Great Lakes, albeit different in kind).

And for me, I personally love the lush forests that you often wind through leading right up to the lake.  Walking and then resting in the deep shade of a tree, looking out at the lake = a pure and honest contentment.     

On March 25, 2023 the New York Times published a worthwhile opinion article by the actor Andrew McCarthy titled “Whatever the Problem, It’s Probably Solved by Walking”. The piece included many of the profound thoughts from the ages about walking including an observation from the great John Muir: “I only went out for a walk… going out, I found, was really going in.” 

The precious summer months are here. Water or trees or city sidewalk: Go out. Go out. Go out.

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I love when you find a non-fiction book that weaves multiple engaging storylines together in a readable, cohesive, and impactful way. I found all of these things when I picked journalist Dan Egan’s 2017 book The Death and Life of the Great Lakes off the shelves of my favorite independent bookstore in Cleveland, Loganberry Books.

A twist on Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the book is a testament to both the positive and negative impact humans have had on the ecology of the Great Lakes (mostly negative, to be real). Egan opens the book recounting the incredible ambition and optimism of the late 1950s that propelled one of the most expansive infrastructure projects in history: the digging of the St. Lawrence Seaway. The idea was to dig a nautical expressway through the St. Lawrence river that would open up a shipping channel from the Atlantic Ocean and coast and would drive Great Lakes cities to become dynamic domestic and international commercial ports. Project leaders, politicians and media figures boldly talked about this “Fourth Seacoast” for North America. 

But the ships and great port cities never really materialized. And the reason is a real kicker. In a brilliant short vignette, Egan tells the story of a gas station attendant turned truck driver named Malcolm Purcell McLean who one day in 1956 put into action an idea he had dreamed up while sitting in his truck watching stevedores haphazardly and inefficiently load ships at a port. He took an old oil tanker, installed a raised platform on it, and built a structure that could hold 58 trailer trucks whose tires had been removed. The structure could hold 58 containers. It was still a number of years before this invention completely took hold of the shipping industry. But it was also still a number of years before the Seaway was completed. And by the time it was fully operational, the channel and locks built were too narrow for the container ships that came to dominate the shipping industry in the 1960s. Whomp whomp.

green and gray evergreen cargo ship

Tragically what did materialize from the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 was ecologic disaster. The cargo that was delivered by international ships came via the millions of gallons of ballast waters that kept ships’ weight steady and balanced while sailing and were then released near and in ports when they picked-up cargo. In those millions of gallons of water were millions of living organisms from around the globe – some of which found new life in the freshwaters of the Great Lakes.    

Many of the storylines that follow in the book are so good that they are worthy of their own blog posts – a scientist who singlehandedly found a way to rid the Great Lakes of sea lamprey (do not look this creature up unless you want to give yourself quite a fright), the incredible effort to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes, and the complex root causes of Lake Erie’s toxic algae problem that endanger drinking water. You can wait for my synopses of these storylines, or you can head to your local library or independent bookstore for this very worthwhile book.

body of water under blue sky
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