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.