Watching a sand dune is like observing ocean surf filmed in extreme slow motion. The dune serves as a stop-action photograph of nature`s restlessness, changing radically within a human lifetime but imperceptively in the course of a day.
Molded by prevailing winds, dunes spread and grow, burying all vegetation. Then they pause, while grasses and trees again assert themselves. Almost everyone within comfortable driving distance of the Great Lakes has heard how the Chippewas gave Sleeping Bear Dune its name. That legend is the one thing about it that remains solid, while the dune itself must bend and move as the air and Lake Michigan waves constantly alter its shape.
The story, of course, concerns a mother bear and her two cubs, who fled a forest fire in what is now Wisconsin. They swam miles into Lake Michigan, and the mother eventually pulled far ahead of her flagging offspring.
The mother climbed a bluff to watch for the young ones, but they succumbed to the rough waters and drowned. Today, that solitary dune on the Michigan shore where the mother waited is called ”Sleeping Bear,” and her luckless cubs are the Manitou islands, about 10 miles offshore.
`Perched` dunes
Approximately 11,800 years ago, after the last of the great glaciers that formed the basins of the Great Lakes receded, the leeward side of Lake Michigan was left with a sandy coast. Westerly winds moving unimpeded across 50 miles of water built beach dunes on low-lying shores. Where sands deposited by glaciers already had built lofty bluffs, the piles of sand covering those heights are called ”perched” dunes. The Sleeping Bear is one of them, rising in spots more than 450 feet above the lake.
Thanks to the National Park Service and lumberman Pierce Stocking, the public can comfortably tour the upper surfaces of Sleeping Bear and its surrounding dunes.
In the `60s, Stocking built a road through the area (about 20 miles west of Traverse City) so he could share the vistas with everyone. In 1977, a year after his death, the road officially became part of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
Tourists pick up the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive near the juncture of Michigan Highway 22 and Michigan 109, approximately two miles north of a handsome, weathered-wood visitors center here. The center itself is worth a stop, because well-mounted photo displays, a slide presentation and detailed exhibits bring the lore and geology of Sleeping Bear to life.
Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive covers 7.4 miles on a one-way loop of asphalt dotted with breathtaking overlooks and intriguing points of interest, making the area far more accessible than hard-core nature purists probably would like it to be.
After crossing a Disney World-perfect covered bridge, the route pauses for a view of crystalline Glen Lake, which was once a lobe of Lake Michigan until a sandbar separated it from the main body of water.
On a clear day, the dune-overlook a few hundred yards up the road provides a view of the Manitous and Sleeping Bear Bay to the north. But the most striking vista is of the dunes themselves, wave upon wave of buff-colored mini-mountains that, from certain angles, can look as limitless and forbidding as the Sahara.
”A sand dune is simply a pile of sand deposited by the wind,” says the pamphlet that visitors pick up at the drive entrance, but as accurate as that prosaic observation might be, the overall effect is stunning.
Bearberries, buffaloberries
The pamphlet also encourages the camcorder set to examine the foreground, where plants such as bearberry and buffaloberry hold the sand in check and
”ghost forests” of dead birch and beech trees, once buried and suffocated by dunes, now poke through the surface like accusing fingers.
The highlight of the tour is an overlook enabling visitors to stare directly at the Sleeping Bear dune itself, a mound of sand higher than the rest. Far below the wooden observation platform, the huge sand plateau drops almost vertically more than 400 feet. From that perspective-higher than the rooftops of most Loop buildings-the pounding surf resembles a string of dental floss.
A Coast Guard station maritime museum at nearby Sleeping Bear Point stands ready to fascinate those who can spare the time for a brief side trip. Some will depart with their hair standing on end, because the history of Great Lakes shipping, particularly in that part of Lake Michigan with its narrow passages and capricious winds, terrorized and sometimes destroyed even the most skillful sailors.
A series of 12 hiking trails lead the more adventurous deeply into the dunes and the surrounding forests, leaving the roar of RVs far behind. A park service brochure explains that Pierce Stocking Drive is open to traffic from mid-May to early November, that some of the hiking trails are available only in winter and that numerous sports-from hunting to canoeing-are allowed in certain parts of the area.
Of course, the brochure also bristles with warnings. Interior Department publications tend to read like the detailed, lawyerly caveats that come with major appliances. The Sleeping Bear Dunes version discusses perils ranging from poison ivy to landslides to contaminated water, but nowhere does it mention that all those who go there are bound to get sand in their shoes.
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For more information, call Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, 616-326-5134.
