Beyond the politics of low water, weeds and beaches
is a more-epic storyof Great Lakes ebb and flow.
In this saga, green herons play and nature gets busy
bracing itself against brute-force waves and winds.
Why? So sugar sand can rule … forever and ever.

By Lori Hall Steele
WATER’S FLUX
      For me, nothing quite evokes summer’s chi, the essence of years of vacationing Up North, more than a small scalloped-edge black-and-white snapshot. It was the mid-’60s—a time when we all looked like Kennedys in photos—and my dad is carrying me on his shoulders through spiky knee-high beach grass.
      The image undams memory: swimming for days with siblings, sunburnt legs and scooped ice cream, and the grit of sand, everywhere, even in cool white sheets. Cherry fights, cousins and stars reflecting on night water. Unquestioned togetherness.
      Summer is a mosaic of moments, but here in Northern Michigan, it really is largely defined by one thing: the water’s edge. Our shores shape not only our geographic boundaries, but also life and how we live it. We all have scattered pictures of beaches—some are places we merely visit, others are sacred shores. Mine, in the 1960s, are all low tides and wide grassy beaches, small feet submerged in hallowed sun-shimmery water and later feeling snug, towel-wrapped and tuckered out on a lap. Thirty years later are my too-bright high-water moments, silent next to my mother as we watched waves come and go, the only sound, in a year of mourning, a year there was no beach, no buffer, only breakwater rocks between us and that blue lake.
      That is the nature our shores: They shift. They are undirectable, unpredictable except for the certainty of unrest: Waters will rise; waters will fall. Ebb does not exist without flow, and there is no pause at equilibrium, only motion. Only series of moments that belong to a more-epic story of watery flux, a story that began 10,000 years ago with mile-high glaciers moving through the place we call home, carving basins into rock and then melting.
      Today, the Great Lakes are trending low, now in the fourth year of an ebb cycle, nearly as shallow as they were when my dad carried me through that beach grass in the mid-’60s. We are only 2 feet below summer’s average—the height of two baths, drained. It seems such a slight number, especially compared to mile-high ice, and yet the changes this makes along our watery borders can seem acute.
      Researchers who’ve studied 4,000 years of Great Lakes water cycles found that highs and low cycles occur every 30 and 100 years. Lakes Michigan and Huron, whose waters are inseparable, can rise and fall about 6 feet—maybe 3 feet above average to 3 feet below—high to low, during these cycles. At waters’ edge, that difference can mean waves are crashing at the foundations of shoreline homes, one year, threatening to topple and consume them. Other years, the water moves far, far away, exposing hundreds of feet of lake bottom, and nature moves its plants and animals into the new playground.
      This back-and-forth motion churns sands and reshapes shorelines, sometimes burying life, sometimes exhaling it. In 1996, shifting sand unburied an intact ship that ran aground in a 1911 tempest near Manitou Island. “It is hard to believe anything that big was hidden by a sand bar,” said the first diver to glimpse the wreck.
      Lake levels rise and fall because of fluctuations in snowfall, rainfall and temperatures. Years of less-then-average snowpack in northern Ontario, the Upper Peninsula, Wisconsin and Minnesota reduce waters running into the Great Lakes. Mild winters—which we’ve had for several years—mean less icing over, which causes more water to evaporate into the atmosphere.
      Water levels also change seasonally, by about a foot to 18 inches, with highs in early spring after snows melt, and lows in late summer. And then there are flukes: short-term, unexpected changes called seiche or setup, caused mostly by shifts in barometric pressure. Think of a saucer of water, tipped slightly. Atmospheric pressure can push water to one end of, say, Grand Traverse Bay, temporarily and very suddenly, and then it washes back out.
      Our waters are about the certainty of perpetual impermanence. The familiar can morph in a blink. Waters rise, unexpectedly, as ebullient and overflowing as someone in love, or as raging as heartbreak. Other years waters relax and retreat. There is room to lie and listen to waves and feel the sun. Still other years grow dense with spiky grass and geese. Crowded, unpassable.
      There is no way to halt and hold our beaches, no way to interrupt the momentum of tidal motion except through the freeze-frame lenses of camera and memory. This summer the water is low, again, and my pictures reverberate with laughter: My toddler son running top speed from waves that are coming to get him. He’s naked and tiny and delirious with the freedom of it all, of being alive, of the sneaky joy of playing peek-a-boo from behind newly sprouted beach grass.

THE WISDOM OF THE WETLANDS
      Harmony: That’s what those shoreline grasses are all about. They’re nature’s shield against sometimes-fierce Great Lakes waves. Kind of like a big brother sticking up for beaches when waves come a-pounding.
      The roots of wetland plants, particularly bulrush, mat together to form a stable, protective layer that can take the punch when waves hit. Sand collects there, creating a foredune. Later, when lake levels rise again, it’ll all be buried underwater, and those sands will again slowly wash out. Back and forth, in and out.
      Enviro-geeks call this system “littoral transport”—essentially the movement of a shoreline—and the sandy drift actually starts way, way out, at depths to 30 feet. This unseen, underwater sand movement can take years to show up on shore. Human alterations in coastal wetlands and on shorelines—disking up reeds, building breakwaters—can disrupt currents and interrupt that sand-in, sand-out rhythm. The results? They can be drastic. Sometimes, a bluff may suddenly collapse. Other times, beach owners who wanted only to maintain the shore’s sugar-sand state will find, decades later, that their beloved beach—or their neighbors’—is nothing but rocky rubble because the shoreline’s been scoured down to clay.
      The strength of waves is a mathematical product of wind and water depth. Grand Traverse Bay—one of the areas in Michigan where emergent wetlands are most visible—produces the strongest waves possible, thanks to depths reaching to 605 feet. Our waves have immense brawn—which makes those wetland plants especially important protectors of tomorrow’s sugar-sand beaches

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
      Critters of all sizes are making homes on our shores. Wetland vegetation—which sprouted during the past four years of low Great Lakes water levels—provide cozy digs for more than 48 fish species and 24 types of waterfowl. Not to mention those leopard frogs.
      Often, during low-water periods, uplands dry up, and new foliage growing along the shoreline becomes an alternate habitat for wetland-loving birds and mammals. This summer, Traverse City–area locals have reported seeing a small bald eagle nabbing dinner in a coastal wetland, bass spawning in reeds and green herons camping out. Wetlands in general not only filter water runoff, they’re also like miniature rain forests or coral reefs in the diversity of species they feed and shelter. The good old toad and lots of frogs—bullfrogs, green frogs, leopard frogs, pickerel frogs—hop around these coastal wetlands. Birds and waterfowl (locals and migratory flyers alike) adore grassy, reedy shores because they provide food and rest in a place largely safe from predators. The list is long: Black duck, merganser, canvas back, black terns, blue herons. And speaking of dinner, fish are mad about emergent wetlands. Perch lay their eggs on dead and dying bulrush stems; pike only spawn in shallow, warm marshy areas. Here on our shores, you’ll also find walleye, northern and gar pike, smallmouth bass.
      The changing lake levels are crucial to the survival of some, including several federally endangered species. Piping plover are starting to thrive thanks to widened beach areas. Pitcher’s thistle couldn’t live without shifting dunes and water levels that rise and fall, preventing forests and other foliage from overtaking the shoreline. And in Saginaw Bay, also hard hit by emergent wetlands, is prime habitat for the rare eastern prairie fringed orchid. “This system is very dynamic,” says wildlife biologist Mike DeCapita, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in East Lansing. “There are highs and there are lows. Many of the plants and animals that live there, they thrive on that disturbance, they need it. If we stop it, pitcher’s thistle would disappear.

BALANCING AT THE WATER’S EDGE
      Who doesn’t love running across wide sugary sand and plunging into a gorgeous blue lake? Pristine beaches are an Up-North trademark—summer’s finest playground. For a couple decades, high waters have made for clean swimming and Hollywood-fabulous beaches.
      But four low-water years have ushered in weeds and reeds, swamp and muck where sugar sand once ruled. Shoreline owners are mowing beaches, and vacationers expecting pristine waters are grumbling. Beach owners in the two shallowest regions—Grand Traverse and Saginaw bays—organized to vocally protest state and federal environmental protection regulations that prevent such things as mechanical grooming. Hundreds had been cited for illegal grooming. As a result of strong lobbying by a group of beach owners, some rules or permitting processes have been relaxed.
      Even as the debate continues, one thing is certain: just as surely as the waters receded, the lake will rise again—possibly quickly—and flood those swamps.
      Meanwhile, how do we live sensibly with our shores? Those water’s-edge wetlands provide a needed buffer between crashing waves and vulnerable sands. Since about a third of Lake Michigan’s coastline is made up of homes and businesses, private shoreline owners are our first-string beach guardians. (Remaining coastline is wild or publicly owned.) What happens off on those private shores—dredging, breakwalls, tilling, filling—can be the difference between environmental equilibrium and long-term havoc: weirdly eroded shores at the neighbor’s, birds feeling homeless, fish with few places to spawn, a breakdown in nature’s water filtration system.
      Can we still have our beach parties without wrecking Mother Nature’s grand plan? Absolutely, says Scott McEwen, water resource program director for Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council in Petoskey. Here’s how:
      —Locate Your Playground: Determine your recreational needs: Boating? Swimming? Beach blanket bingo? Making Olympic-sized sandcastles? Most folks with 100 feet of shoreline only need about 20 feet of beach in which to accomplish all the water’s-edge fun their hearts desire. Target just that area for fun, and leave the rest to the forces of nature. The result: A healthy balance between carefree beach play and eco-friendliness.
      —Clearing the Way: So you’ve got your 20-foot swath picked out. The kindest, gentlest way to rid it of reeds is by hand pulling them, just like people do in gardens. If you need to bypass the shoreline—say, if you’ve got swales or it’s too mucky to stick in a bare foot without going “eeeew”—then boardwalks or slightly raised paths, dug from adjacent bottomlands, are the best bets. Be sure to get permits as needed, and check guidelines on path and boardwalk widths and lengths.
      —Don’t Rock Out: Moving stones can weaken shorelines, and repositioning rocks to create a breakwall will steal sand from your neighbor’s beach. Trust us: They’ll be grateful to still have that sand—next year, in a decade, and years from now, when their grandchildren are old enough to be telling stories about the way things were, back in the low-tide years of the new millennium.

Published in Traverse magazine.