Ever heard of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore?  Marge and I spent the past weekend there with a couple friends, and we concluded that it is truly another of the best-kept secrets about Michigan—secret, of course, to non-Michiganders.  So maybe I ought to just stop here and not tell more about this wonderful place.  But since it’s not nice to keep secrets, I guess I’ll have to reveal that Sleeping Bear Dunes is probably the most dramatic setting in the state for experiencing the beauty of the Lake Michigan shoreline.

Early May is still a little too soon for full spring foliage, so it’s a great time of the year for birding—before the woods fills up with it’s green drapery.  Evidence of the work of the giant pileated woodpecker is everywhere: large oval-shaped holes in dead trees where the crow-sized bird leaves mounds of chips on the ground—a dead giveaway of its presence. We didn’t see one this time, but we did hear one drumming away out of sight—sounding like the echo of a distant Gatling gun.  On the backside of a large dune yet devoid of leaves, sound travels a long way.

The early buds in their golden and bronze hues reminded me of the Robert Frost poem I typically afflict my family with at this time of the year, so I did have to afflict my friends with it.  And if you don’t stop reading, you know I’m going to lay it on you!  It does have a lot of meaning, though—Christian meaning that Frost is not typically known for.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Many leaves, when they first emerge, have a golden hue to them before they darken down to the full green of maturity.  This reminded Frost of nature’s original “golden age”—the paradise of the Garden of Eden before the Fall.  His generalized conclusion is that the golden stage of every good thing we experience never remains.  Missing, of course, is the hope of the coming golden age when Jesus will return to remove forever the curse that Frost alludes to.

So while it is true that the first golden blush of spring will give way to green, it does herald the coming glory of summer at Sleeping Bear when the golden sands will stand in rich contrast to the almost infinite shades of green provided by the conifers, hardwoods, shrubs, and grasses that bound the verges of this awesome natural wonder.

Like the fabled white cliffs of Dover on the English Channel, Sleeping Bear’s monumental dunes often send out invitations to fliers who travel the northern air corridors above the Great Lakes.  I recall being on a westbound flight on a crystal clear day when I had the opportunity to pick up the dunes a hundred miles to the north and keep them in my sight until the plane was well beyond Green Bay, Wisconsin—almost 130 miles away!  Of course it helps that the tallest dune towers upward some 400 feet.

So here I extend my own invitation for you to come and experience another of the countless wonders of God’s creation.

See you outdoors!

Dean