.

2012-02-21T12:58:00.000-08:00

This winter has been so mild. I went to the beach about a month ago on a day when it was in the 40's to replenish my stone supply. There wasn't any snow on the beach but this is what the bay looked like. Beautiful!

Going Green

2011-06-19T07:10:00.000-07:00

TraverseBayShores@Etsy

PETOSKEY STONE PICKING SEASON!!

2011-06-09T09:02:00.000-07:00

Petoskey stone season is now in full swing, and Bethany is loading her Etsy shop with various groups of both drilled and undrilled stones. After a long hard winter, shelves of ice have shoved piles of stones along the shore, and we'll be heading to our cottage to see what the bay has churned up. We'll be heading to the shore to stock up

Beautiful!!

TraverseBayShores@Etsy

Long Winter

2011-05-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

blog entry by Sarah Dickerson

Another couple of semesters of teaching done, and as I feared, I neglected this blog. It was a long, hard, and cold-as-hell winter, and a busy and over-all sad year. Our father suffered an infection last fall, and subsequently had his prostate removed.Though near fully recovered by Christmas, our mother subsequently became ill in the nursing home and passed away in January.Her death was sad, even though it was expected.Or not her death that was so much sad, but our loss, especially difficult for our father.Though I’m sure others would argue it, our place on the bay is that much less special without her, as it has been for a few years now since she's been unable to go there.It just is.Some might say you've got your memories, hang on to those. Sure.But memories are only that, until they evolve into family history.
Not to sound gloomy, but without cookies and muffins and knit blankets, it’s back to raw nature.And that’s not a tragedy.

And so it goes, as our great-great-great-uncle, Abraham Rhines wrote of his father’s death in 1860 to his sister in Syracuse. I’ve been getting hung up on family history and genealogy since Mom died, perhaps to be reminded of the inevitability of death, or to secure her, too, into the family's history--and everyone on the family tree is dead. A good reminder. Not one of them lived forever (Thomas Lynch, the essayist/undertaker from Milford, MI writes: “The death rate is one hundred percent”). Somehow, history is way cooler than memories. And philosophizing and rationalizing the inevitability of death, and whatever comfort it offers seems less cliché when written about in 1860, even if it is overly poetic. Letter writing back then was an art. Worth the time. I love it! (I can’t help but giggle a little at the verbosity).

On the news of his father’s death, Uncle Abraham writes:

“He has gone to that great receptacle of all that ever have lived and now live and all that ever shall live. And the last result of life is uniform to all whether we wade through the miseries of almost intolerable magnitude. Or through the flowery paths of luxury and ease. We must all die. This is the great debt we owe. And none shall be able to avoid the payment of it. And, oh that we might all lay it to heart. And let it occupy a just share of our moments. That we might at last adopt the language of the prophets ‘let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end like his.”

He then goes on to speak of the weather and health of his family and friends. As we all should once loved ones are buried or scattered. And I love how he keeps going after the period. Fragmenting his sentiments. You think he’s done. But, oh! No. He keeps going. So at last you wish he’d be done already. As we all should be done by then.

I absolutely love it.

So many of the Rhine’s family letters are to inform of someone’s death. I may post them on my own blog for anyone who’s interested. They tell a wonderful and sad story.

All the while, however, Bethany has been minding the store, having stayed busy through the long and sad winter. Groups of un-drilled Petoskey stones have been quite popular on her Etsy site. She’s most recently made and sold some nice pieces of beach stone jewelry. She’s also taken to polishing and buffing some stones, though there’s plenty of natural stones up for grabs yet. There’s little of everything: drilled, un-drilled, natural or polished, a few pieces of jewelry, some really nice groups of Petoskey stones, drilled beach stone beads, a few chain corals, and some really cool Charlevoix stones and other fossils.

I imagine, now the stone picking season is upon us, we have no choice but to get on with the business of stone picking.

I’d like to share one of my dad’s drawings (He continues to visit the nursing home, and make sketches of some of the residents in their final months or years: wonderful character sketches, something he’d done for several years while visiting my mother). Last February, when the ice was still piled up along the shore and the snow still deep, my father and Bethany took my mother’s ashes up to the cottage. At a loss as to how to get them into the bay, they found that the little creek running through our neighbors yard and out into the bay was flowing hard from a recent snow melt. It flowed beneath the snow and out again at the shore, then shot out into the bay beneath the ice. The bay beyond the ice was wild and white-capped. They poured her ashes into the hard-flowing creek, and out she went.

Burton Dickerson

In some of my mother's journals and notes, she wrote that she was once afraid of death, though somewhere along the line, she'd realized, or concluded, or learned, that her own death would be the least significant event of her life.

Spider Sand Dune Rides

2010-09-17T06:20:00.003-07:00

Banks township was kind enough to send me images of Mel's old pamphlets for the Spider Sand Dune Rides, and I wanted to include them here, along with a few images from the Antrim Creek Natural Area's website. I remember this pamphlet. Mel used to keep them on the shelf that dropped down from the screened window. I haven't seen this in a million years. Well, not quite that long, but not since I was at least 14, the last year Mel ran the dune rides.

I've been looking for photographs of Mel's but have had little luck. Odd, since during every ride, Mel would stop the jeep and offer to take a photo of the passengers for anyone with a camera, and since Mel always asked if we wanted to ride along (if there was room), we must have smiled for a million photos over the summers. You'd think I could track one or two down.

During one of these ride's photo sessions, I jumped out of the jeep to take a picture myself. I wanted Mel to be in it, as I recall. It was my first Polaroid camera; my parents gave it to me for Christmas when I was in the 5th grade. Film cost a bundle as I recall, about 4 bucks for a pack of film that could take 8 instant pictures (the kind where you pulled the picture out of the camera, waited a minute, then peeled the film off a small white framed photograph). When I got my first camera in the 5th grade, a Polaroid, I asked Mel if I could take a picture, and I wanted him in it.

By this time, Mel had given up on his tiny Scout Jeeps (pictured in the pamphlet: man I'd love to get some good photos of those, and of Mel!), and no longer needed some 3 to 4 drivers: I only vaguely remember the days of the many Scout jeeps lined up in the drive outside the shanty, all of them red? Or maybe one or two of them were blue. Sy, Larry, his sons I believe, and I recall at one time 4 jeeps. So, who was the fourth? I'll have to ask my older brothers.

In this old Polaroid, fuzzy because it was a Polaroid and I was a crappy picture taker, and fuzzy too because it's a scan of the old Polaroid. Mel, in later years, began driving a Chevy truck, which could seat more passengers (near 10 instead of only 6). It still zipped around the dunes pretty well, but not like the old Scout jeeps could. That's Mel waving, and if any one out there has a better picture of Mel, I'd love to have a copy! Bethy is in the back in a gray shirt, and Marty Manker sits next to her, leaning into the passenger next to him. I know his brother Mike is in there somewhere, and I think a few other beach friends as well.

Mel ran the the Spider Sand Dune Rides on Harry Jones stretch of property just on the other side of "The Big Creek" as we called it (Antrim Creek). We always called the dunes "The Dunes", still do, though it's now officially the Antrim Creek Natural Area, purchased by Antrim County in 1994. This photo above was taken by Phil Ohmer, the area off the beach where much of the ride took place. The deer have reclaimed the space now.

Mel would zip the jeep along the shoreline as well, pictured above (photo courtesy of Banks Township). Part of the fun was Mel driving some 5o or 60 miles per hour (could have been slower or faster: all I recall is it was fast!), through the water in such a way so the spray came up and over the back of the jeep, getting every one soaking wet. Of course, if there were a few old ladies or those who didn't particularly want to get wet, he'd do this very gently (or not at all) When asked however, he'd give the whole crew a solid soaking! It was his way of cooling us off.

Mel would also cruise along the shore slowly, his door ajar, so he could look along the water's edge for Petoskey Stones. Bethy and I sold Petoskey stones, as well, up near the Shanty for a dime each. Mel's searching for them for passengers for free didn't seem to affect our business too much--we'd go home at summers end having made some 16 dollars altogether: more sales so far than has been made on Etsy! :)

Here's a great areal photo of The dunes. You can see the Big Creek, and The Dunes stretching back a ways. A lot of the ride took place back there, a hilly, winding place, though not huge. Today, in fact, the Dunes look pretty well flattened. Either they seemed bigger when we were kids, or they have, indeed, blown flatter. After the day's rides were over, or on Sundays when the Spider Sand Dunes was closed (Mel was a church-going man: of course he would not have worked on a Sunday), we spent a lot of time as kids playing. Later, as college students, the Mankers or my older brothers, would drag their huge generators back there and hook up their stereos and monolithic speakers for a number of beach parties: Yes, Genesis, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Who blasted into the dead quiet of The Dunes, not a soul around to hear it, but us. Memorable parties.

They say many babies in Antrim County were conceived back there, and those of us who summered there took advantage of the privacy as well, particularly after Mel stopped running his jeep there. I received my first kiss, at 14, a terrifying, but memorable event (thanks Sean!), on a high dune (very near where the deer poses in Phil Ohmer's photograph) overlooking the place where the jeep's tracks criss-crossed through a low valley (pictured in the pamlphet at the top of this post).

We have so many wonderful memories of Mel and the dune rides, and even more of The Dunes. Please, if anyone out there has any pictures of Mel or the Dune rides, we'd love to have copies!

When ever any one stopped by and asked Mel about the rides, he gave this speech (us summer kids still have it memorized: if I get this wrong, anyone who knows the old lines, please correct me):

Well, go down through the woods a half a mile, onto the beach three quarters, into the old Indian campsite, down the beach a thousand feet, and there you have the Spider Sand Dunes, not high, maybe thirty feet off the water, we fool around a little bit, and return.

I'm missing something. What is it? Help!

blog entry by Sarah Dickerson

Mel's

2010-09-17T06:20:00.001-07:00

More on Chain Corals

2010-09-09T16:04:00.000-07:00

This once living coral, also called Halysites (meaning chain coral), lived in colonies during the Silurian period. The white "chain" like appearance was the actual coral, it's structure replaced with quartz during fossilization (or the correct term, I guess, is "petrifaction.") The tan part of the stone is filler, I've read. Filled with what? I'm not entirely sure.

They say these fossils are a rare find on Lake Michigan shores, and perhaps they are, though it seems we've found quite a few. I wonder, though, if there are other fossils that closely resemble the chain coral, that aren't, in fact, chain corals.
I was surprised to read about Petoskey stones, which are fossils derived from the coral Hexagonaria Percarinata. There are actually some seven or more species of Hexagonoria in the Grand Traverse Region, and it's possible that a another species formed some of the stones we've found, maybe varying slightly. Could it be true of chain corals too? A 1970s article (okay, so it's a little dated) "Corals of the Traverse Group of Michigan" by Erwin C Stumm of the University of Michigan discusses these various species of Hexagonaria, and shows photographs and diagrams of many of them: lo and behold, everyone of them looks like a Petoskey stone to me, which makes you wonder, or makes me wonder, are all the Petoskey Stones we find on the bay of the Percarinata species, or could some be of another species?

Halysites, the chain coral, is also a colony coral, in which individual members of the colony construct an elliptical tube next to each other in the manner of chain links, some just a few centimeters long, others ten or more centimeters long. Apparently there are some 17 species of this one, not sure how many in the Grand Traverse Region, if there's more than one. Here's a picture of a chain coral fossil, not from our region, but the because this specimen is not beach-washed, like the ones we find on the shore of the bay, the chains are much more distinct:

The ones found along the shores of Lake Michigan, and Grand Traverse Bay, however, look more like the ones we've found (see above), like this:

Oddly enough, I don't recall taking note of this fossil as a kid. I guess we were too busy collecting and selling Petoskey stones for a dime each. But since I've been looking at rock and fossil guides and scouring the internet for some info on the various Lake Michigan beach stones, I've been finding quite a few of these. We've tossed a group of five of these chain corals on our Etsy site, TraverseBayShores, but I've been struck by what others on Etsy have been doing with Lake Michigan Beach stones, in particular what some of done with chain corals.

Two sellers on Etsy have Bethany and I beat by a mile, and clearly they've been up to this rock thing longer than we have. RiverOtterRocks has a beautiful selection of drilled beach stones and fossils. Here is a beautiful chain coral pendent:

If you take a look at some of RiverOtterRocks sold items, you'll see a number of similar pendents, all of them stunning.

StoneMe, another rock seller on Etsy, who also offers a wonderful collection of drilled stones and stone beads, also has a chain coral pendent up for grabs-- "Sailor's Rope"-- named because the pattern calls to mind a ship anchor's rope:

I've looked high and low on the web for other items made from chain corals, and there's not a whole lot out there. In fact, I found nothing but these beautiful pendents on Etsy. And I'm glad I found them. They are cool fossils, for sure.

Drilled Fossils

2010-09-09T07:20:00.000-07:00

Check out Bethany's latest drilling work on Etsy!

Basalt

2010-08-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

Drilled Basalt

Basalt is the most common rock we find on our beach in the summer: tons and tons of black, sometimes greenish stones, pile up, often in rows. I thought it was interesting this past summer when I would see the larger, heavier black stones in a long row along the shoreline, about knee-deep out. I thought this odd, a foot-wide line of black basalt (I should have taken a photo!), that stood out against the lighter-colored beach stones. Was it because they were heavier than the other beach stones, and didn’t make it all the way to the shore? Did the waves just drop them down right there, a foot or so out? I’m guessing. I’d love to know why they sit beyond the shore like that.

Basalt stones are smooth and solid, often weighing heavy in your hand. Though they might seem very plain, each one is different. This volcanic rock formed from lava that quickly cooled when it reached the surface. This quick cooling caused their density and smoothness, along with the natural tumbling action of the lakes.

According to Lake Michigan Rock Picker’s Guide, local Indians once used these stones for breaking flint to make arrowheads, and also to grind corn and herbs.

But the coolest thing is when rather ordinary basalt becomes quartz filled with fractures and viens, and sometimes other minerals. Suddenly very plain stone become extraordinary. Here’s a photo of group of basalt mixed with quartz veins and other minerals:

Some basalt gets its greenish color from a mineral called epidote. Throw quartz in the mix and you can get some really cool looking green stones.

See Etsy for this batch.

blog entry by Sarah Dickerson

Drilled and un-drilled groups of stones

2010-08-29T05:10:00.001-07:00

See what Bethany's been doing! Here's a group of perfect Petoskey stones.

And, she has perfected the art of drilling stones!

Arranging and grouping beach stones has become an art form, our latest obsession. We could spend hours doing this.

Chain corals. More on chain corals to come.

I LOVE this batch. Something beautiful could be created with this group.
Check out Bethy's Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/shop/TraverseBayShores,
or click on the photos to the right of page.

blog entry by Sarah Dickerson

2010-08-24T19:53:00.000-07:00

My sister's recent blog post discussed her spending time, maybe too much, with rocks: collecting, drilling, lacquering, photographing, instead of her getting any painting done. She feels guilty. Guilty? What more worthwhile work? And why not paint rocks! (I mean, you painted trees didn't you Bethy?). My friend Thom Ford recently gave me a photograph--my favorite one--of rocks, from the shores of Lake Superior.

Incidentally, Thom also photographed the stones along the shore at our cottage, which we used to create the banner for this blog (see above). Very cool.

See more of Thom Ford's work at: http://bwprints.wordpress.com/

Rock on.

blog entry by Sarah Dickerson

beach stones

2010-08-19T19:50:00.000-07:00

Despite events up north these past weeks, I've been spending a lot of time collecting stones on the beach. Tons have been washed up during the last few days with high winds and big waves. Lots of beautiful Petoskey stones, and I went crazy picking up whatever I thought was unique, unusual or just flat out pretty. I've been particularly attracted to anything with quartz mixed in, like fractured basalt filled with quartz, or green basalt with quartz blended in, sometimes with fractured lines of green epidote or quartz.

Unikites, an inexpensive gem stone (see pink stone with green stripe at top of photo), I've read recently, is another stone I find really attractive. These stones are orange or pinkish granite with green stripes of epidote. The pink, I've learned, in granites and unikites are feldspar. Pure feldspar stones (I think I've found one so far), are a lightish pink with a subtle veiny appearance. I've heard these are sometimes yellow, and I'm not positive, but I believe I've found one of those too (Bethany: did I give these to you? Can you take pictures?) .

There is also something called a moonstone, another gemstone, which is a shinier, or maybe quartzier feldspar. I think I found one of those, too.

Anyway, I've gone bonkers over anything with a quartzy look to it, particularly the various shades of greens I've found. I've learned, too that quartz is often the basic ingredient of many beach stones found along Lake Michigan's shores, like flour is to baked goods.

What to do with these stones? Jewelers and other hobbiests can polish these in a tumbler. Bethany sprayed a few with clear gloss spray (like Krylon), and stuck them on a plate she picked up at Good Will.

I also purchased a bunch of cheap heavy glass vases and a few goblets from Good Will and filled them with sprayed stones. I took two of these to Bethany and she stuck a couple of candles in them.

Is that cool? Or what?

Right next to the Home Page link above, see "Projects" for ideas on what to do with beach stones.

blog entry by Sarah Dickerson

2010-08-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

We are back from another crazy week on the bay. Marty, Julie and their daughter Alicia created an altogether beautiful and celebratory send-off. We spent three days with the Manker family, beaching, swimming, sharing stories, eating, drinking, laughing and crying. Their service was perfect, some 300 in attendance.

On Sunday, the beach friends on the lane were invited to join the immediate family for a brief prayer and sharing on the beach, as Marty, Julie and Alicia waded out to above their knees into the strong wind and white-caps to scatter a few ashes. All the while, a bald eagle (huge, white head and tail ) and what we believe were eaglets, were wind surfing above, as they had been all that day, majestic and spiritual. The sky was blue, lots of white puffy clouds, and high winds. I was moved to see Marty, Julie and Alicia, standing in prayer afterward, in wet shorts, barefoot, arms around each other. Then, I looked up, the eagles still soaring overhead. I felt honored to be invited to join them in their send off.

From a few different websites, I found this poem. I can't find the author:

On the currents of the Four Winds
you ride the sky
held aloft by unseen hands
that hold you close to the Grandfather

Far below lies the world of Man
a realm in which you also dwell,
yet always from within
comes the ache to rejoin the Great Spirit

Caught between two realms,
you remind all who witness your beauty and strength
of the eternal struggle of the two-legged
to rise above the mundane
and feel the Soul take flight.

There is tons more I'd like to learn about the spiritual significance of the bald eagle. It seems every kind of spiritual faith on the planet attributes some significance to this creature. These last few days on the bay, the wind and waves roared for three days straight. All the while the eagles surfed the wind, up and down the shore. I never saw them flap their wings.

blog entry by Sarah Dickerson

Busy summer

2010-08-12T06:19:00.000-07:00

We've been crazy busy the last couple of weeks: relaxing, swimming, collecting stones, and attending our niece Madelynn's wedding (the perfect wedding!). Sadly we're returning to our cottage to spend some time with our childhood and life-long summer friend Marty, his wife Julie, and rest of the Manker family, and to attend a memorial service this weekend. This past week, they lost their 21 year old daughter, Kelsey. We are heartbroken for them. The next few days will be devoted to offering whatever sort of comfort and support we can.

Our friend Marty and his wife had their first baby just one month before my daughter, Esther was born. The two of them, a year old, played on the beach together, and again for a few summers when they were older. We also had our second babies near the same time, about six months apart. I recall when my brother Brandy died: I was pregnant for Emily, now 17 (and on her way to Interlochen Academy of Art!)--Marty and Julie toted their second baby, just a few weeks old, down to our cottage to offer their condolences to us. A brief moment of holding their new infant offered a slight reprieve from our own shock and grief at losing Brandy and reminded me that I had my own baby's birth to look forward too. Now, we owe 'em one. For whatever that's worth.

Esther came up north to join us for Madelynn's wedding, alive and well and lively and fun, showing Madelynn's out-of-country guests around Old Antrim Shores, letting a young British couple practice driving an automatic car on the right side of the road, taking her youngest cousin for a walk with the dog, spending every spare moment swimming in the bay with the rest of us. And now I find myself struck dumb times ten by Marty's and Julie's and their youngest, Alicia's loss (and Alicia, now on her way to U of M!)

A message of thanks from Julie for the support of family and friends on Face-book: "God Bless You All, and hold tight to your loved ones, as you never know when it's their time to go. I love you ALL."

Needless to say, we are distracted from our usual Etsy posting and blogging duties. We'll pick up where we left off soon.

blog entry by Sarah Dickerson

Shale versus Slate

2010-07-30T07:23:00.000-07:00

I was feeling pretty cocky and confident about the difference between shale and slate yesterday when Bethany posted the previous rock photos, but then I felt doubtful. What is the difference? I was near 90% sure the flat black rocks we’ve been playing with all our lives (stone skipping contests, decorating sand castles, diving for rocks), were, in fact, slate, but had to research it to find out for sure. Here’s what I found on Wiki Answers (and they have all the answers!):

"Slate is a metamorphic rock whose parent rock is Shale. Slate is composed of microcrystals, and because of its degree of foliation, it cleaves easily into thin sheets or plates. Shale is a sedimentary rock. It can cleave, also. The easiest way to to tell the difference between the two is to smell the rock when it is wet. Shales smell like clay, slates do not."

And then, not two entries below in the list of Google search results (Wiki Answers are first?), I found a very interesting blog called: “Lake Trek: A Thousand Mile Walk on the Beach” kept by writer/adventurer Loreen Niewenhuis from Battle Creek. Fascinating! Loreen walked the whole shoreline of Lake Michigan and wrote about her progress in her blog, along with posting tons of photos and video clips. She finished her walk last September at Chicago’s Navy Pier, but continues to write about her work in progress (a book based on her 1000 mile walk along the beach), highlights and memories from last year’s walk, and even this summer’s re-visits to various beaches around Lake Michigan, including our neighborhood near Antrim Shores. She also writes about current issues pertaining to Lake Michigan: The Asian Carp situation, the recent oil spill on the Kalamazoo River (and what a mess that is!), and other related environmental concerns.

From my initial perusal of her blog, it's clear she's gotten a lot done! She's had tons of press coverage, knows her stuff, and in a recent email exchange, informed me that she walked along the beach in front of our cottage last June (of 09). Who knows, maybe we were sitting on the beach when she passed by!

I had initially hit on an entry about “tumbled slate” (see photo just below) and then found her entry on “Antrim Shale” and “Ellsworth Shale.” The tumbled slate she discovered on Fisherman’s Island State Park near Charlevoix, a five mile stretch of unspoiled beach, not 15 miles from our place, with boatloads of this stuff on the shoreline. Along with a photo of a handful of slate, she writes: “This was the only place along the lakeshore where I came across this unusual stone in this quantity.”

Her other two entries are from this year, when she revisited the beach near Barns Park in Eastport. Apparently there is an “Ellsworth Shale” deposit, not far from an “Antrim Shale” deposit. Ellsworth Shale, she explains, is green in color (top photo below), whereas Antrim Shale is dark gray or black (bottom photo below). I had NO idea!

So, it would seem from her photographs that you can see the difference between slate and shale. I never knew there were shale deposits near Barns Park, and I never knew there were two types, or two colors, each named after nearby communities.

When in doubt about the difference between slate and shale, you can test it by scratching it with a knife. As Loreen explained in her email to me: “shale will score, slate will not.”

For more good stuff on Loreen Niewenhuis, check out her website too:

http://www.loreenniewenhuis.com/1_bio/index.html

blog entry by Sarah Dickerson

Petoskey Stones

2010-07-25T15:47:00.000-07:00

The sun burns hot on your back and shoulders as you step forward along the rocky shore, the cold waves washing over your bare feet. If you’re lucky, there are places of hard wet sand to walk, but mostly the shoreline is so rocky, the stones stab the soles of your feet. Still, you walk. The soles of your feet were leather-tough from summers of bare-footing when you were a kid, but now you’re a pussy, and stumbling along gingerly, you swear: “Shit, shit, shit!” You weigh a lot more than you did as a kid, too, and you decide next time to wear your old tennis shoes or a pair flip-flops.

You keep your head down to watch where you’re stepping and look for stones. They come in all shapes and sizes, all colors and textures, from tiny pebbles to massive boulders. As the waves tumble over them you can see the colors: round black or green basalt; red, pink, and black granite; brown, red, or white-gray chert; round and flat chalk-board slate; white or yellow, sometimes pink quartz; sometimes mixed basalt and quartz; a variety of fossils with a variety of patterns and textures; and a million other crazy layered or mottled mixes of all of these, all the colors of the rocky rainbow. They glisten along the shore, and they wobble and waver where it’s deeper, magnified by water and sunlight.

Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes, according to Lake Michigan Rock Picker’s Guide, have more varieties and colors of rocks than anywhere else in the world. But along the shores of Grand Traverse Bay and the northern shorelines of Lake Michigan, you can also find Petoskey stones. They are fairly easy to spot along our shoreline, especially in the spring when new batches of them have been pushed up by last winter’s ice. They were named after Ottawa Indian Chief Pet-O-Sega, whose name means ""rising sun" o "rays of dawn,” or sometimes "sunbeams of promise.” Petoskey stones are generally gray in color, and when wet or polished (sometimes dry), show the classic mottled, fossil pattern of connected hexagonal shapes, each one with “rays” radiating from a little black “eye.”

Petoskey stones were formed from the coral, Hexagonaria Percarinata, which commonly populated the coral reefs in this part of the state during the Devonian period 350 million years ago, when the land of our state was situated on the equator beneath warm shallow seas. Each of the little eyes and rays we see on Petoskey stones were actually Individual “polyps,” each of which secreted a limey substance that hardened into a “corallite,” a skeletal base for support. These once living creatures multiplied in tight knit colonies, some colonies bigger than others, some polyps bigger than others. The surface of these colonies formed a dome of hexagonal food intake openings or “cups” that were surrounded by stinging tentacles used to catch and immobilize plankton. When the land moved north and the seas poured off, and each of their little lives was over, mud and silt made up of calcite, silica and other minerals filled the polyps and replaced the various elements in each one in a process called “petrifaction.” These fossilized corals were later picked up by glacial ice and dumped around the northern part of the Lower Peninsula. The fresh water and sand of Lake Michigan have been tumbling them around for the last ten-thousand years, rounding and smoothing them into the Petoskey stones we find on the beach today.

by Sarah Dickerson

In the Beginning

2010-07-21T04:37:00.000-07:00

http://www.etsy.com/shop/TraverseBayShores

I remember the story from school days, of a giant Indian who pressed his hand on the side of the earth, leaving land in the shape of Michigan. Michi gami, in Algonquin means “large lake.” Other legends say Michigan is the hand print of Paul Bunyan. In another childrens' story book called “The Legends of Michigan” by Trinka Hakes Noble, the Great Gitchi Manitou and a young warrior boy raised their double-deer skin mittened hands to the North Wind, who left snow and ice to cover the land year round, to get him to north of Up North where he came from. The North Wind blew and blew with all his might but could not fight against the deer-skinned mittens. Fearful of losing everything to the Great Spirit, the North Wind tried to bargain. In reply the Great Spirit said “For three moons each year your cold winds can rule the land. “Only three months?” said the North Wind. “After the South Wind sends in Indian Summer,” the Great Spirit told the North Wind, “your cold winds may change the leaves of trees orange, red and golden yellow, but the pines must stay green.” The North Wind agreed and retreated back north of Up North. Thus, the four seasons returned. The ice melted and set the rivers flowing and filled the lakes, leaving the land of Michigan with deep great lakes of blue water. But, if the north wind should ever return, the Great Spirit left his double-deer skin mitten on the land, and this is how Michigan got its shape.

The legend closely resembles our geological history. In fact, the shape of Michigan, and our own Lake Michigan, is the result of varying degrees of resistance to erosion as the glaciers moved forward and back.

What really happened is this: in the beginning, the earth spewed up hot lava. It spewed it up and hardened, and spewed up some more on top of that, piling up in layers. Underneath it all, the earth sagged, leaving immense basins with hard, layered floors of basalt and rhyolite. Rivers flowed into these basins filling them with sand and mud made from sandstone and limestone. Then the climate changed—it snowed and didn’t melt in summer, and snowed and didn’t melt, snow piling up and packing down hard into gigantic ice caps. The ice-caps covered the entire northern part of continent. As it became colder the ice caps moved south, as it warmed, they retreated north. This happened four times: up, back, up, back.

The last glacier, the Wisconsin ice sheet, according to Bruce Mueller and Kevin Gauthier in their book "Lake Michigan's Rock Picker's Guide" (and a great guide for rock pickers on Lake Michigan!) is what created Lake Michigan (as well as all of the Great Lakes). It did not, the authors explain, act as a bulldozer, like I have read elsewhere on the formation of The Great Lakes, but as a convey belt driven by sunlight on the northern hemisphere, carrying rock, which rolled south for about 63,000 years. The rock, sand, gravel and boulders it carried were deposited to the south, east and west of the lake. As glacier melted, it deposited the stone it carried in the lake and all along Lake Michigan's shores.

So the lake bottoms and beaches of most of Lake Michigan are rocky. There’s granite, the stuff this country’s mountains are made of, and quartz, a common mineral that comes in mostly white and yellow. Along with these two, there's also basalt and rhyolite, and amazingly, all kinds of wonderful, colorful mixes of all of these. There's agate, thomsonite, chert, and chalcedony. There's a variety of fossils, too, including everyone's favorite, and the ones my sister and I collected and sold as children: Petoskey stones.

by Sarah Dickerson

Old Antrim Shores

2010-07-16T18:34:00.000-07:00

Around the summer solstice, when the days were long and the sun was hot, my mother liked to rake the beach. When I was little, she’d get the heavy garden rake from the lean-to utility shed behind our cottage, haul it down to the beach, and start pulling at layers of washed up rocks, making a grating, god-awful metal-against-rock scraping racket. If it was a particularly quiet, calm day, you could hear the noise from all directions, from way down the beach or way up at the cottage. She raked to clear the stones away, or to try to clear the stones away, so she could lay her towel down on the sand.

There was plenty of sand, and plenty of rocks, plenty of stuff to rake away: clam shells and driftwood, sea gull feathers and dead alewives, the bleached-white exoskeletons of crayfish. She enjoyed raking, like she enjoyed hanging clothes on the clothes-line. Even when the washer broke down she’d take the laundry to the Laundromat in Charlevoix and stick it in the washer, then haul it back to the cottage and hang it all neatly from the clothes lines that hung between the trees way out back behind the lane. It was good exercise, she said, both the hanging and the raking. It gave her time to think, or clear her head. But she found raking the beach especially soothing. Warm and sunny days of soft breezes off the bay offered an hour of peace, and that little bit of beach, the one that always needed raking, was her own little piece of heaven.

* * *

In 1953, lake-front property on the Great Lakes was cheap. Back then, lots on the east shore of northern Michigan were not necessarily desirable. The land was swampy and the soil acidic, abandoned by farmers soon after the land was logged off. The Great Lakes were often wild and rough, not much good for fishing peacefully off little boats. And the water was too cold and the bottom too rocky for swimming. If you wanted to farm you moved to the lower half of the state. If you wanted swimming and fishing and boating, you went to one of the quieter, gentler, small inland lakes.

My grandfather, Lyle Dickerson (we called him “Pop”) was born and raised in Bellaire, Michigan, the place my father spent his summers growing up. Pop told my parents about the lots for sale on Antrim Lane. My parents, both art teachers in the public school system in Flint, chose a lot near the dead-end of a rut road near a place once called Antrim City.

Thirteen miles south of Charlevoix, thirty miles north of Traverse City, it cost my parents five-hundred dollars for the hundred feet of beach front six-hundred feet deep with timber so thick (the second forest growth after the clear-cut lumbering around the time of Antrim City) it was near dark in the woods even during day-time hours. Away from shore the land was wet and muddy—swampland—infested with poison ivy, mosquitoes, and big black horse flies. Here were beech, maple, and birch trees, along with a variety of pines: hemlock, white pine, aspen, and fir. Along the dryer, well-drained shore grew an abundance of cedar, hemlock, and spruce, a beautiful green backdrop to the sun-lit beach and blue water bay.

Years before my sister and I were born, our father (our mother’s hero), with ax and saw slashed his way through the new forest growth, just as the settlers must have years before, scraping knees and elbows as he cut away at ground hemlock and branches from cedar trees, wondering as he worked if this was such a good idea (all ideas were Mom’s; Dad did the grunt work). He made his way to the edge of a twenty-or-so-foot bluff above the beach. It was one of Lake Michigan’s quieter days, he later told us, the bay dead calm, one of those days where chopping and sawing resounds for miles, echoing back through the woods and out across the bay.

When he finally broke through the tangled pine mess, he called to my mother, who followed his voice to the bluff above the shore. That’s when they saw Grand Traverse Bay, the Leelanau Peninsula directly across, and Lake Michigan to the north for the very first time. It was enormous, they said, a deep blue inland sea as big as an ocean. Along the shore they saw stretching, in both directions and beyond several points, a deserted and un-touched sugar-sand beach. The waves rolled in quietly, rippling northward along the shore. This was it, my parents at that moment decided; this part of the world, this one little spot, was theirs: a place they could call their own, their very own summers-at-the-lake.

On teacher salaries, my parents made yearly payments of one-hundred dollars. After a couple of years they nearly sold, struggling to come up with the cash. But they did make their payments and five years later, when the place was paid off, a company from East Jordan came out to clear the lot, cutting down some of the birch and pine trees, leaving a few tall hemlocks at the edge of the bluff and near the rut road in back. A cabin-building company from Bellaire erected a tiny cabin from a kit not long after my three older brothers were born: four log walls and a roof on a cement slab. The cost: eight-hundred dollars. Again, they had to make payments. My sister and I were born five and seven years later.

And though this was no calm, inland lake—sometimes the waves beat fiercely at the cliff’s edge and our boats and our toys washed away; often the wind bent the hemlocks nearly in half, the thunder during summer storms so loud our mother made us sit away from the plate glass picture window lest it should shatter, the rain pounding down so hard on the rooftop we feared it would crash in—we too, learned the value of summer-at-the-lake.

* * *

Over the years, the Great Lakes swelled and the shoreline moved up closer to the bluff. The beach began to lose its sugar sandiness, the bay throwing back rocks more often than it washed them out, layers of washed up stones digging into our bare feet. Over the years, our father watched us so our mom could rake the beach.

She wore her black, or blue, fifties- style and later sixties-style bathing suit and always wore a floppy beach hat. You could hear the grating sound of the rake against the rocks in the peaceful quiet of early afternoon, when the sun was the highest and hottest, from all the way up at the cottage. She was raking her own little square of paradise, keeping it tidy and free from clutter. After raking, she enjoyed an hour of beaching. Only the sound of gentle waves could be heard, the slight breeze rustling through the pines, maybe the sound of a Coppertone-lotioned hand flipping the page of a paperback. Maybe my dad listened to the Tigers on the radio on the porch swing. Now and then we’d hear that Coca Cola commercial—I’d like to teach the world to sing, in per-fect har-mon-y.

by Sarah Dickerson

How it all Started

2010-07-14T16:59:00.000-07:00

Our fascination with Lake Michigan’s beach stones started a long time ago. Several years before we were born, our parents bought our place on Grand Traverse Bay, near a little-known ghost town called Old Antrim City. In 1953, they paid five-hundred dollars for a hundred feet of beach front directly across from the Leelanau Peninsula. A few years later, they purchased their Bellaire-style cabin-- the cost for that: eight-hundred dollars. Here, we spent long summers, from early June to late August, from the time we were born until we graduated from college.

One of our favorite activities as children was collecting Petoskey stones along the shoreline of the bay, and for several summers we set up shop at Mel’s. From 1960 to 1978, Melvin Essenberg operated the Spider Sand Dune Rides on what’s now called The Antrim Creek Natural Area. On the corner of Rex Beach Rd and Old Dixie Highway (The Flat Rd) was Mel’s red and white “shanty,” his headquarters. Here, Mel allowed us set up our stand, where we placed our carefully selected stones in a pan full of water to more easily see the Petoskey stones' patterns-- the cost: a dime apiece. We had initially planned to charge a nickel, but our mother said folks would spend a dime as quickly as a nickel. We lugged our stones on foot (bare foot mind you; we rarely wore shoes in the summer), the mile and a half to Mel’s, often spending entire days under a shady tree near Mel’s shanty, though we often sat beside him in the shanty while he ate his packed lunch. By summer’s end, we’d earn enough money selling Petoskey stones at Mel’s to take home and spend at the county fair.

We still go to our cabin, whenever we can, and still have stories to tell: about our childhood and our place on Grand Traverse Bay; about Lake Michigan and it’s geology; the shoreline and it’s stones; and about the history of the area near Old Antrim City. And we still collect Petoskey stones, and other stones, too, primarily because it’s so much fun!

by Sarah Dickerson