The Sand Dunes--A Plan Z Diet Trip to Michigan
By: Zola
Chief Dieter
Plan Z Diet
It all started when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over the lantern and Chicago burned to the ground.
The whole city was destroyed. Over 100,000 people were rendered homeless. The fire had burned for two days and wiped out every structure in its path and most of those were made of wood.
Recovery was not going to be easy. The whole city had to be rebuilt. Even if the buildings were going to be constructed using stone or brick this time, they were still going to need a lot of wood.
Chicago is dotted with beautiful, brick Victorian homes. My neighborhood alone has about a hundred of them. There are thousands of grey-stone homes too. They all also have ornate décor on the inside. Many have carved wood-paneled walls. Most have wooden floors and so very many have beautiful, ornate staircases that are made of wood. Then there are things like kitchen cabinets and all of the furniture. That’s all made of wood too.
So with Chicago destroyed they had to go find a LOT of wood to rebuild.
Where did they go? Well, one place was the western coast of Michigan.
I was visiting Michigan’s Harbor Country last week, taking a little vacation from Plan Z Diet headquarters and learned about the deforestation that supplied some of the much needed wood to re-build Chicago. The unforeseen consequence was a major development of sand dunes.
The easiest thing for Chicago to do was send out loggers and ships. They could leave Chicago, travel along the lakeshore and head right up to a huge stand of hardwoods that at the time lined the shores of Lake Michigan. They concentrated much of their effort in an area that swings along the southwestern shores of the state of Michigan. They got all the beautiful, strong hardwood they needed. They cut it all down and the ships transported it back to Chicago. This went on for decades while they re-built Chicago. Then they left it alone and Mother Nature stepped in.
As they describe it in Michigan, “leave an open space along a beach and the wind will take over and make sand dunes”. The prevailing winds are usually from the west. As the wind travels over Lake Michigan to Michigan’s western shores the wind picks up the sand and blows it. And blows it and blows it. LOTS of it. Some of the sand dunes along Michigan’s shore are as high as 350 feet tall. They look like small mountains of sand. I had no idea that there is no soil under that sand. It’s just a huge pile of sand. The sand dunes are everywhere; even to the point that they supply a whole cottage industry of giving tourists rides along the sand dunes in large “dune buggies”. They aren’t really buggies when you are transporting 12 or 16 people in one vehicle but the idea is the same. The guides give a tour of the area and doll out information on how the dunes were formed.
Good news is the area is filling back in. Michigan State University, years ago, planted thousands of new trees and they took hold. The re-foresting has begun. It’s actually quite mature already. They also found a special strain of beach grass that they planted and it has taken hold too. Each year as the grasses freeze and die they decompose and are depositing new top soil. Other things are beginning to grow in the new soil where nothing much would grow before.
The sands make for beautiful beaches. The dunes are a unique part of Michigan that draw tourists like me each year for fun in the sun and along the beach. The ride in the dune “buggie”, although a bit harrowing, was fun too. I think I liked the history lesson better than the ride.
Cheers,
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