Segment 1, Day 2 Hyde Park>East Chicago, IN 12 miles

High of 71 degrees!

This day began in Jackson Park. This park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (who also designed New York's Central Park). This park was also the site of the 1893 World Exposition. The first two photos are from this grand (though in need of some care) park. The first is in the Japanese garden, a beautiful spot to watch the sunrise. The second are the first flowers in bloom along my Trek. If anyone knows the name of this flower, please post a comment. It's been driving me crazy! OKAY: My mom came through with the flower ID. She writes: "The flower is called the Snowdrop ( Galanthus) a native of Turkey and Eastern Europe. It is one of the first harbingers of spring and is in the amaryllis family. Mom" Thanks, Mom!

The Lakefront Trail kind of dies on the southside, so then I walked along major roads until I came upon the next park or other lake access. I went through Rainbow Park (which was deserted except for me), and then skirted the former site of the U.S. Steel South Works Plant. The plant operated from the mid 1800s to the 1990s before shutting down completely. The plant has since been scrubbed from the land (except for a lone power plant). It is now a fenced off scrubby plot of hundreds of acres. There is a trash-heaped berm of dirt blocking the street view of the site and I would have had to climb the fence to get a photo. This was not the sort of neighborhood to go shooting photos anyway, so I didn't do more than pick my way through the rubble of a neighborhood left behind when the mill and all the jobs left. The grand church pictured here stands in the middle of this devastated place.

I cut a few blocks inland to try to find some breakfast, and came across a delightful Mexican bakery on Commercial Avenue called Marzeya. The lobby area of the bakery is filled with glass cases stuffed with delightful pasteries (see photo). You merely pick up an aluminum tray and a pair of tongs and help yourself from the cases. Everything is made on site and fifty pound sacks of flour are stacked behind the counter.

From this point until I stopped for the night, I'd be passing through Calumet Park, then crossing into Indiana, then walking through a lot of industry only broken up by Whiting, IN.


The day warmed up (as they said it would) and it was rather hot when I passed through the BP refinery (formerly Standard Oil, then Amoco), one of the largest in the world. It isn't the most pedestrian-friendly walk (as you might imagine--actually it's probably even worse than you can imagine). I hustled through there. BP security tailed me at one point, but then lost interest. I then crossed over the drawbridge on the Indiana Harbor Canal and into the area between East Chicago and Gary.

As I got closer and closer to my hotel (the Ameristar which is situated on Lake Michigan), I realized that I could not approach it on foot. This was after crossing two on/off ramps to the layers of highway. You had to get ON, then OFF the highway in order to get to the hotel that was less than a half mile away. I started to backtrack to a bar I had passed to call a cab to take me there, when a man just getting off his shift at the mill pulled over and gave me a lift in his yellow Jeep. The day was so lovely that he had peeled back the soft top of the Jeep and it was great to feel the air rushing through the vehicle. The gentleman's name was Dwayne and he'd just returned from a trip to Hawaii. So, for that short ride through industrial horrorscape, we talked about the beaches of the islands so far removed from where we were.


I'm still thankful for Dwayne and his yellow Jeep with the top rolled back.

Segment 1, Day 1 Chicago>Hyde Park 10 miles

High of 64 degrees, sunny. The Trek began on Navy Pier which stretches over a half mile out into Lake Michigan. I got out there just as the sun was rising.

Chicago has preserved its lakefront for its people. There are pathways and parks stretching uninterrupted from downtown all the way to Hyde Park. I strolled along the paved Lakefront Trail through Burnham Park all the way to where I'd stay my first night.

The day was warm, but there were still chunks of floating ice and some ice on the rocks along the way.

First three days done

Over the last three days, I've trekked from Navy Pier in Chicago to Portage, IN.

Today I'm off to Michigan City, then on Friday I'll trek to New Buffalo, MI.

I'll blog much more when I'm back home. I've seen so much already, and have so much to share.

In Chicago for the Beginning

I arrived by train to Chicago around noon today. It is a gorgeous, sunny day, and more of the same is in the forecast. I walked to Barbara's Bookstore on Roosevelt from Union station. At Barbara's, I met Gail, the manager and we chatted about the Trek and the books she stocked about the Great Lakes.

From there I walked to the Art Institute of Chicago to catch the Edvard Munch exhibit. It was pretty crowded, but the exhibit was quite good.

After checking in at my hotel, I took a cab to the independent bookstore that is furthest away from the lake (of all that I will visit on the Trek): Quimby's in Wicker Park. Quimby's is a fun, radical bookstore which stocks a lot of out-of-the-mainstream books and mags and other stuff. It is a haven for the graphic novel and writing with an edge. They stock some of my favorites: everything published by McSweeny's, Sara Vowell, and David Sedaris. Quimby's probably isn't the place you'd find my Lake Trek book, but that's cool because Quimby's is cool and is keeping a very independent vibe alive in Wicker Park.

I'm going out to dinner soon, then will try to get some sleep tonight before beginning the trek tomorrow. I'm so excited, though, I feel like running down the lakeshore right now.

Forever Open, Clear, and Free

One week from today, I'll begin the Lake Trek. This first segment stretches 70 miles from Chicago, Illinois to New Buffalo, Michigan. This is the most diverse segment of the trek, traversing three states with portions ranging from the extremes of a major metropolitan city (Chicago), to major tracts of industry (including the defunct U.S. Steel's South Works facility and the recently expanded Amoco refinery installations), to the miles of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

Chicago is my favorite big city. Part of the reason is that it is on Lake Michigan, but it is even more appealing because the city has preserved its relationship with the lake. Twenty-four miles of Chicago's thirty miles of shoreline has been preserved for parks, beaches, museums, and other public spaces. In addition to this, Chicago has recently reclaimed even more land for public use. The grand, art-filled Millennium Park (pictured above) is largely land that used to be a train yard. And this park transitions into Grant Park which stretches to the lake.

Lois Wille wrote a fantastic book about the history of Chicago called Forever Open, Clear, and Free. She chronicles the struggle to preserve the lake front for the people of the city. The fourth section in Blair Kamin's book, Why Architecture Matters, contains his essays on the lake front. He critiques the current situation and calls for a more cohesive plan (and more money) to unify, improve, and protect Chicago's relationship with the lake.

Industry has been part of the lake for a long time. The Amoco facility has been there for over 100 years. The steel plants even longer. We may not like these stretches of industry, but as long as we drive cars made of steel and fuel them with gasoline, we will need them. It is important that the relationship between industry and the lake is is symbiotic and not detrimental to the lake. Tens of millions of people get their drinking water from Lake Michigan, many more enjoy the shoreline or waters every year.

It will be strange to step out of the industry-scape onto the dunes of the over twenty miles of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. This stretch of park was set aside in 1966 and is an area of great biodiversity. Two years ago, I climbed Mount Baldy (over 100 feet high) with my brother, Phil. It may not sound like it's that high, but it's incredibly steep and for every five steps up, you slide back four. When we got to the top, I looked at Phil. He was a very strange shade of intense red and he was gasping. He looked at me and said, "Did you bring me here to DIE?" We laugh about it now. Well, actually, I laughed about it then!

I will try to post to the blog whenever possible along the trek and I'll be taking many notes for my book, A 1,000 Mile Walk on the Beach. Thanks for following this blog, and don't forget to click on the hat in the side bar to sign up for more updates. I'll also give away a hat or t-shirt at the end of each segment to someone who has signed up.

The Trek Draws Near

I was out at The Lake again today. I admit it: as The Trek draws near, I'm drawn even more strongly to the lake.

I was out at South Haven and Saugatuck in West Michigan. I had the distinct pleasure of visiting Black River Books in South Haven. This is one of my favorite used bookstores. Dick and Pam Haferman (in the picture to the right) LOVE books. They've been collecting them (actually, amassing would be a better word) for many years and finally opened their store in 2007.

I always buy a stack of books there and have to leave behind another stack of books that I would like to give a new home, too. They have a great eye for books and
stock many vintage sets that I'd love to move into my office.

(They also have two affable labradoodles in the store--Dewey and Booker--who are as friendly as their owners.)

The ice is beginning to break up. You can hear it groan and snap when you're near.

Only 13 days until the Trek begins!

Frozen Lake

I was out at The Lake yesterday. It is frozen on the Michigan side. There is a large windrow of ice near the shore where the waves have tossed and stacked chunks of sheet ice (the humps of white in the photos). Past that was intact ice for as far as I could see.

The sheet ice lends a calmness to the lake. There are no waves, no sound of moving water. The wind can scream across the lake when it's covered over with ice, but there was only a mild breeze yesterday.

I was out at the lake to have lunch with my friend Joan Donaldson at her farm in Fennville. She is a wonderful writer who has had many essays in the Christian Science Monitor (and many other places), and has published several books for children and middle readers. We talked about writing and Michigan and The Lake. She has a passion for Lake Michigan, too.

Many people have asked me about walking around the lake and how I can do that with so much of the land being privately held. The Supreme Court of Michigan ruled in 2003 that the land near the lake that has been scrubbed free of vegetation is public land. Indiana has a similar ruling. Illinois has a stricter guideline, one that says you must 'keep your feet wet' to be on public land. Wisconsin has ruled both ways at various times, so keeping my feet wet in Wisconsin will probably be a good idea.

There are, of course, tracts of industry or nuclear power plants that will have to be circumnavigated. I'll have to go inland to get around these obstacles.

And there are large stretches of beach lined with private homes and private staircases down the dunes. Another reason I went to The Lake yesterday was to locate public access points where I could get to and from the lake. Thankfully, there are many of these points along the trek.

The Lake should always be for all people.

The Trek Begins in One Month

I was in Chicago this past weekend for a writers' conference (AWP) and did some Lake Trek shopping! I went to North Face (the place you'd go to get outfitted to climb Everest) and got some rain-shedding pants for the trek. As I was approaching the store, though, along the base of the John Hancock Building, the wind caught my specially vented, high impact umbrella and turned it inside out. It was the kind of wind that makes it impossible to breathe and I had that animal instinct to crouch and hunch until the worst of it had passed.

I'm looking forward to being in weather during the trek, to working up heat from within when it's cold, and to plunging in the lake when I'm too hot. We live in such a climate-controlled world now. With a touch of a button we regulate our environment so that our bodies no longer do that work. I'm looking forward to living fully within my body during the trek. I'm sure the aches and pains of training for the trek are minor compared to the aches and pains of doing seventy miles in five days.

That first segment: Chicago to New Buffalo, Michigan is just that. Seventy miles traveled over five days. A distance that I would drive in under an hour I will cover on foot over days. It's a different way of moving through space. This extremely connected-to-the-earth method of walking, sole-of-boot-to-soil, that we've also moved away from. We glide in cars, hopping in and out of them as near to our destinations as possible, and pulling into our garages (an extension of our homes) when we return. We avoid the weather unless it is pleasant.

I'm looking forward to moving through unpleasant (and pleasant) weather. To feeling each step. To recording the distance not on an odometer, but in my bones and sweat and breath and number of waves reaching toward my feet on the beach.

The trek begins one month from today.

NOTE: If you click the hat in the sidebar, you can sign up to follow this blog and also for the chance to win a Lake Trek hat or other Lake Trek items. I'd love to hear from you!

The Joy of Independent Bookstores

While in Chicago this past weekend, I had the pleasure of stopping in at Sandmeyer's Bookstore on Printer's Row (714 S. Dearborn). It's a great little bookstore, reminiscent of the Tattered Cover in Denver with its wood floors and old warehouse feel.

The owner, Ellen Sandmeyer, was staffing the store that morning and we had a nice talk about Great Lakes books and my upcoming Lake Trek.

I plan to stop in at thirty independent bookstores like this one, all near the shores of Lake Michigan. I try to support independent bookstores whenever possible. Why? Because they have a unique relationship with smaller and regional publishers that the big chains do not. Because they allow more time for books to find readers. Because you'll always find people who love -- truly love -- books in these stores.