Tag: Sleeping Bear

Sound sculptures . . . 2022 . . . duration: 30 minutes

Michigan, The Great Lake State, is two enormous peninsulas surrounded by Lakes Michigan, Superior, and Huron. Actually, there are many smaller peninsulas extending out into the lakes. The Leelanau Peninsula (north of the venerable Interlochen music camp where I spent many summers) extends about 30 miles from the northwestern corner of the mitten-shaped Lower Peninsula into Lake Michigan. Algonquian-speaking tribes occupied this area prior to European colonization. The land is now home to lighthouses, wineries, ski slopes, inland lakes, and coastal dunes and beaches.

Listen uninterrupted to all four sketches . . .

Leelanau Sketches

Or separately to any of the individual sketches . . .

Shining Water

The changing patterns of sunlight sparkling on water always fascinates me, particularly on Lake Michigan looking west from the Leelanau Peninsula.

Ice Caves

On the Leelanau Peninsula’s western shore, the Lake Michigan surf sometimes whips up and freezes in mid-air, forming weird ice caverns and ice dunes.

Sleeping Bear Dunes

Ojibwe legend tells of a fierce forest fire on the western shore of Lake Michigan, forcing a mother bear and her two cubs into the water to swim to the opposite shore. After many miles of swimming, the exhausted cubs drowned. When the mother bear reached the eastern shore, she waited on top of a high bluff in hopes that her cubs would finally appear. Moved by the mother bear’s determination and faith, the Great Spirit created two islands to commemorate the cubs, and the winds buried the sleeping bear under the sands of the dunes, where she still waits.

The main dune is enormous, a mountain of sand rising dramatically above the shore of Lake Michigan. The bear’s bluff atop this majestic mass of earth is a serene vista of radiant sun, windblown sand and waves.

Autumn on M22

A scenic autumn drive around the peninsula on Highway M22 is a glory of light sifting down through a canopy of colored leaves. The 75-mile drive from Empire on M22 winds northeast to Northport then south around the east side of the peninsula along Grand Traverse Bay to Traverse City.