I recently spoke before a lively and well-informed audience at the St. Clair Public Library in Port Huron. As is always the case, when I opened the floor for questions and comments, a dozen arms shot up. Everyone had thoughtful and important things to say, but most of the questions boiled down to two major ones: 1) What are the biggest challenges facing the lakes? 2) Is there hope of solving them?
I responded the best I could, but I’m a writer, after all, not a speaker. Here’s what I wish I had said:
Climate change. Invasive species. Nutrient loading from agricultural run-off and municipal waste. Ruptured petroleum and chemical pipelines. Airborne deposition of heavy metals. Poorly planned shoreline development. The diversion, sale, or theft of the water itself.
All of those are big problems and all of them need our attention.
But I think there’s a greater danger. One that makes many of the threats to the lakes worse. One that made many of them possible in the first place.
I fear the greatest danger to our Great Lakes is anything that causes us to turn our backs on them, to become cynical, to lose hope. It’s anything that makes us think it’s too late to make a difference.
Anything that makes us accept the message beamed to us countless times every day in every medium that our value is not as human beings, but as consumers. Anything that makes us believe the battles are already lost and that we might as well grab what we can for ourselves before somebody else gets it.
Yet there remain many reasons to be hopeful. We face profound challenges, as we always have and always will. But you don’t have to look far around the Great Lakes to find encouraging stories.
For those who might be losing hope, I recommend a visit to Lake Superior’s wild shores on both the U.S. and Canadian sides and to its biggest island, Isle Royale. Or to the largest network of freshwater dunes on the planet, stretching from Indiana Dunes at the south end of Lake Michigan to Sleeping Bear Dunes and beyond to the north end of the lake. Or to the North Channel of Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay. Or to the islands and wildlife preserves of Lake Erie. Or to Lake Ontario from Toronto to Kingston and the St. Lawrence downriver through the Thousand Islands. Those and many other places will convince you that large portions of the lakes and their shores remain healthy and beautiful—and deserve to be guarded ferociously.
I’m also hopeful because of the people I’ve met. Everywhere I’ve gone in my travels around the lakes I’ve listened to them share their concerns. Some are discouraged and some have quit trying. Many are indifferent. Or, rather, most are indifferent. But most always have been.
It’s the ones who speak up who make a difference. And what I’ve heard from them, young and old, college graduates and high-school dropouts, from every race and religion and social class, is the same message: We care.
We care about the water, the land, the air, and every living thing that shares them with us.
We care about decisions that involve this place where we live—and demand that those decisions not be made by people and corporations who have a vested interest in plundering and profiting from them.
We care so much that we will rise up and block locust industries that would harvest our natural resources, leave a mess, then move on.
We care when someone dumps their waste in our lakes and rivers. And when locust industries harvest our natural resources, leave a mess, and move on. And when a Canadian pipeline company with one of the most dismal records of safety, spill response, and public relations on the continent insists in a silky voice that we have nothing to worry about just because their twin petroleum lines under the Straits of Mackinac are 70 years old and decrepit, patched together, improperly supported, and not open to inspection.
We care when the place where we live is abused, because in the most literal sense what happens to the land, water, and air, happens to us. And we damned well take it personally.
So listen up, all you candidates running for office this year. We might sometimes be overwhelmed or disheartened or angry, but make no mistake: We are paying attention.
About the author:
Jerry Dennis’ essays have appeared in more than 100 publications worldwide. His books, including Up North in Michigan, The Windward Shore, and A Place on the Water have won many awards and have been widely translated. A special 20th anniversary edition of The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas is in bookstores now. He lives near Traverse City.
