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Marram Grass


Roots of marram grass weave fine
webs under the sands as
a network expands
thousands of feet.
Stalks bow down to west winds
and multiply season after season
until the tasseled dune
waves with green grace.
Each year the dunes grow higher
in tasseled grasses
in marram grasses’
loving embrace.
--Barbara Spring
Excerpted from Sophia's Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below

In the Cool Dunes

Gifts of the west wind and the glaciers

cool dunes rise above the windy beach.

For thousands of years the dunes

grew tall and then the sand began to sing.

The sand sang of quartz from Wisconsin

and of ice mountains grinding

through, of Lake Michigan currents

and November winds that blew.

Quartz and hematite granules sang

as young girls wove garlands of wildflowers

from the wooded dunes:

bloodroot, Dutchman’s breeches, hepatica,

trillium, violets and Pitcher’s thistle.

They played in dappled shadows under

sassafras, witch hazel and choke cherry trees.

Bewitched, young boys carved their names

beside names of the girls they loved

in the smooth gray bark of beech trees

while silent deer and young wood ducks watched

in the cool dunes.

--Barbara Spring

Excerpted from Sophia's Lost and Found: Poems of Above and Below

Available from Barnes & Noble, Amazon and many fine independent bookstores.

The sand dunes along Lake Michigan are gifts of the west wind. 

It was here that the father of ecology, Henry Chandler Cowles, made observations about the rapidly changing plant life that led to the

science of ecology.

In 1899 he published

The Ecological Relation of the Vegetation on the Sand Dunes of Lake Michigan

 In this paper he showed the  mutual relationships between plants and their environment.

“Ecology is a study in dynamics,” he wrote.

The word dynamic means change. The Great Lakes are dynamic.

Sand dunes are dynamic, making them a living laboratory for the

study of ecology.

Excerpt from The Dynamic Great Lakes

Available from Barnes & Noble and many other fine bookstores.

The Singing Sands

Singing Sands in Michigan


Barbara Spring

Build sand castles or lie on the beach, boogie board, kite board or sun bathe. Sand beaches in other parts of the world are o.k., but sand beaches in Michigan are of an especially fine quality. Why? someone asks.

This sand is composed of quartz granules, dark colored magnetite and other fine grains of rock. People love to walk in the so called singing sands…it feels good underfoot. When a toe or shoe is dragged across the sand, there is a high pitched sound or singing. This is due to the high quartz content of the sand.



At any time of year, you may find people enjoying the cool wooded dunes at Hoffmaster State Park on the shore of Lake Michigan in Norton Shores near Muskegon. Some of the best sand dunes in the world are found here and along the coasts of the Great Lakes. At Hoffmaster State Park, there are beaches and places to camp, trails through the wooded dunes, and stairways to climb over the dunes to breathtaking views of Lake Michigan. Naturalists take visitors and school groups through the park and point out owls, song birds and plants.



But to really learn about the dunes, you must visit Gillette Nature Center at the center of the park where there are displays explaining how the dunes were formed by actions of the glaciers and the west wind. The displays show dynamic dune succession: that is how dune plants and animals change over time. It was in dunes such as these that Henry Chandler Cowles studied botany and then wrote “ The Ecological Relation of the Sand Dunes of Lake Michigan” in 1899. The discipline of ecology was born in dunes like this.



There are hands on displays, kids really go for this, on the lower level and a collection of creatures…mammals, reptiles and fish found in and near the dunes.



In the fall, the changing colors of leaves are worth a walk in the dunes and in winter, people like to cross country ski on an old logging trail that hugs the side of a dune. In spring, wild flowers bloom under the trees. Bird migrations pass through here.



Many beautiful and unique dunes were leveled in the past and their intricate ecosystems destroyed by mining the sand for industry and building subdivisions. We still have some dunes left to enjoy on the Great Lakes. They are well worth preserving. After all, they were created over thousands of years. Once gone, dunes with their intricate ecosystems, can never be resurrected by humans.

Read more about dunes in The Dynamic Great Lakes available at Schuler Books in downtown Grand Rapids, the Bookman in Grand Haven or order from the publisher http://www.publishamerica.net/product23502.html.

Great Lakes Singing Sand

Some of the best sand dunes around the Great Lakes are found in West Michigan. These sand dunes and the beaches are the so called "singing sands" so called because the sand will give off a high ringing note when a shoe is dragged across it. This is because of the high percentage of quartz in the fine sand.
Read more about sand dunes in The Dynamic Great Lakes
isbn 1-58851-731-4



photo by EPA