Pileated Woodpecker near Lake Michigan

The pileated woodpecker does not mind cold snowy weather and so we see them year around near the Great Lakes.  They have a loud raucus call that reminds me of the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker.  Here he is getting at grubs deep inside of a tree.  The holes these woodpeckers make can be huge.

Pancake Ice on the Great Lakes

Pancake ice forms from sheets of ice that break off and then are like a broken plate glass window. When these pieces of ice continually knock together by the rolling action of waves, they become rounded and curled up at the edges like gigantic pancakes.  Sometimes the pancake ice looks like bumper cars crashing into each other like a wild carnival ride. 

 Excerpted from The Dynamic Great Lakes.

Read more about ice formations on the Great Lakes in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.  This book is available at Amazon.com, bn.com, Schuler Books, The Bookman and many other fine bookstores.

my Amazon page

Reviews of The Dynamic Great Lakes

Praise for The Dynamic Great Lakes

 In her cautionary book, environmental activist and professor Spring enthusiastically explores the Great Lakes, and clearly explains why they should be protected. —Book Sense Nov 22 2003

This is intriguing stuff for adults, but the straightforward presentation also lends itself to use in schools. —Peter Wild U.S. Water News

 Every library should have this book. —Stan Lievense, retired fish biologist MDNR

Worth reading if for no other reason than that the writing is masterfully done…reminded me a little of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. —Jonathon David Masters,

This is an impressive little book. Not quite 110 pages long, it’s a read of about an hour or so. The author has, however, managed to jam it full of facts and information about the Great Lakes. The author also sprinkles a strong environmental ethic throughout the book coupled with the belief that the democratic process can make a difference. —Bob Gross, The Oakland Press

 Spring’s handy 108-page primer about the Great Lakes provides the curious with a solid overview of the lakes including their history, physical characteristics, denizens and the threats facing them, particularly from invasive species and pollution. —Dave LeMieux, The Muskegon Chronicle

The Dynamic Great Lakes is available at Barnes & Noble stores and online, Amazon.com and many fine bookstores.

 

Great Lakes Education

People need to know about the Great Lakes

 

In Touch with the World through the www

 

People who live around the Great Lakes often take them for granted.  I wrote The Dynamic Great Lakes, to give people enough information to make intelligent choices in their every day lives about the world’s greatest freshwater system.  The Dynamic Great Lakes is a book about their ecology and the mistakes people have made when altering the landscape by making locks for shipping, destroying wetlands or introducing new species both intentionally and unintentionally.  It was my aim in writing this book to make people appreciate these lakes and understand what they might do for their betterment.

 

Most people do not understand the significance of the Great Lakes.  They are twenty per cent of the world’s fresh surface water and need to be protected.  These lakes’ freshwater will be hotly contested as more and more industries and people in arid parts of the world would like to exploit them. It is indeed happening now.   Some large freshwater lakes in the world have been destroyed—drawn down to nothing through a lack of understanding.

 

Bottling plants have their eyes on the Great Lakes.  Bottling water and shipping it out of the watershed will destroy the integrity of the lakes and their unique ecosystems.  People in the Great Lakes watershed argue that the water belongs to the commons and should not be sold for private profit.  There are many more issues the book addresses: directional drilling for oil, nuclear power plants, exotic species, wetlands, sand dunes and pollution from industries and municipalities. 

 

  

I wrote the book and created this website so that people might find the information they need about the Great Lakes. It gives the basics and yet limnologists have told me they learned things about the Great Lakes they did not know, while general readers have told me that they never appreciated the Great Lakes until they read my book.  Another motive in writing the book was to raise consciousness about the greatest freshwater system on the surface of Earth and the need to protect what we have.  Armed with such knowledge, people are in a good position to make good decisions about the lakes.

 

One of the first educational websites and newsletters that featured The Dynamic Great Lakes website was www.Spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk  in the U.K.  I have had responses from around the globe: Germany, France, USSR, Scandinavia, China, and many other places.  I believe the world wants to know about the Great Lakes.

 

The Dynamic Great Lakes has been added to the National Clearinghouse of Math and Science, The Eisenhower Regional Consoritia (enc online)  a database for math and science, a resource widely used by schools.

 I  have given talks about the ever-changing Great Lakes at several bookstores, libraries and museums as well as schools.

 

Several public radio stations, and several public television stations have interviewed me and prominently displayed my book cover and URL as the program was aired, or in the case of radio, repeated the URL of my website over the air several times. 

 

The Dynamic Great Lakes, the book, will be listed as a resource in an educational program under development for the Great Lakes in Michigan.  The book is also listed as a resource in a book published by Michigan State University 

 

Because of a great many favorable reviews, the book has been critically acclaimed and re released by Independence Books.  It has also been updated with new material.  The Dynamic Great Lakes is in its fourth printing.  I believe that having a website has helped get the word out and this led to the book being chosen by the publisher to be re released. 

 If we do not work to conserve our life giving freshwater, we may find that the integrity of the lakes is damaged beyond repair.  My website allows people to see satellite views of the Great Lakes as well as places around the Great Lakes of interest: Chicago, Cleveland, Lake Michigan with its singing sands, the Door Peninsula in Canada and the Bruce Peninsula in Canada with their limestone formations, population centers, invasive species, fish, both endemic and planted or accidentally released into the lakes.

 

A website can be a valuable adjunct to a book.    To keep the website fresh, I change it from time to time.  I have published other books, The Wilderness Within, a book of poems and a few essays. It is about wild places in the world and within the self; Sophia's Lost and Found, poems of above and below, and Between Sweetwater and Sand.  Although different genres, these books were  written with a deep appreciation of nature.

 

My poems are published on other websites that appreciate my work, the PW Review, Artvilla, Prairie Poetry, Wise Women’s Web, Betsie’s Literary Page, Creative Women’s Network UK.; Care2  These websites can be accessed around the globe.   In this way I can publish new work until I decide to publish another collection of poetry.  There is a community of poets who support and appreciate one another.

 

There is a community of people who are involved in the work of educating about the environment, and groups whose aim is to make a difference in improving the environment.  I can be in touch with these groups with a few keystrokes.  They let me know what is new and often send good feedback about my website.  Often we trade links.
 

These websites are Environmental Education on the internet (EE link); National Science Teachers Association (nst); Planeta.com; http://www.nalms.org; Teachers.net; Presbyterians for Restoring Nature; www.ecoiq.com; eco-portal; getCited; Book Sense; Care2 Environment Supersite; Michigan Authors and Illustrators Search Page; waterwebring; www.ideacog.net, a clever literary website; Creative Womens Network; A Celebration of Women Writers; Snakeskin; Teacher Talk Earth and Sky; 2River.org, a literary website and Poets House in New York City, www.poetshouse.org.

 

Some of the most ardent conservationists are outdoorsmen and women.  I won an award from Water and Woods for my website.  I contribute articles to websites and sometimes they review my book:  Lakeland Boating has such a website as does Great Lakes Boating; www.great-lakes.org; Fishing With Rod, a website in British Columbia where my book was reviewed; Float Fishing, a website in Toronto.

                                 

I can be in touch with communities in far-flung places with my website.  My book is available to purchase in other countries such as Canada, Japan, Germany, England, and France, Australia through various on-line stores.

Smitty the Mastodont

Mastodont Bones Found

In l985, the gigantic bones of a mastodont were found in
 Grandville, a city in West Michigan. A family digging the

foundation of a new house reported the find to Dr. Richard

Flanders, an anthropologist at Grand Valley State University

and Dr. Flanders along with his anthropology students began

the task of digging up the skeleton of the Ice Age animal

very carefully so that none of the bones would be lost or

destroyed in the process.

After all the bones had been carefully reassembled, they

could learn a great deal about Smitty, a name the students

gave to the ancient animal. Smitty weighed as much as a

school bus and his huge tusks were supported by a very

powerful neck.

Some parts of Smitty were missing, the brain and the

legs. They wondered if Smitty might have been hunted and

then killed by paleo indians because these would have been

the choice cuts of meat. Professor Flanders took some of the

bones to a butcher for his opinion. Flanders suspected that

the animal had been butchered for its meat. The butcher told

him that it looked to him as if the bones had been butchered

in the same way butchers still cut meat today.

The place where Smitty was found also led Dr. Flanders

and his students to believe that the mastodont had been

driven into a pit by a number of hunters and their dogs where

he could be killed with stone weapons.

Although the mastodonts and their larger relatives the

mammoths were numerous at the end of the Ice Age and

quite a few of their bones have been found in the Great

Lakes basin, they disappeared from the face of the Earth

along with the other mega sized animals.   

 

Enbridge Pipeline Under Straits of Mackinac

https://www.facebook.com/flowforwater/photos/a.10150172774016236.318508.346842236235/10153557808786236/?type=3&theater

 Did you know that the currents that run through the Straits of Mackinac are 10 times stronger than the current of the Niagra River? That's one of many reasons it's a terrible idea to have 23 million gallons of oil passing through those waters daily - imagine how quickly those currents could move leaking oil across the #GreatLakes Help us #ShutDownLine5 - Visit CrowdRise.com/PipeUp

Click the links above for more information and how you could help.

Isle Royale in Lake Superior

Greenstones,  Wolves, Moose, Thimbleberries, and the Isle Royale redfin lake trout

 

On the map, Isle Royale looks like the eye in the wolf’s head shape of Lake Superior with Duluth its snout and the Keweenaw Peninsula its mouth.  It is precious since there are few places left on this planet that have been preserved like this.  It is unique; some of the oldest rocks on this planet form Isle Royale, its plants and animals  and minerals.  There are copper mining pits on the Island where native Americans dug rich veins of copper long ago.

 

     When I think of Isle Royale, I think of Eden, a place away from cars and the noise of machinery. There is no traffic on Isle Royale; only hiking trails.   The sounds of Isle Royale are of bugling moose, the silvery songs of northern songbirds, the lapping of waves on rocks and the quavering voices of loons.  Sometimes there is the slap of a beaver’s tail.  The resident pack of wolves are elusive and seldom seen.  We did not hear them at all.

 

     My husband and I hiked the trails there and I’ll never forget the thimbleberries  higher than our heads along a trail.  We picked the large berries like none other I have ever tasted, copper color, tangy and delicious.

 

          We found greenstones, Michigan’s semi precious stone.  We stayed on Isle Royale for a week and every day we took a different hiking trail.  We watched a diving duck teaching her young to dive.  We saw a fox near its den, and had a close encounter with a moose.   As we hiked, my husband Norm said, “I smell a moose.”  I didn’t believe him, but as we came around the bend, there it was, bigger than life, standing athwart our trail.  We kept a respectful distance and it casually strolled off.

 

          We did not fish, but the rocks off of the island are the place where the Isle Royale redfin lake trout spawn as they have for millennia.  This is an endemic species and its good to know it is still returning to Isle Royale every year before returning to the depths of Lake Superior.

 

          In my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes, I have a section devoted to this very special fish, the Isle Royale redfin lake trout.