A 1000 Mile Walk on the Beach by Loreen Niewenhuis

I’ve often wondered about the entire lakeshore of Lake Michigan.  How much of it is walkable?  If I started walking from my favorite beach, how far could I go before I was stopped by a barrier of human or natural construction?

Loreen Niewenhuis wondered this too.  Also, she had just turned 45.  She says, "I felt something pull at me, goading me to take on something bigger than myself.”  She decided she would “take on the lake.”  She began with the question, “Why not walk its shoreline day after day until I had walked all of it, captured it in my muscles, recorded it in my body?”

She begins her walk at Navy Pier in Chicago and heads toward Indiana.  She describes the beauty of the lake and its beaches and the ways that factories and power plants have marred that beauty and dumped toxic waste into its water.

 The worst is a site near Montague, Michigan.  On the shores of White Lake, Hooke Chemical, producer of pesticide compounds, dumped so much waste into the water that drastic cleanup measures were called for.

A vault [five stories tall] was created to entomb over a million cubic yards of chemical waste.  The bottom and sides are lined with 10-foot thick, packed clay walls, and all of the barrels of toxic waste and contaminated soil was trucked inside the vault.  Then the trucks used to haul the waste were parked inside because they were so heavily contaminated.  The vault was then sealed with concrete. 

Niewenhuis’ book is full of interesting facts about the lake.  Her weakness in conveying her rationale for this trip and how it changed her.  By documenting a 1,000 mile walk, she puts herself at the center of the story, but at the end of the book, the reader still doesn’t know her very well.

In the introduction she says this: 

In the fall of 2008, I told my husband, Jim, “Next year, I’m going to walk all the way around Lake Michigan.”

He paused for a moment, then asked, “Well, shouldn’t we discuss this?” 

I simply said, “No.” 

 It had been decided.  It was the adventure that I must have.

In her account of the journey, she often mentions her children, siblings, and friends.  She rarely mentions Jim, a glaring omission.  The philosophical and psychological impact of the journey could be developed more deeply.  I recommend the book to anyone who loves Lake Michigan, but Niewenhuis’ lack of personal insight cheats the reader and Niewenhuis herself.