I get asked over and over again if I make Pandora style beads with the beach stones I collect from Lake Michigan. I can now say that I do.

I've learned how to make these Pandora style beads with Petoskey stones. When I researched how to make them, I was intimidated by the tubing and all of the tools needed to make them, and then I found out about the glue-in grommets which make it much easier. These are great if you love the look of the tubing but not the hassle.

 I also made these with the same method.

This winter has been so mild. I went to the beach about a month ago on a day when it was in the 40's to replenish my stone supply. There wasn't any snow on the beach but this is what the bay looked like. Beautiful!

Going Green

TraverseBayShores@Etsy

PETOSKEY STONE PICKING SEASON!!

Petoskey stone season is now in full swing, and Bethany is loading her Etsy shop with various groups of both drilled and undrilled stones. After a long hard winter, shelves of ice have shoved piles of stones along the shore, and we'll be heading to our cottage to see what the bay has churned up. We'll be heading to the shore to stock up

Beautiful!!

TraverseBayShores@Etsy

Long Winter

 blog entry by Sarah Dickerson

Another couple of semesters of teaching done, and as I feared, I neglected this blog. It was a long, hard, and cold-as-hell winter, and a busy and over-all sad year. Our father suffered an infection last fall, and subsequently had his prostate removed.Though near fully recovered by Christmas, our mother subsequently became ill in the nursing home and passed away in January.Her death was sad, even though it was expected.Or not her death that was so much sad, but our loss, especially difficult for our father.Though I’m sure others would argue it, our place on the bay is that much less special without her, as it has been for a few years now since she's been unable to go there.It just is.Some might say you've got your memories, hang on to those. Sure.But memories are only that, until they evolve into family history.
Not to sound gloomy, but without cookies and muffins and knit blankets, it’s back to raw nature.And that’s not a tragedy.

And so it goes, as our great-great-great-uncle, Abraham Rhines wrote of his father’s death in 1860 to his sister in Syracuse. I’ve been getting hung up on family history and genealogy since Mom died, perhaps to be reminded of the inevitability of death, or to secure her, too, into the family's history--and everyone on the family tree is dead. A good reminder. Not one of them lived forever (Thomas Lynch, the essayist/undertaker from Milford, MI writes: “The death rate is one hundred percent”). Somehow, history is way cooler than memories. And philosophizing and rationalizing the inevitability of death, and whatever comfort it offers seems less cliché when written about in 1860, even if it is overly poetic. Letter writing back then was an art. Worth the time. I love it! (I can’t help but giggle a little at the verbosity).

On the news of his father’s death, Uncle Abraham writes:

“He has gone to that great receptacle of all that ever have lived and now live and all that ever shall live. And the last result of life is uniform to all whether we wade through the miseries of almost intolerable magnitude. Or through the flowery paths of luxury and ease. We must all die. This is the great debt we owe. And none shall be able to avoid the payment of it. And, oh that we might all lay it to heart. And let it occupy a just share of our moments. That we might at last adopt the language of the prophets ‘let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end like his.”

He then goes on to speak of the weather and health of his family and friends. As we all should once loved ones are buried or scattered. And I love how he keeps going after the period. Fragmenting his sentiments. You think he’s done. But, oh! No. He keeps going. So at last you wish he’d be done already. As we all should be done by then.

I absolutely love it.

So many of the Rhine’s family letters are to inform of someone’s death. I may post them on my own blog for anyone who’s interested. They tell a wonderful and sad story.

All the while, however, Bethany has been minding the store, having stayed busy through the long and sad winter. Groups of un-drilled Petoskey stones have been quite popular on her Etsy site. She’s most recently made and sold some nice pieces of beach stone jewelry. She’s also taken to polishing and buffing some stones, though there’s plenty of natural stones up for grabs yet. There’s little of everything: drilled, un-drilled, natural or polished, a few pieces of jewelry, some really nice groups of Petoskey stones, drilled beach stone beads, a few chain corals, and some really cool Charlevoix stones and other fossils.

I imagine, now the stone picking season is upon us, we have no choice but to get on with the business of stone picking.

I’d like to share one of my dad’s drawings (He continues to visit the nursing home, and make sketches of some of the residents in their final months or years: wonderful character sketches, something he’d done for several years while visiting my mother). Last February, when the ice was still piled up along the shore and the snow still deep, my father and Bethany took my mother’s ashes up to the cottage. At a loss as to how to get them into the bay, they found that the little creek running through our neighbors yard and out into the bay was flowing hard from a recent snow melt. It flowed beneath the snow and out again at the shore, then shot out into the bay beneath the ice. The bay beyond the ice was wild and white-capped. They poured her ashes into the hard-flowing creek, and out she went.

Burton Dickerson

In some of my mother's journals and notes, she wrote that she was once afraid of death, though somewhere along the line, she'd realized, or concluded, or learned, that her own death would be the least significant event of her life.

Spider Sand Dune Rides

Banks township was kind enough to send me images of Mel's old pamphlets for the Spider Sand Dune Rides, and I wanted to include them here, along with a few images from the Antrim Creek Natural Area's website. I remember this pamphlet. Mel used to keep them on the shelf that dropped down from the screened window. I haven't seen this in a million years. Well, not quite that long, but not since I was at least 14, the last year Mel ran the dune rides.

I've been looking for photographs of Mel's but have had little luck. Odd, since during every ride, Mel would stop the jeep and offer to take a photo of the passengers for anyone with a camera, and since Mel always asked if we wanted to ride along (if there was room), we must have smiled for a million photos over the summers. You'd think I could track one or two down.

During one of these ride's photo sessions, I jumped out of the jeep to take a picture myself. I wanted Mel to be in it, as I recall. It was my first Polaroid camera; my parents gave it to me for Christmas when I was in the 5th grade. Film cost a bundle as I recall, about 4 bucks for a pack of film that could take 8 instant pictures (the kind where you pulled the picture out of the camera, waited a minute, then peeled the film off a small white framed photograph). When I got my first camera in the 5th grade, a Polaroid, I asked Mel if I could take a picture, and I wanted him in it.

By this time, Mel had given up on his tiny Scout Jeeps (pictured in the pamphlet: man I'd love to get some good photos of those, and of Mel!), and no longer needed some 3 to 4 drivers: I only vaguely remember the days of the many Scout jeeps lined up in the drive outside the shanty, all of them red? Or maybe one or two of them were blue. Sy, Larry, his sons I believe, and I recall at one time 4 jeeps. So, who was the fourth? I'll have to ask my older brothers.

In this old Polaroid, fuzzy because it was a Polaroid and I was a crappy picture taker, and fuzzy too because it's a scan of the old Polaroid. Mel, in later years, began driving a Chevy truck, which could seat more passengers (near 10 instead of only 6). It still zipped around the dunes pretty well, but not like the old Scout jeeps could. That's Mel waving, and if any one out there has a better picture of Mel, I'd love to have a copy! Bethy is in the back in a gray shirt, and Marty Manker sits next to her, leaning into the passenger next to him. I know his brother Mike is in there somewhere, and I think a few other beach friends as well.

Mel ran the the Spider Sand Dune Rides on Harry Jones stretch of property just on the other side of "The Big Creek" as we called it (Antrim Creek). We always called the dunes "The Dunes", still do, though it's now officially the Antrim Creek Natural Area, purchased by Antrim County in 1994. This photo above was taken by Phil Ohmer, the area off the beach where much of the ride took place. The deer have reclaimed the space now.

Mel would zip the jeep along the shoreline as well, pictured above (photo courtesy of Banks Township). Part of the fun was Mel driving some 5o or 60 miles per hour (could have been slower or faster: all I recall is it was fast!), through the water in such a way so the spray came up and over the back of the jeep, getting every one soaking wet. Of course, if there were a few old ladies or those who didn't particularly want to get wet, he'd do this very gently (or not at all) When asked however, he'd give the whole crew a solid soaking! It was his way of cooling us off.

Mel would also cruise along the shore slowly, his door ajar, so he could look along the water's edge for Petoskey Stones. Bethy and I sold Petoskey stones, as well, up near the Shanty for a dime each. Mel's searching for them for passengers for free didn't seem to affect our business too much--we'd go home at summers end having made some 16 dollars altogether: more sales so far than has been made on Etsy! :)

Here's a great areal photo of The dunes. You can see the Big Creek, and The Dunes stretching back a ways. A lot of the ride took place back there, a hilly, winding place, though not huge. Today, in fact, the Dunes look pretty well flattened. Either they seemed bigger when we were kids, or they have, indeed, blown flatter. After the day's rides were over, or on Sundays when the Spider Sand Dunes was closed (Mel was a church-going man: of course he would not have worked on a Sunday), we spent a lot of time as kids playing. Later, as college students, the Mankers or my older brothers, would drag their huge generators back there and hook up their stereos and monolithic speakers for a number of beach parties: Yes, Genesis, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Who blasted into the dead quiet of The Dunes, not a soul around to hear it, but us. Memorable parties.

They say many babies in Antrim County were conceived back there, and those of us who summered there took advantage of the privacy as well, particularly after Mel stopped running his jeep there. I received my first kiss, at 14, a terrifying, but memorable event (thanks Sean!), on a high dune (very near where the deer poses in Phil Ohmer's photograph) overlooking the place where the jeep's tracks criss-crossed through a low valley (pictured in the pamlphet at the top of this post).

We have so many wonderful memories of Mel and the dune rides, and even more of The Dunes. Please, if anyone out there has any pictures of Mel or the Dune rides, we'd love to have copies!

When ever any one stopped by and asked Mel about the rides, he gave this speech (us summer kids still have it memorized: if I get this wrong, anyone who knows the old lines, please correct me):

Well, go down through the woods a half a mile, onto the beach three quarters, into the old Indian campsite, down the beach a thousand feet, and there you have the Spider Sand Dunes, not high, maybe thirty feet off the water, we fool around a little bit, and return.

I'm missing something. What is it? Help!

blog entry by Sarah Dickerson