Review of the Dynamic Great Lakes

The Dynamic Great Lakes

 

Review of The Dynamic Great Lakes

U.S. Water News – Peter Wild
Are dinosaurs cruising the benthic depths of the Great Lakes even while we go about our daily tasks? Not exactly. Yet sturgeon, fish weighing up to 300 pounds and similarly plated with armor,are nosing around down there. Occasionally you can see the monsters appear, making their spawning runs up rivers and surfacing like submarines in the pools beneath waterfalls.

The five Great Lakes, holding nearly twenty percent of the earth’s fresh water, are quite young. Gouged out by glaciers, they assumed their present shapes a mere 3,000 years ago. For that, they are a dynamic shifting system, still changing and exhibiting surprising differences. Lake Ontario, for example, the easternmost, although smallest of the bodies, holds more water than Lake Erie, its shallower nearby sister. Here’s a handy primer for all such things, from the interaction of phytoplankton and calcium carbonate that gives a white cast to these inland oceans come August and helps clean the water to the charming ice volcanoes spouting chilly “lava” in the winter.
This is intriguing stuff for adults, but the straightforward presentation also lends itself to use in schools, beginning about the sixth grade and up. And yes, we get the latest news on the zebra mussel, the tube nose goby, and other threats to the natural scheme of things. Also good news; how since the banning of DDT in the 1970′s, the bald eagles have come back.

Maybe the Manitous

The Wilderness Within by Barbara Spring

It’s getting colder now on the Great Lakes. The water looks heavy, dense, and usually by Thanksgiving, the first ice begins to form on the shore. First one crystal grabs a grain of sand and then it begins and a stiff collar of ice forms along the shore on the eastern side of Lake Michigan. Maybe the Manitous is a poem from my book, The Wilderness Within.

Maybe the Manitous

Eastward rolling water
pellucid dense and slow
Karo syrup gloss or
flowing molten glass.
One crystal grabs
one grain of sand and
the beach blooms
with frost flowers—
a stiff white collar grows
all along the sandy shore.
Cold.
Icy winds blast.
Ice balls bob, wink, crash.
An eagle’s cry hangs
midair
above a white horizon line—
when sweetwater seas
freeze.
Late afternoon sun—
deep blue shadows on snow
manitous whisper to ice shelves
sibilant spirits speak —
murmur to structures below.
From Milwaukee to Muskegon
cold rollers flow, then splash through
ice volcanoes on the shore
troll caves and canon balls
shot from polar storms
or maybe the manitous.

Maybe the Manitous

The Wilderness Within by Barbara Spring

It’s getting colder now on the Great Lakes. The water looks heavy, dense, and usually by Thanksgiving, the first ice begins to form on the shore. First one crystal grabs a grain of sand and then it begins and a stiff collar of ice forms along the shore on the eastern side of Lake Michigan. Maybe the Manitous is a poem from my book, The Wilderness Within.

Maybe the Manitous

Eastward rolling water
pellucid dense and slow
Karo syrup gloss or
flowing molten glass.
One crystal grabs
one grain of sand and
the beach blooms
with frost flowers—
a stiff white collar grows
all along the sandy shore.
Cold.
Icy winds blast.
Ice balls bob, wink, crash.
An eagle’s cry hangs
midair
above a white horizon line—
when sweetwater seas
freeze.
Late afternoon sun—
deep blue shadows on snow
manitous whisper to ice shelves
sibilant spirits speak —
murmur to structures below.
From Milwaukee to Muskegon
cold rollers flow, then splash through
ice volcanoes on the shore
troll caves and canon balls
shot from polar storms
or maybe the manitous.