Author shores up lake trek with new book

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Loreen Niewenhuis as she passed through Chicago on her trek around Lake Michigan.

For most of us, a walk on the beach is a leisurely process of shuffling through sand and occasionally stooping to pick up a pretty shell. But Loreen Niewenhuis took a rather longer stroll along the water. It was, in fact, a 1000-mile hike, not just on a beach, but at times across rocky and sometimes perilous terrain around the coast of Lake Michigan. Now, the Battle Creek, Mich. woman who has really walked a walk has memorialized the experience in a fascinating book.

A 1000-Mile Walk on the Beach, One Woman’s Trek of the Perimeter of Lake Michigan (paperback, Crickhollow Books) is a well-written adventure story peppered with cogent observations, interesting science facts and historical trivia. But it is also much more, as the author warmly and often humorously incorporates her thoughts and feelings, and further personalizes her trek with accounts of family members and friends, who joined in on her walk from time to time.

Bu 80 per cent of the walk was done alone. Niewenhuis endured a number of daunting challenges, including blood blisters, bogs, the possibility of cougars, and a painful gallstone just 100 miles before the end of the trek.

The author will visit several area bookstores to tell the story of her adventure and the writing of her book.

The lake trek was done in 2009, when Niewenuis was 45 years old. The genesis of the idea, she said, began as “a mid-life crisis for me. I was at a big turning point, one son was off to college and another was driving. Things were changing and I really wanted to challenge myself.”

Niewenhuis trained for her mammoth walk, and acquired some useful ways of approaching the journey. “We don’t read the land anymore, we just jump in our car, and walk in places where there are sidewalks” she said. “I learned to anticipate the shoreline to stay safe.”

No phone

She had a cell phone with her, but noted dryly that “Any time you have a dune between you and civilization, there is no signal. As I told my sister, I have duct tape in my backpack and there’s always a stick around, so if I break a leg, I can always wind it up and hobble back to civilization.”

With bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology, and a master of fine arts degree in fiction writing, Niewenhuis was well-equipped for both her lake trek and for writing a book. She had already published short stories in several literary journals, and was a finalist in 2009 for the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.

And the lake was an old friend. Niewenhuis noted that her life-long interest and studies in the natural sciences was sparked when, as a child growing up in Michigan, she’d run up and down the dunes to the lake.

Chicago research

She prepped with plenty of reading, too. “I read everything I could get my hands on, books on natural history and the geology of the lake,” she said. “I spent a lot of time at the Chicago library, where there’s a whole floor of scientific research, soread a lot of scientific papers about the lake. The research was a nice blending with my science background, as I could read more technical papers. And I had the ability to gather data over time, and to make the logical deductions based on everything I had seen. So, yes, my scientific mind helped.”

Niewenhuis has been working this year on a medical novel, while also planning her next adventure, to begin in April 2012, when she will walk 1000 miles around sections of all five Great Lakes. Another book will follow, because she believes it’s important to share what she learns about these great, inland seas. “They contain ninety per cent of the fresh surface water in America and are very important,” said Niewenhuis. “I’m completely captivated with the Great Lakes, how they work, and how little people know about them.”