Inside the Breakwaters
Presque Isle State Park, Lake Erie - part 2
Inside the line of breakwaters offshore of beach 9 at Presque Isle State Park, the water is distinctly green and translucent, and waves curl in to break on the sand. I focus on the sound of the surf: steady, sibilant, the soothing rhythm of our planet’s heartbeat. It’s the cliched song played by every seaside everywhere, but it seems magical here, 273 miles from the nearest ocean.
There is a strong breeze sweeping across the lake and up the sand to where I’m sitting, and thanks to the sound of the waves, I half-expect it to smell of salty brine. Instead, it’s odorless and too cold to be quite comfortable. But that’s ok, too, because the afternoon heat is still a bit much, and the combined sensation is a quiet, wavering thrill, like facing a blazing fire on a cold night.
The soft sand beneath me has compacted under my weight and my seat is going numb. I relocate a couple feet to the side, and smoothing the sand draws my attention to the shimmering, flickering light around me.
Here on beach nine, I’m doing something else you can’t usually do by the seaside: I’m sitting on a sand dune underneath a group of cottonwood trees. Their thousands of leaves are small, spade-shaped with jagged toothy edges, and a leathery texture. They flutter endlessly in the steady sea-breeze, not whispering together so much as rattling, and it’s a sound somehow more quiet than silence.
On my right, just out of reach, a fleshy root has snaked out from under the sand and lays in the twinkling sunlight. It’s a cottonwood root, testament to the stabilizing, homemaking role that these native trees play here. Cottonwoods seed themselves right in the sand, growing quickly despite the free-draining, low-nutrient environment. Their leafy crowns break the wind for inland neighbors, and their roots buttress the sand dunes that are stitched so delicately together by the roots of grass and milkweed.
I turn to look inland, where small shrubs have sprouted in the ground stabilized and fertilized by these pioneer plants. The shrubs hold their gnarled and twisty twigs stubbornly still against the wind, standing only a little taller than the grass stems that sway around them. Glistening green and blue dragonflies navigate like bush pilots along the edges where light meets shadow.
Along the crest of the dunes, a flock of chipping sparrows pluck grass seeds, skitter along the sand, and crowd into the lower branches of the shrubbery, moving like a crowd of pre-teens in a department store. Despite all the movement, they are so well camouflaged that I would have missed them if it were not for their frequent calling.
Looking back across the water, I see a foursome of cormorants have landed on the nearest breakwater. They’re standing on the rocks with their wings spread, drip-drying like freshly laundered scare-crows in the sun. I’ve been told that these fish-catching waterfowl must drip-dry after diving because their feathers lack the waterproof oils used by ducks. This makes them less buoyant, which makes them better divers and more deadly fishermen. It also makes them look silly, silhouetted with their long, snakey necks twisting around and their wings rigidly cruciform.
This is one of the things I love about Presque Isle: With seven distinct ecological zones in such a small space, I can often move between different worlds just by turning my head. The watery world of the cormorants and the grassland ground of the chipping sparrows are within eye-shot, but it’s not likely either flock will ever see the other.
Just over the dunes, not much further from where I sit than the breakwaters, is yet another kind of habitat, with white pines, oaks, and other forest trees. There is a lull in the sea-breeze, and the ecstatic song of a catbird reaches me from those trees.
I climb by stages to my feet and stretch. Rested for the moment, I feel a sudden restlessness. It’s time for some bird-watching.
This article first appeared in 2023 as part of a long-form essay on The Storied Outdoors.
"... the combined sensation is a quiet, wavering thrill, like facing a blazing fire on a cold night." I can feel it.
Now I can't wait for some more days on the sand <3