Flying from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan

November 21, 2007 in Future, Geology, Life, Past, Photography, Places, Travel, Uncategorized | 4 comments

The shot above, of Kettle Point on Lake Huron, is one of many in a series taken in a line running from Pinery Provincial Park in Ontario, across Michigan looking north toward Saginaw (and its Bay), Grand Rapids, various towns on the Grand River, and then the shore of Lake Michigan, all while flying from Boston to Chicago on the way to Atlanta last week.

The woods near Kettle Point, and up the coast into Pinery Park, comprise the largest oak savanna in North America, left unspoiled because the sandy land beneath was bad for farming. The lines running through them are the remains of old shorlines. I won’t say “ancient”, because they aren’t. They’re markers of the rising land and shrinking size of the lake, which is actually a puddle left by the melting glacier that comprised an ice cap that recently came south as far as Long Island and Cape Cod, which were both built along its southern boundary of dirt and rock the glacier had carried there. In fact all the Great Lakes, and nearly every Lake in Canada, is but a dozen thousand years old, at its most elderly edge (this one here).

Kinda puts global warming in perspective. You could stand at any one of those lines at any time in the past 12,000 years, and speak of global warming as a progressive fact.

By the way, fall colors stand out in many of these pictures, if you look closely for them.

4 comments

jthoagland on November 21, 2007 at 9:26 pm

Doc
Tre Cool

Living a bit further north, but did my early study of geology at Oberlin (outside Cleveland).
Born in Ohio (had family there, visited often)
Northern Ohio flat, ancient lakebed, pretty good farmland

Northern Mich, living on Glacial till
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_lakes#Geological_history

Back to Oberlin
Aced the course because I referenced Tuzo Wilson ( on sandstone lentils, ancient beaches)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tuzo_Wilson

Professor Emeritus who graded my papers had worked with Tuzo in the Canadian Rockies (another must visit area)

Check : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgess_Shale
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderful_Life_%28book%29

Back to Great Lakes, we are still experiencing isostatic rebound
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound

Evidenced by a series of ancient beaches here and further north
Our lake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_lake) was once part of Lake Michigan

Ah … geology – land history

Happy Thanksgiving to the Searls clan
Ciao
Chip
Robert Gable on November 22, 2007 at 1:10 am

As a Californian who used to live in Saginaw and Grand Rapids but hasn’t been back to Michigan for quite awhile, this is a great sequence.

By the way, Grand Rapids is Kent County
jthoagland on November 22, 2007 at 9:38 am

Doc
just went through the photostream, adding comments
Good stuff, from ex-resident of “downstate” Michigan and with daughter living (when not on road) in Chicago

A bit more “altitude” :
http://modeshift.org/?p=245

And I think I posted this before:
http://looneydunes.blogspot.com/search?q=abrams
MichiganBusinessHub.com on April 12, 2008 at 10:08 am

Great picture! Lake Huron is my fav of all the great lakes in michigan.