We woke in Amherst, Ohio and drove west. West, toward Indiana Dunes National Park. There’s a certain quality to the flatness out here. The road stretches like it was drawn by a child with a ruler, and the fields roll out on either side—same shade of tired green or gold, depending on the crop and the sun. It’s hypnotic, even lulling, until you begin to wonder: Who lives here, and why? Not in the judgmental sense, but in the quiet, contemplative way that long drives demand.
There’s a pull that places exert on people. A sort of gravity. Where you’re from has a way of anchoring you. You might fantasize about leaving, dream about other lives in other states, but often the strongest dreamers I’ve known were the ones who never quite made it out. It’s not a failure. Sometimes it’s just that the land holds you in place. Or the work does. Or the people. Or the memory of people. In this part of the country, agriculture still carves out a living for many. It’s honest work, tied to rhythm and soil, and I can understand how the pride of it keeps you rooted.
We rolled westward through Ohio under a low, rainy sky. Showers came and went in burst. Sometimes a mist, sometimes a full downpour. Then just as quickly, a brief patch of sun would break through. The landscape stretched out endlessly flat around us, fields yawning open in every direction. A quilt of fields broken only by the occasional farmhouse or distant line of trees.
By late afternoon, we reached Indiana Dunes National Park, which stretches for 15 miles along the southern shore of Lake Michigan. It’s a strange and lovely patch of protected land consisting of scrub forests, shifting sand, and freshwater coastline. We made our way to the eastern edge to hike Mt. Baldy: the tallest dune in the park, Mt. Baldy is slowly migrating, twenty feet a year, sliding grain by grain away from the lake. You can’t climb it now; the sand hides sinkholes where trees once grew and then were swallowed by sand creating potential for dangerous “sinkholes”.
The walk was easy through a tunnel of trees that eventually opened to the dune. It was here, standing on the edge of something ancient and soft and shifting, that the contradictions of the place struck me hardest. To the east: a power plant, industrial and humming, coughing faint chemical smoke into the big Midwestern sky and into the lake. To the west: the teeth of the Chicago skyline, sharp and gray, rising out of nothing. But looking north was something else entirely. There, it could’ve been Cape Cod. Or some unmarked part of the Atlantic coast. The lake stretched beyond vision, and the waves folded in like they had traveled thousands of miles.
We walked the last bit to the beach. The sand was thick and cool and swallowed our feet as we moved. Our footprints sank and held. It’s funny how the Midwest often gets reduced in our collective imagination as flat, barren, industrial. That’s the picture I used to have. And in many places, that picture holds true. But here, on the shores of Lake Michigan, those assumptions fell apart completely. There was nothing industrial about the horizon, nothing barren about the waves. Beauty wears many disguises.
That night, we slept in the skoolie by the Visitor’s Center. We weren’t alone. Vans and RVs surrounded us like a pop-up neighborhood. Silent, respectful, lights dimmed early. There’s an odd comfort in these makeshift communities. Travelers finding a home for a night. A shared moment on the way to the next place.
I thought about that sand dune still moving in the dark, quietly, relentlessly. No sound. No effort. Just change, unfolding on its own time.
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