Here beside St. Clair’s blue waters,
Stands our tower bold,
And our noble Alma Mater,
Glorious to behold…
– First Verse of Grosse Pointe South High School’s Alma Mater
If you were to ask me about Lake St. Clair, I’d be able to rattle off a handful of facts off the top of my head.
It connects Lake Huron to Lake Erie– technically, it’s too small to be a Great Lake.
It’s shaped like a heart if you tilt your head to the left and squint.
Contrary to what four-year-old Charlotte may have told you, there aren’t any whales.
If you were to ask me again– really ask me, ask what it means to me and my connection to it– I’d be at a loss for words. I don’t own a boat. I haven’t gone swimming in the shallow, algae-tinted water. It doesn’t give me much value—though, yes, I realize how capitalistic that sounds—beyond being a fun factoid to dazzle out-of-state friends.
“See, that’s— I’m jealous you can just have your lake right there,” one said after I
showed her old homecoming pictures taken on the breakaway wall. “It’s so close. My “lake”
would have to be the Atlantic.”
I’m jealous, too, I thought as I mustered a smile in reply. And also confused. Why don’t I
feel connected to “my” lake?
When I mention my ambivalence to the Deputy Director of Huron-Clinton Metroparks Amy McMillan one hot August day, chalking it up to Lake St. Clair not being a Great Lake, her response comes quickly.
“I don’t share that opinion in any way, shape or form.”
As I blink back my shock– and before I can break in that yes, of course, I agree, I was only asking because I was curious, and so on– she continues animatedly through the screen. “First of all, it is such a critical element to the– to the Macomb County community,” she says. “It is. It is what Macomb County really is built around, and it has always been. It’s so critical to the economy. It’s critical to the culture of Macomb County. I don’t think that there is a need to be designated a ‘Great Lake’ to be a great lake, right? I don’t support that position whatsoever.”
McMillan’s history with the park is extensive. After interning at Lake St. Clair Metropark (the only park with lakefront access out of the 13 in the Huron-Clinton Metroparks system) in her final year at Central Michigan University, working on a project to make the parks more accessible to people with disabilities, she “made a professional commitment to herself” to become the director one day.
In total, the park system spans 25,000 acres. There’s nearly 10 million dollars in grant money going towards projects such as renovating the North Marina’s infrastructure, managing stormwater in Parking Lot C, connecting non-motorized pathways into the park and redesigning the west end of the boardwalk. There are programming events for camping, concerts, and a partnership with the Detroit Zoological Society, in addition to educational and environmental programs and initiatives to help protect the water and parks.
McMillan is resolute, however, that she does not have a favorite.
“I have favorite places in every park,” she says, leaning conspiratorially toward the screen. “And we have this tradition in the Metroparks. A lot of times, people move around from park to park for various reasons, but we all have a home park. If you’ve worked in the parks, you have a home park. Lake St. Clair Metro Beach is mine. When I walk onto that plaza at Lake St. Clair and look out onto the lake, I always feel like I’m coming home.
“There’s always something you know, particularly special about being on the water,” she continued after a moment. “One of the things I love when I’m walking around the park (…) is everybody who makes their little cones along the shore by piling stones. I don’t know– there’s something about that that I just love. It kind of speaks to me in some weird, spiritual way, that people take the time to do that.”
I nod, ignoring the ache that comes from her words– from her enviable sense of home with the water, from the completeness of her relationship with the lake. I can picture the plaza she describes perfectly, remembering the crinkling of fish flies under my feet from the many elementary school field trips. I enjoyed being at the lake, of course, and my inner (or, more accurately, fully-on-display) nerd was thrilled at learning facts about the fur traders. But I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed, like this little lake somehow wasn’t “enough” to warrant a connection in comparison to my annual childhood trips to Lake Michigan spent swimming and eating and playing on its freezing, rocky banks.
This liminality is echoed in Lake St. Clair’s broader position. It’s too shallow to be a
Great Lake and it doesn’t have a place in the HOMES mnemonic (the quintessential acronym
every Michigander learns), but it’s still visible on maps. It was even referenced in the former
territorial governor of Michigan Lewis Cass’s journals, Erin Parker, the park’s Eastern District
Interpretive Services Supervisor, said through the Zoom screen a few days later. Early white colonists, like the French voyageurs, were using the lake, she continues, but there is– and was–
continuous usage by Indigenous folks as well.
“We have history and cultural aspects to our programming,” she said. “It’s a really important flyway (a point of land that sticks out in the lake). We focus on the wetlands and habitats that protect the lake. We’ve worked on reducing stormwater and other pollutants heading into the lake, and that includes some management of the Canada geese population. All kinds of things use the lake, not just birds, monarch butterflies, dragonflies, or painted ladies. People (use it).”
“Goosebusters” (the name of the geese-population-mitigation program) aside, the lake’s liminality doesn’t exclude it from current climate impacts– something that may be challenging for residents to reconcile with, Parker mentions.
“We (…) are helping people think about what we’re actually seeing and experiencing in the Great Lakes,” Parker said. “Sometimes, climate change seems like it’s happening somewhere else. We’re helping people explore through the lens of their own experiences, whether that’s wildlife impacts or storm frequency or even that we don’t do many winter outdoor activities (due to the lack of snow and ice). (We are) helping people understand long term trends– one day or month or year is not climate change. Let’s look at the pattern.”
Hearing about the very real– and very close– impacts of climate change on the lake forces me to reconsider my indifference. From a recent Detroit News article mentioning how “mucky algae” (lyngbya, a type of cyanobacteria) in Lake St. Clair is a pressing issue to the creation of a two-year, $400,000 algae study from the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, this lake is far from untouched.
These reminders show how silly my ambivalence is. Irresponsible, even– the warming temperatures and algae blooms aren’t waiting for me to decide if I like this lake. How can I protect this lake’s future if I’m still questioning my connection with it?
This sense of urgency lingers as I bring up the topic at family dinner that night, asking them about their relationship with Lake St. Clair. Secretly, I’m hoping one of them feels the same turmoil I do.
My mom’s response is immediate.
“I do (feel connected to the lake),” she says as one of our golden retrievers eyes our salmon bowls. “I definitely do. It’s the one closest to us. We can put eyes on it– we can go out on it if we wanted to.”
My brother disagrees– he has more memories tied to Lake Michigan than Lake St. Clair, and besides, he says, we don’t have a boat, so we can’t go on it, really. My mom merely lays an arm on the table for emphasis (and to stave off the dog).
“It influences my water supply,” she says. “Lake St. Clair is my water supply– ours. What happens to the lake happens to me. It happens to my family.”
I look towards my sister. She shrugs. “It’s a lake. I like it.”
As the conversation tapers off, I’m struck by a few things as I carry the dishes to the kitchen. One, again, the sense of how frivolous it seems to be so unsure of my relationship with the lake. Two, the surprise that one household with fairly similar levels of interaction with the lake could have various perspectives on it.
Three, that this lake is much more personal to me than Lake Michigan, regardless of how many handstand competitions or Petoskey stones I’ve found on its shores. The absence of these memories with Lake St. Clair doesn’t negate the time I’ve spent with Lake Michigan, but it does force me to examine my relationship with it. I’ve never needed Lake Michigan in the direct way that I’ve needed Lake St. Clair, and that’s uncomfortable. I’m embarrassed at ignoring the lake virtually in my backyard.
But maybe that’s the wrong perspective, I think as I start to load the dishwasher, nudging the dog’s head out of the way as she starts to “help” by licking the plates. I’ve never felt “worthy” of claiming Lake St. Clair as my lake– I didn’t spend enough time with it, and I wasn’t a great steward of it (outside of having a general passion for environmental justice).
Maybe I didn’t have to “deserve” a relationship with the lake. Maybe I had to choose it.
I nearly drop the dish in my hand at the realization.
I get the chance to try embracing these new feelings– this new relationship– that weekend when a few friends make the drive to Grosse Pointe. There’s no chance for me to overthink how I’ll talk about my relationship with the lake with them, to spiral over if it’s even too late for me to start choosing Lake St. Clair back. After showing them the Grosse Pointe highlights (the restaurant with the best rosemary garlic aioli and the little league concession stand I staffed for a summer), they beg to see the lake. I direct them to Patterson Park, leading them past the splash pad, dog park, and memories of sticky summer nights from my childhood to the rocky inlet behind the kayak rental spot.
“It’s so clear,” one friend says as I latch the gate behind us. “It’s so blue– it’s like the Caribbean.”
“And the Hudson is so dirty,” another agrees. “This is so much nicer.”
I open my mouth to disagree– it’s not entirely clean, it’s had environmental concerns in the past, I’m sure the Caribbean is bluer than this little lake– but I hesitate. My friends start to wade into the water.
I slide out of my Birkenstocks to follow them, feeling a flicker of something as the sunlight ribbons across the water.
“Yeah,” I said after a moment. “My lake’s great.”
Writer To Writer Literary Journal 