While much of my research took place in the local history floor of the Grand Rapids Public Library, I took a few trips that led to many poetic ideas. One was to the Grand Rapids Public Museum, where there just so happened to be an exhibit on sand dunes in West Michigan: their geology, their locations, and most importantly for me, how exactly their sandy inclines behave. Since I was already focused on lake erosion due to climate change, this exhibit was a serendipitous gold mine.
I took photos of the entire exhibit and later wrote about how my son played with a piece in the exhibit that became central to my thrust that the shores had reached a tipping point:
Instead, he ran to a fiberglass tumbler. Filled halfway with beads of plastic, it looked like a pale waxing moon. 32 degrees, said a nearby sign. “This is the angle of repose,” I read to him. “Have you ever tried building a sand castle from dry sand? It’s hard to do, isn’t it?” He held tightly to the metal circle in the center and reared the cylinder back and forth so that the beads swayed loudly. The ‘sand’ never stood a chance to reach the angle, which was drawn with a bold, black line at the back of the cylinder.
Pursue What Gets Under Your Skin
While this essay stemmed from how much the shore of lake Huron that I grew up on had changed, a different field trip to a buried lumber port brought about some other emotions:
Then, in front of the old City Hall, amid the scent of warm fudge, I found a historic plaque that introduced more of the mystique I was looking for: Beneath the sands…lies the site of Singapore, one of Michigan’s most famous ghost towns, it read, ending with a line that made me want more: Gradually, Lake Michigan’s shifting sands buried Singapore.
At first read, this plaque made me want to know how exactly this happened. After taking a photo of it and studying the diction, I realized that I really didn’t like the tone and way in which the plaque sensationalized and flattened history. It also didn’t give any autonomy to those who lived in Singapore. And as I researched further, I uncovered another interpretation of the plaque that gave a nice twist to my essay.
Think Analogously
While most writers naturally think in comparative terms, doing so while researching can offer benefits. Once I began to weave a connection between the buried town of Singapore and climate change facing my home state of Michigan, all of the facts and stories I uncovered about Singapore had the potential to speak on our situation about Michigan, especially how us citizens were frozen in terms of reacting to it. Then in a classic example of history repeating itself, my research hit an apex when I stumbled upon a book called Lost & Found, which had a photo of a house in Singapore filled with sand, along with a story:
. . . a boarding house called the Astor House was too large to move. In the last decade of Singapore, fisherman James Nicols inhabited the structure:
As the ground floor gradually filled with sand, he moved to the second floor, at the end of each working day climbing the steep dune of soft sand to his home. When the sand level reached his second floor windows, he moved to the top floor. When the sand began blowing down the chimney he moved away.
