Sleeping Bear Dunes

In 2012 I visited some distant relatives who live in Michigan, more precisely in Traverse City, which is located on the “pinky and ring finger of Michigan” (if you imagine Michigan as a hand). Since one of my relatives had worked as a ranger in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore before he retired, my relatives took me to some extraordinary places in this area.

The National Park’s name derives from a Native American legend about two small islands that are located in lake Michigan, close to the shore of the National Park. According to the legend, a mother bear and her two cubs had to flee from a raging forest fire and as a result they were forced to swim across lake Michigan. The bears swam for many hours and eventually the two cubs became tired and slowed down. When mother bear finally reached the shore, she was very worried and desperately waited for her cubs to appear. However, the cubs were too tired to continue and drowned not far from the shore. The Great Spirit Manitou created two islands to mark the spot where the cubs drowned and a single sand dune to mark the place where their mother had been waiting for them.

In the course of a week I was given chance to explore this NP and I visited several memorable places, most of which are located at the shore of lake Michigan. It was amazing to stand in the yellowish, warm sand, looking at the light blue sky and seeing the sun’s reflection in the clear blue water. I was gazing towards the horizon, unable to spot the opposite shoreline.  

If any of you ever gets the chance to visit this part of Michigan, take it! Climb on the edge of a sand dune, enjoy the view, revel in the moment and experience the perfect mix of clear, blue water, golden sand, immense dunes, bluffs  and green forest.

You can find more information about the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore on this website:

http://www.nps.gov/slbe/index.htm

Who Needs Geography?!

A lot of you are probably busy studying for their midterms right now (or some lucky people might have already finished them). Either way, I think it is time for a more humorous post :) On Friday, we had an English exam for which we also had to study the names and locations of the 50 American states. Last week I came across a survey in which Americans were asked to fill in countries’ names on a blank European political map.  Since I (like most Austrians) had to start memorizing these countries in primary school, I found some of the responses hilarious:

"affordable vacation"

Austria is as big as Germany!! Nice try...

However, to be fair, I have to show the other side of the coin as well… because let’s face it – how many Europeans would succeed in correctly locating all the American states? If I had not had to study them for our recent exam, I would not have been able to do so. So let’s take a look at a survey that tested the Brits' knowledge of US geography:

I hope all of you had a good laugh at one or the other picture. However, I would like to finish this post by thinking about what the gaps in the survey-takers’ knowledge actually tell us. They mirror part of our economical and political reality. While most people, for example, were able to identify powerful and geographically large countries like Germany or France, only few could tell apart the former Soviet satellite states. On the other hand, many British people could locate California or Florida correctly (states that gained a lot of fame through movies) while the Midwest, or “flyover country“ as it is called, remained a complete mystery to them. However, I do not think the smaller countries are any less important.

Come to think of it, I bet neither a lot of Europeans, nor Americans would succeed in identifying African states. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that most high school graduates know the Pythagoras’ theorem by heart but don’t know a lot about the location of countries on other continents? I mean, those who have to deal with countries on other continents because of their jobs or for personal reasons, will have to extend their geographical knowledge sooner or later anyway. Still, I think it would not hurt to be a little more attentive to what the world actually looks like ;)