Rennie’s Log Slide Dream: Part One

Going down Log Slide and coming back up on her own had been on Rennie’s bucket list for years. She considered it every summer, but the dune was always thick with kids on vacation running down the 500 foot, nearly vertical, sand cliff to the Lake Superior beach and then groaning their way back to the top while their parents cheered and took pictures.     

A big National Park Service sign at the top of the dune explained the dangers: It takes just a few minutes to run down and nearly an hour to come back up. Older people and people with heart conditions should not attempt the dune. Rescue can take hours. Storms on Lake Superior are treacherous and can trap people at the bottom. The list was ominous but ignored. There had been rescues by the National Park Service, a couple every summer, but that deterred very few. The challenge was irresistible.

Rennie studied the amateur climbers who used Log Slide for training. She watched their technique, where they stopped to rest, and how they navigated fallen branches and patches where parts of the dune had given way. She also witnessed folks who miscalculated the challenge. Last summer, she watched an older woman get pushed up the dune by a young guy wearing a Lansing Fire Department t-shirt. He put both hands on her butt and pushed, over and over, on the count of ten. Near the top, he climbed around, grabbed her hands, and hoisted her to safety. The two hugged, the vacationing fire fighter laughing, and the older woman chagrined but grateful.

Rennie’s secret research had gone on for years. She wanted to be prepared and wise when she made her attempt and not careen down the dune like a ten-year-old or, worse, get stuck at the bottom and have to be hoisted back to the top. She was seventy-three and had something to prove.                        `                      

She picked a Tuesday in late October after all the tourists were gone. She wore cargo pants, a turtleneck, and a thick, weather-proof hoodie with “Superior Rules” on the back. She was a Yooper, for sure, after having lived in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for twenty years. She was purposely plain with short grey hair, usually hidden by a black watchman’s cap, lip balm, phone, and car keys in her zipped pants pocket, and sturdy hiking boots over thick socks. This is what she wore but also who she was.

She packed a lightweight backpack for her trip even though she was going down and coming right back up, not camping or even hanging out for the day. A couple of things, just in case. A bottle of water, two granola bars, a bag of trail mix, matches, an emergency blanket, two flares, and a tiny first aid kit. She was sure she’d need none of it but the water, but you never knew what would happen on Superior.

 At dawn, Rennie drove to the Log Slide parking lot, and then walked the paved path to the visitors area, or so it was called. The actual visitors area, a hefty observation platform built by the National Park Service, had slid down the dune in heavy weather the winter before. From her vantage point, Rennie could see its remains, a jumble of heavy timbers about a hundred feet down. On the horizon, she could see the ghostly outline of a freighter making its way to Superior.

Rennie surveyed the dune to decide where to start. She wanted firm sand with no overhangs and no roots that might get in the way if she took a tumble. She picked the center – straight down, no branches or overhangs, a good place to start. She beamed, felt a smile well up inside so big, she had to laugh. After all this time, all the watching, she was ready for that first step.

It was a big one. She slid a yard after planting her right foot and then another yard with her left foot. This was the rhythm as she went, a combination of stepping and sliding that happened so fast she could barely keep her feet under her. It was easy and it was hard at the same time. The easy part was the speed of her descent, the hard part was how little control she had over how fast she was going. She sat down to catch her breath and assess how far she’d come.

She heaved, sucking in big gulps of air and exhaling until finally her breathing settled down. Sand pushed her pants up to her knees and covered most of her shirt. Rennie shook off her cap and put it back on. Brushing the sand off her face, she assessed her progress. Maybe halfway down the 500 feet.

She took a swallow of water and calmed herself by looking at the freighter, now nearly out of sight, then pulled her turtleneck up to keep the sand out of her nose and slowly stood. Trying to pace herself, she planted each foot and made sure it was secure before bringing the other forward. This slowed her descent and right away made her feel more in control. She made steady, sure progress down the rest of the dune until she reached the beautiful flatness of the beach. It wasn’t so bad, she thought, although that one patch with the wild sliding was scary.

She sat on a log half-buried in the sand. It felt like the visitor’s chair and she bet that hundreds of people had had their pictures taken sitting there. She fished in her zipped pants pocket to find her phone and take her own picture.

“Hello there.”