If you want to embrace fun to the fullest in Michigan this summer, you will need to get intimately acquainted with sand. For me, that means getting over the mess it makes and learning to love the unruliness of the season.
When I was a kid, I remember traveling with my family. We had a Chevy Astro van that we’d pull up to a beach on Lake Michigan or Superior.
We would run around in the water until it was time to continue on, and then we would track in about a kilogram of sand. We would be vacuuming it out of the carpeted flooring for weeks. The door track barely worked because sand clogged the mechanism.
Back then, I didn’t have any problem sitting in a wet bathing suit lined with sand or tracking it all over the car or the house. Sand was just a piece of the grand adventure, a necessary thing that came along with the enjoyment of the Great Lakes and the sun.
Yet on a recent vacation to Boyne City, after we hit two beaches in one day, I realized I have a hard time with the particulate matter. What happened to me?
Maybe now I mind it because I’m thinking about the work it’s going to take to get it clean. I now have carefree children of my own, with sand somehow up to their knees, even after we showered off by the sidewalk.
Maybe the sand is a reminder that real life is messier than the idealized version of it, where you are in control of all the details. It’s a state of mind: Chill out and have some fun.
The car can be vacuumed, even if it takes weeks to get every single grain. The towels can be shaken out once they’ve dried. The floor of the vacation rental is someone else’s problem at the end of the week. (And the cleaning fee is always exorbitant anyway.)
Swimsuits can be rinsed. Or, better yet, they can just go straight in the lake the next day. Sand is simply part of life.
It’s not possible to have fun at the beach without bringing more than memories home with you.
Brendan Clarey is deputy editor of Michigan Enjoyer.
