Dune

“ For from an absolutely barren dune, we suddenly looked down upon a thick garden of beautiful flowers; tall, and like a slender foxglove in appearance, they filled the wide hollows between the dunes in all directions. They were of endless variety in color, white, mauve, and an endless gamut of pinks, down to the deepest purple; and a more beautiful sight it would be impossible to imagine. But thickly as they grew for mile after mile, there was nothing else, no t'samma or any other refreshing plant or fruit, and the hungry horses would not look at them. ”

“ When the storm gods lash the lake with whistling winds, and send their sullen dark array through the skies, and the music of the tempest blends with song of the surges on the shore, the color tones seem to become vocal and to mingle their cadences with the voices of the gale.
We may look from the higher dune tops upon panoramas of surpassing splendor. There are piles on piles of sandy hills, accented with green{32} masses and solitary pines. These highways of the winds and storms, with their glittering crowns and shadowy defiles, sweep into dim perspective. ”

“ Out in the mysterious depths of the lake are pale sandy floors that no eye has ever seen. The mobile particles are shifted and eddied into strange shadowy forms by the inconstant and unknown currents that flow in the gloom. There are white bones and ghostly timbers there which are buried and again uncovered. There are dunes under the waters, as well as on the shores. Slimy mosses creep along their shelving sides and over their pallid tops into profound chasms beyond. ”

“ The landscapes among the dunes are not for the realist, not for the cold and discriminating recorder of facts, nor the materialist who would weigh with exact scales or look with scientific eyes. It is a country for the dreamer and the poet, who would cherish its secrets, open enchanted locks, and explore hidden vistas, which the Spirit of the Dunes has kept for those who understand. ”

“ We must, therefore, not be surprised to see the people here deal as gingerly with their dunes as if treading among eggs. He who is lucky enough to own a molehill of dune pets it affectionately, and spends his substance in cherishing and fattening it. That fair, fertile, rich province, the peninsula of Eiderstadt in the south of Friesland, has, on the point towards the sea, only a tiny row of dunes, some six miles long or so; but the people talk of their fringe of sand hills, as if it were a border set with pearls. ”

“ THE DUNE COUNTRY WHILE there are immense stretches of sand dunes in other parts of the world, it is of a particular dune country, to which many journeys have been made, and in which many days have been spent, that this story will be told. ”

“ The echoes of the roar of the surf among the distant dunes pervade them with solemn sound. An indefinable spirit of mute resistance and power{31} broods in the inert masses. They seem to be holding back mighty and remote forces that beat upon their barriers.
The color fairies play out on the bosom of the lake in the silver radiance of the moon and stars, and marvelous tones are spread upon it by the sun and clouds. ”

“ As you round a sand dune you come suddenly upon a gigantic round, flat-topped rock, like a titanic pink tree-stump—scarcely a reward for all those miles and miles of dreariness and intense heat, even though its flat-chopped top is a thousand feet clear above the surrounding plain. ”

“ The big ranges of sand dunes that skirt the southern and eastern shores of Lake Michigan, and the strip of sparsely settled broken country back of them, contain a rich fund of material for the artist, poet, and nature lover, as well as for those who would seek out the oddities of human kind in by-paths remote from much travelled highways. ”

“ On the dunes, walks are particularly delightful when the moist, packed sand becomes a yellow floor, but it requires much endurance and{48} enthusiasm to trudge through miles of soft sand on a hot day and retain a contemplative mood. ”

“ THE DUNES
Far as the eye can see, in domes and spires,
Buttress and curve, ruins of shifting sand,—
In whose wild making wind and sea took hand,—
The white dunes stretch. The wind, that never tires,
Striving for strange effects that he admires,
Changes their form from time to time ”

“ Next day the going was as bad—dunes up to nearly one [57] hundred feet in places—and the wind stronger, while about midday the father and mother of all dust-storms came on, one of the kind that makes you think it’s midnight in Hades. For an hour we sat huddled up in the lee of a dune, a circle of dumb men and dumb beasts, under the biting lash of a sand-laden wind that seemed to flow past like some torrent of grit. ”

“ Maples and Oaks, relics of the time when the dune area was fertile, may still be found dying and being buried over by drifting sand. Now it is a different community of plants and animals living here. The continually shifting sand and the scarcity of water limit the variety of life found, but each dune dweller is specially adapted to this homesite, and no matter how lush, green, and more attractive a neighboring meadow may look to us, many of these specialized organisms could not survive there at all. ”

“ People come and go in such a manner!"
The man felt a dull irritation, and smeared the sand out of his eyes. How had that sand got there? Naturally, from having laid on one of those dunes. There seemed to be no particular reason for lying on a dune, under the fire-box of an engine, so the man sat up and kept blinking and rubbing his eyes.
"This is the best mirage, yet," he reflected. "The palms look real. And the water—it sparkles. Those white blotches—one would say they were houses!" ”

“ One must feel the spirit and poetry of the dunes, if he deals with them as an artist who would send{23} their story into the world. The magic of successful artistic translation changes the sense of desolation into an impression of wild, weird beauty and romantic charm. ”

“ The view from the dune on which it stands is therefore not without attractions, but the immediate vicinity is bare and treeless. Fields, green in summer, desolate in winter, lie around it, while in the west the side of a barren table-land rises to shut off every view in that direction. ”

“ The strange human characters, whose little drift-wood shanties are scattered along the shore, and among the sandhills, and whose isolated retreats are further inland, are difficult to become acquainted with, except in a most casual way. They look upon the chance wayfarer with suspicion and disfavor.
Readers of “The Dune Country” will remember “Old Sipes,” “Happy Cal,” and “Catfish John,” the old derelicts living along the beach, further accounts of whose “doin’s” are in the following pages. ”

“ The old man pulled down his hat over his eyes, drew his cloak closely up under his chin, and went quickly down the dune. It was evidently unsafe to remain longer on this prominent summit.
He had possibly stayed there too long already; the top of the dune was the only point in the whole landscape which still remained visible. ”

“ The dunes are in another world. They are two miles across the uncertain and hazardous tide races of the estuary. The folk of the village never go over. The dunes are nothing. They are the horizon. They are only seen in idleness, or when the weather is scanned, or an incoming ship is marked. The dunes are but a pallid phantom of land so delicately golden that it is surprising to find it constant. ”

“ As the tide falls, the sand laid bare is rapidly dried by the wind and carried above high-water mark. Then, safe beyond the reach of the waves, the minute particles are borne still farther from the water, and striking against some piece of drift-wood, bush, or tuft of grass, quickly build a hillock, which grows larger and larger as more sand falls upon it, and a dune is formed many feet in height. ”

“ Simple dunes are basic forms with a minimum number of slipfaces that define the geometric type. Compound dunes are large dunes on which smaller dunes of similar type and slipface orientation are superimposed, and complex dunes are combinations of two or more dune types. A crescentic dune with a star dune superimposed on its crest is the most common complex dune. Simple dunes represent a wind regime that has not changed in intensity or direction since the formation of the dune, while compound and complex dunes suggest that the intensity and direction of the wind has changed. ”

“ All its expanse coruscated as if each wave was crested with tinsel, and where they receded from the beach it was as though a web of white and shining tissue was drawn back, torn and glistening, from the restraining clutch of the sand. The smooth bareness of fawn-colored dunes swept back from the shore. They rose and fell in undulations, describing outlines of a suave, fluid grace, lovely as the forms of drifting snow, or the swell of waves. Ocean and dunes, for all the splendor of sky and sun that overarched and warmed them, suggested a gaunt, primeval desolation. ”

“ The dune rose in a Wave of glittering yellow sand, drowning them from head to foot. He saw the glint and shimmer of the myriad particles in the sunset; he saw them drifting by the thousand, by the million through the whirling mass of it; he saw the two figures side by side above him, caught beneath the toppling crest of this bending billow that curved and broke against the fiery sky; he smelt the faint perfume of the desert underneath the hollow arch; he heard the thin, metallic grating of the countless grains in friction; he heard the palm leaves rattling ”

“ It is well known that the front of a sand dune generally consists of sand deposited on a slope inclined at the angle of repose, say between 30° and 35°, and rolled into place up the long back slope of the dune by the wind. ”

“ To spend all day and every day on the long straight dunes, where the great waves roll up ceaselessly in the wind and the jelly-fish thrown up high and dry on the silvery sand look for all the world like amethyst pendants. ”

“ Over the shoulders and slopes of the dune
I saw the white daisies go down to the sea,
A host in the sunshine, an army in June,
The people God sends us to set our heart free. ”

“ While many interesting volumes could be filled by pencil and pen, this story of the dunes and the “back country” has been condensed as much as seems consistent with the portrayal of their essential characteristics.{10}
We are lured into the wilds by a natural instinct. Contact with nature’s forms and moods is a necessary stimulant to our spiritual and intellectual life. The untrammelled mind may find inspiration and growth in congenial isolation, for in it there are no competitive or antagonistic influences to divert or destroy its fruitage. ”

“ The dunes sweep for many miles along the Lake Michigan coasts. They are post-glacial, and are undergoing slow continual changes, both in form and place,—the loose sand responding lightly to the action of varying winds.{16}
The “fixed dunes” retain general forms, more or less stable, owing to the scraggly and irregular vegetation that has obtained a foothold upon them, but the “wandering dunes” move constantly. The fine sand is wafted in shimmering veils across the smooth expanses, over the ridges to the lee slopes. ”

“ Sand-dunes are not only blown away piecemeal, but the winds pour upon their flanks a ceaseless shower of sand, and, as the frail masonry gives way, the falling grains are caught and carried on by the gale. ”

“ The elongated arms of parabolic dunes follow rather than lead because they have been fixed by vegetation, while the bulk of the sand in the dune migrates forward. The longest known parabolic dune has a trailing arm 12 kilometers long. ”

“ The dunes yonder must be gigantic. But of course on a world the size of ancient Earth, and which was waterless save for snow-patches at its poles, the size to which sand-dunes could grow had no limit. ”

“ Since most activity in the dunes takes place at night, very little of this action is observed. However, in the morning we can stroll in the sand and unravel the secrets of the previous night. As you look at each set of tracks, imagine what the animal looks like as it moves. How big is it? How many feet does it have? Are the feet side by side as though jumping like rodents or rabbits, or do they alternate as in the walking or running motion of lizards? How far apart are the prints? Does the animal drag its tail? Now, where do the tracks go? ”

“ The duneland air burns with the smell of sand, ocean, and sun. On the tops of the hills, the grass stands at its tallest and greenest, its new straw-green seed plumes rising through a dead crop of last year’s withered spears. ”

“ Besides their importance as a barrier against the inroads of the ocean, dunes are useful by sheltering the cultivated ground behind them from the violence of the sea-wind, from salt spray, and from the drifts of beach sand which would otherwise overwhelm them. ”

“ Formation of dunes.—In contrast with dust deposited from the atmosphere, wind-blown sand is commonly aggregated into mounds and ridges in the process of lodgment. These mounds and ridges are dunes. Once a dune is started, it occasions the further lodgment of sand, and is a cause of its own growth. Dunes sometimes reach heights of 200 or 300 feet, but they are much more commonly no more than 10 or 20 feet in height. On plane surfaces, there is a limit in height above which they do not rise, though the limit is different under different conditions. ”

“ The Dune head, and rising of Wauenheie, are not much in sunder: for as it is supposed, they are both not farre distant from the bridge betwéene Lophām and Ford, wherby the one runneth east and the other west, as I haue béene informed. The Dune goeth first of all by Feltham, then to Hopton, & to Kinets hall, where it meeteth with a water cōming out of a lake short of Banham (going, by Quiddenham, Herling, Gasthorpe) and so on, both in one chanell, they run to Ewston. ”