Sleeping Bear Dunes: Free your inner artist and inner child

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore stretches 35 miles along Lake Michigan. Rugged bluffs tower up to 400 feet above beaches. Carved by the same glacier that etched the Great Lakes basin, landforms constantly shape-shift with wind and rain. Vast waters that have dashed ships into stormy graves serve as a hypnotic backdrop for snowshoeing along cliffs, climbing mega-dunes and creating works of art.

No wonder Lakeshore artist-in-residence slots are so coveted. Intended to share the western Michigan park’s beauty, the program is open to American writers, composers and artists willing to donate a work created during the stay in exchange for three weeks’ free lodging.

“This was pure heaven,” said Margaret Huddy, an Alexandria watercolorist who applied for a fall residency after being awestruck on a previous visit.

The plein air painter spent four hours a day on location, then returned to an old farmhouse to finish the paintings. “The landscape is so varied” — high dunes, small lakes, and barns surrounded by brilliant maples, pines and golden birch, the subject of the gouache she gave to the park.

Sleeping Bear’s name comes from an Ojibway Indian legend: A forest fire forced a mother bear to swim with her cubs across Lake Michigan; the cubs drowned. The Great Spirit eased her grief with sleep and marked the spots where her cubs vanished with South and North Manitou Islands, visible from the shore.

At the visitors center, ranger Peg Burman prepared to lead a snowshoe excursion — free, even with use of snowshoes, beyond the modest park entrance fee. She discussed snowshoe styles, from huge thatched platforms to slick carbon-fiber marvels.

The under-2-mile snowshoe hike makes for a rousing family-friendly outing. In the snow-silent forest, Burman pointed out effects of invasive species, described rare piping plovers, and revealed a hidden path to a ridge overlooking lake and dunes.

During warmer months, you can canoe around dunes or get a workout scaling mighty sand peaks. Hikers’ choices include Sleeping Bear Point Trail threading through the Devil’s Soup Bowl and a ghost forest, 2-mile Duneside handicapped-accessible trail, and Windy Moraine, which inspired Huddy’s paintings.

Sleeping Bear Dunes appealed to Huddy over other parks because “you can drive there from D.C., a big plus when you have to carry art supplies.” Back in Alexandria at the Torpedo Factory, her residency’s rewards continue: “So many people from Michigan have wandered into my studio!”

Reach Robin Tierney at [email protected].