Getting the flavor of...Lake Erie's ice dunes

Lake Erie's ice dunes

Every winter, Pennsylvania’s Presque Isle State Park is transformed by ice dunes into “a sci-fi moonscape,” said Robin Soslow in The Washington Post. A seven-mile spit of land that juts into southern Lake Erie, the park is among the relatively few places outside the Arctic where cold waves and spray conspire to build frozen dunes. Stepping onto the unstable ice is prohibited, but my camera gave me an excuse to tiptoe close to some dunes that reached 15 feet in height. The texture of the dunes varied dramatically. Some were smooth, some “abraded by wind-thrust grit”; their colors ranged “from ghostly white to variegated honey, ale, and ash.” As our group strolled the coast, led by a naturalist, “sunbeams lanced the gray skies, creating monochrome rainbows” overhead. Presque Isle is home to Pennsylvania’s only beaches, and I hear they’re quite nice during the summer. But “for sheer serenity,” I’d take gazing at the ice dunes.

Detroit’s rebirth

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Detroit is far from the “down-and-out” dump most outsiders imagine it is, said Andrew Bender in the Los Angeles Times. Sure, “eerie shells of onetime factories” pock the landscape, but “cheap rents and an urban pioneering spirit” are attracting young artists and nourishing a renaissance. “It’s still the early days, but change is palpable, even to the casual visitor.” Aspiring visual artists can find “plenty of inspiration” in the city’s designated Cultural Corridor, home to the College for Creative Studies as well as the Detroit Institute of Arts—America’s “most overlooked major museum.” Meanwhile, “dozens of farther-flung art sites” are easy to find thanks to a map available at ArtDetroitNow.com. Not surprisingly, the city’s new generation of glassblowers, sculptors, and painters has brought collectors and hipster admirers with it, giving rise to many new restaurants, nightspots, “and even urban farms.” Veteran installation artist Tyree Guyton seemed to speak for the whole city when I ran into him. “Watch me,” he said. “I’m just getting started.”