From a Lofty Perspective to Deep Connections

Grand Traverse: Scene from a plane

By John Noonan

Executive Director

Great Lakes Children's Museum

When I fly out of Traverse City, I masochistically fold my six-foot-four-inch frame into a window seat, just so that I can watch the remarkable landscape flow beneath me as the plane heads out toward Detroit or Chicago. I play a game, trying to see how long I can continue to confidently identify buildings, landmarks, lakes, and other natural features as we move farther and farther from the airport. At one level this little game gives me the same simple pleasure as completing a crossword puzzle-it creates a feeling of accomplishment and reinforces my sense that I "know stuff." At a deeper level, I just love the sense of place that a bird's-eye view of this magnificent region gives me.

The engines roar at take-off leaving Cherry Capital Airport, and I can see lots moving quickly beneath the plane. (there go the car dealerships, old mall, new mall...) The yellow-striped, asphalt patches of large, mostly empty, commercial parking lots spill out along the main road corridors. Even close in toward town and flying low, there are still immense green patches: The elongated links of the Traverse City Country Club connecting tee to green to tee, or the gothic spires of the old state hospital sticking up from the verdant blanket of the Grand Traverse Commons and the hills above. (country club is on the top of the hill the end of union street, so that must be st. francis church just down the hill...) The water impounded behind the Union Street Dam changes the shape of the Boardman River and makes Boardman Lake reach out toward Cass Street and Woodmere Avenue in ways that it would not if the river had been left flowing free (the library and wastewater plant at the far end of the lake; is that the wooden train trestle that crosses the boardman river just behind the food co-op...?).

Climbing higher, the scale constantly changing, I see ponds and lakes dotting the landscape in all directions. The Boardman River and its tributaries may flash bright glimmers of reflected sunlight, but more likely they are recognizable only for the dark-green vegetation that clings to their banks. (there sure is a lot of water in the wetlands next to the meijer parking lot...)

Excavation and "earth work" for construction projects, subdivisions, gravels pits, and oil well pads really do look like scars on the land-stark sandy brown pockmarks on green rolling hills. (is that a new subdivision being built on east long lake road?) The land is broken open for agriculture as well, with plow and cultivation rows making prominent contours of parallel lines in the spring soil. Even-age pine plantations with their in-row plantings bear a striking resemblance to cornfields from the sky. (when were most of the civilian conservation corps work crews planting trees? the 1930s?)

I am familiar with the shape of most of the major lakes from the perspective of maps and navigation charts-namely perfectly perpendicular to their surface and with north poised at the top. (old junior high, new senior high, is that moomers ice cream shop...?) However, when you are looking at lakes from an angle in a climbing plane, their shapes are much more difficult to decode and discern. The aquamarine colors of most of the larger lakes are so beautiful as to create a feeling inside of me that both soothes and causes an ache. (which lakes are those two? wait a minute; that's a radio tower soaring up between them, must be interlochen's campus between green and duck lakes...)

At a certain altitude the view really starts to open up and my attention shifts from looking down to scanning the far horizon. (the long remnant of a glacial trench that created lower lake leelanau sure looks different from big glen lake with its round shape that used to a bay in lake michigan that closed up thousands of years ago...) At the same time that some of the major natural features begin to appear, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between the details of county roads. (the distinctive serpentine switchbacks of the crystal river drain big glen and tucker lakes through the national lake shore into lake michigan.) The Sleeping Bear Dunes is, of course, one of the most significant natural features. When I see the dunes rising above Lake Michigan with the Manitou Islands mounded in the background, I can't help but have a flash of the well-worn legend of the Sleeping Bear. (is that south fox island up there in the haze?)

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Of course, we don't ordinarily experience our region from the air. On a day-to-day basis, my experience is from inside the steel and glass box on wheels that is my automobile. On a good day, I'll be riding around town on my bicycle-on a really good day, I might be out riding on the trails or the county roads soaking up the scenery. Or maybe I'll be walking the urban trails in the hills behind the former state hospital, or those amazing forest trails on Pyramid Point, and enjoying the scenic vistas from the top of either of those prominent land forms.

Floating above the scenery in a plane is literally as disconnected from the land as one can be. Yet, paradoxically, there is a strange depth in the connection that one can feel to our region from that lofty perspective.

In the 1980s and '90s, the late Ted Cline, retired surgeon and aerial photographer, became an important herald of the unfortunate consequences of poor land use planning and widespread sprawl. From the seat of his single-engine Cessna airplane, he took photos along our region's major transportation corridors that graphically showed the need for smarter and more thoughtful land use planning. His community slideshows motivated and inspired a deeper land protection ethic in the land conservancies, environmental groups, and even the Traverse City Area Chamber of Commerce, acting as a significant force behind the creation of the Regional Development Guidebook and the continuing and more widespread movement toward regional planning.

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The next time you fly out of the Cherry Capital Airport take a window seat and put down your paperback book for a few minutes. Enjoy the gently rolling hills; wonder at the twists of the rivers, creeks and streams; be touched by the blue-green depths of the many inland lakes. (that must be elberta and frankfort straddling betsie lake.) Our glacial landforms and the water that drains from them create a remarkable organic interlocking network that is as beautiful from the air as it is from a woodland trail. (lake michigan sure is blue today.)