In spite of his illness Murray has been busy with his new ATV—in the past few days he has dropped five big poplars which have been threatening the lane. He shoots an arrow with fishing line attached over a high limb, pulls a rope up, runs the rope through various snatch blocks and eventually back to his quad, and then uses the ATV to jerk the tree down. It seems to work like a charm, with no danger to the participants.
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Saving Arcadia
Heather Shumaker
Wayne State University Press, 2017
A review by Jim Nies
Some books are hard to read because it’s impossible to sit still while reading them—they make you want to get up and start doing things. The book Saving Arcadia, by Heather Shumaker, is that kind of book, at least for me. I squirmed in my chair the whole time reading it…wanting to be outside getting stuff done.
Arcadia in this book refers to an area in the state of Michigan, along the Lake Michigan coast, from Frankfort up towards Traverse City, just south of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
Back in 1969 the biggest energy company in the state, Consumers Power Company, began buying land there.
For local businesses, cottagers, and farmers who called the place home, not selling was not an option— resistance was met with a bigger offer or the veiled threat of eminent domain; and over the next several years Consumers ended up owning more than 6,000 acres of lakeshore—giant dunes, forest (hemlock, pine, beech, black cherry, and maple), and dozens of farms which, since first settlement in the 1860s, had been adapted to growing the most suitable crops—sweet and tart cherries, apples, peaches and grapes.
Consumers wanted to flood the whole area for a pumped storage hydro plant. But Consumers was not a nice company. Eventually, like its role model Enron, it started doing especially bad things, and eventually the corporate edifice came tumbling down. Consumers Power found itself in deep financial trouble and in court.
That left over 6,000 acres of beautiful Michigan land, and the people who lived, worked, and recreated on it, and those who farmed it, pretty much up for grabs. The buildings were bulldozed, some logging contracts were let (diminishing the forest by selective cutting), and short-term leases were offered on farmland, resulting in inappropriate, quick cash crops like corn rather than long-term investment crops like cherries. Over time things like garlic mustard and spotted knapweed invaded and “No Trespassing” signs faded to illegibility. The place was a shambles, and rumors of condos and golf courses kept people awake at night.
Some twenty years after Consumers Power began buying Arcadia land, Rotary Charities of Traverse City (a few miles north of the property) decided to establish a new organization, The Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy. With the little startup money provided by the Rotary this fledgling organization hired a director and a small staff. By the end of its first year the Conservancy had 492 members and a backlog of projects. By its fourth year of operation the organization had more than 2,300 members and was able to hire a “land protection specialist” (our author).
In late 1999 Ms. Shumaker, finding time between other chores, pieced together aerial photographs (this was pre-Google) of the southern portion of her responsibility and was stunned to see a huge contiguous piece of vacant property—two miles of shoreline, 700 acres of dunes, 2,000 acres of forest, and 3,300 acres of farmland. She, and eventually the whole Conservancy, began to concentrate intense, tireless energy on this remarkable preservation opportunity.
What an effort, what a story. Intense fundraising, endless negotiations with Consumers Power, countless meetings, and always work and more work to bring more and more people into the picture.
Big donors came forward, and several foundations gave their backing, but the need to raise over $30 million remained daunting. Over time, thousands of people from all walks of life got behind the project—affluent cottagers, farmers, birdwatchers, hikers, bikers, grade school kids; especially families whose love of the land went back generations. The staff at Camp Arcadia, a long established denominational family camp set itself the goal of raising $20,000 and, remarkably, did so by putting on a $100/plate locally sourced harvest dinner.
Of course, there’s a difference between working to buy a piece of land and actually owning it and being its steward, and as time passed the Conservancy adjusted to its new role. Area farmers worked with the Conservancy to write conservation easements and eventually bought back the farmland once taken by the power company. Hundreds of people stepped forward to volunteer as stewards and to help on reclamation projects.
This huge preservation and restoration project has brought all kinds of people together, gathered them into a caring community. Throughout Arcadia there blossomed, as Shumaker says, “hope once more.”
Saving Arcadia is a great story, well told. For many readers it might, as it unfolds, bring forth a quiet cheer or secret tear. And for many it will make us antsy to get going on some projects of our own.
On top of that, it’s just good to be reminded in these divided times that a group of people can come together to accomplish extraordinary things.
