Image by Jim Gibson. Photo courtesy of Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy.
The Miracle of ‘Ridiculousness’
By Gordon Berg
You never know when a thought so full of hope-filled ridiculousness, so full of audacious impossibility, will hit you upside the head and stop you in your tracks. When it happens, you can’t shake it. It follows you. All day. All night. A feeling of being on the precipice of the next big chapter of your life is so powerful that you must absolutely lean into it, and let it take you down its uncharted path.
Twenty-five years ago, Heather Shumaker had just such an epiphany.
Shumaker is a self-described “conservation geek.” She was in her late twenties when she arrived in the area from Wisconsin in February 1998. Until then, the only other time she had been in Michigan was to hike Isle Royale. She was a new hire for the fledgling Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy. You could say the ink was still wet on her master’s degree in land resources from the University of Wisconsin. Those who might have thought her inexperienced would be overlooking an inner perseverance driving Shumaker to apply her academic studies by making a mark – a bold, audacious, green preservation mark – somewhere on Northern Michigan’s landscape.
Her mentor and supervisor at GTRLC was its director, Glen Chown. His passion for conservation, according to Shumaker, is “quite unstoppable.”
Eyeing the prize
This was at a time when Northern Michigan was in the crosshairs of developers from all over the world. Still is. Big swaths of land needed to be set aside if conservation efforts were to stay ahead of more golf courses, more McMansions, and more profit-driven projects that deplete Michigan’s natural forests and coastlines and restrict public access to them.
One of the first things Shumaker did at the GTRLC was to get her hands on plat maps of Benzie and Manistee counties. She quickly spotted about 6,000 acres of undeveloped land with two miles of coastline reaching six miles inland.
The more she leaned over this map, the more it drew her in.
“This was what I had come to Michigan for—the chance to tackle conservation on a scale that made a difference. In the Midwest, where land was mostly chunked up in forty-acre squares, a 6,000-acre tract was something grand. Here was a rare opportunity to reknit the patchwork landscape. A chance to make a global contribution to habitat protection in our own backyard.”
(From “Saving Arcadia: A Story of Conservation and Community in the Great Lakes”, 2017, Painted Turtle Books, a division of Wayne State University Press.)
In this place was a wealth of species, from the big ones you see such as trees, birds and critters, to more overlooked ones like insects, fungi and plants. Entire ecosystems in need of saving and sustained nurturing.
Fortunately, she was young and starry-eyed. She had no concept of how impossible this task might be. If she had, she may have never started.
“You need that ridiculousness to plow ahead and do something that is quite out of the question,” she recently commented.
Connecting and collaborating
Shumaker dove in. During the next several months, questions raced through her head. What’s the history of this land? Who owns it now? A corporation?! CMS Energy Corporation? A public utility? Yikes! Who are the family farmers who used to own it? Where are they now? What do you mean the corporation won’t talk to us? How much do they want for it? How much?! Even if we could raise that much, would they accept an offer from us?
“Our first step of needing help was just to connect with people who were on the boards of various other organizations around Michigan who could let us know who to talk to and even try to get a meeting set up (with CMS),” she recalled.
“That took a long time,” she said, elaborating. “Because we were nobody. Little pipsqueak nobodies up in Traverse City, and it took a long time for people to take us seriously, to realize, YES, we wanted to talk, and we wanted to pull this off. There is a singlemindedness and an all-in feeling to all this and energy too.”
So, with the dawn of a new millennium came a laser-focused drive for GTRLC. Make this deal happen! The project became known as “The Coastal Campaign.”
A grant from the C.S. Mott Foundation ⸺ a Flint-based, influential philanthropic organization ⸺ enabled them to hire a full-time director of fundraising.
A meeting with the then CEO of CMS made them realize preserving Arcadia Dunes was not going to be a cake walk. CMS wasn’t convinced a fledgling nonprofit could raise the millions required and, besides, the corporation believed the land would be better “preserved” by selling it to private developers to build exclusive homes and a private golf course.
GTRLC doubled down on its networking. The President of The C.S. Mott Foundation and his family were given a personal walking tour of the land. They fell in love with it. Other influential donors were drawn in too.
Funding the project
By 2002 CMS announced a new chairman and CEO in charge, Bill Whipple. Knowing that one of his first orders of business would be to sell off properties to shore up their balance sheets, GTRLC raced to get his attention before developers did. By the end of the year, CMS was willing to sell, but the price tag was $18 million. Mott came up with $750,000 for the purchase option and GTRLC staff felt confident that the organization would also provide substantial future funding. Governor Granholm lobbied Whipple and other senior CMS executives to seriously consider the offer.
By May 2003 CMS agreed to the offer with one stipulation: 75% of the $18 million had to be in their hands by September. The Mott Foundation agreed to a combination interest-free loan and a cash gift total of $13 million but only if GTRLC could raise the first $5 million by Labor Day.
When??
How much???
During this time Shumaker was running on adrenaline. She literally slept with the documents next to her bed, worried they might get lost. She dreamt about it. The fundraising goal was completely “in my soul and in my waking hours.” It was more than a job. It was a mission.
Major donors who signed on early felt the same way, waking up at three in the morning unable to sleep because this project was so important, yet still so impossible and overwhelming in its scope.
But $5 million! How on earth …
Gathering the grassroots
That’s when something extraordinary happened. Thousands of people got involved and shared the dream that Shumaker, Glen Chown and the Conservancy had.
Shumaker attended town hall meetings. She met with farmers. She acted as an ambassador to make certain everyone who was “local” knew the details of the project. Chown made presentations in neighbors’ homes and enlisted others to do the same. Shumaker said it was part of the Conservancy’s “quiet campaign” to announce the project to a small number of people first and to receive input from them. Shumaker contacted local neighbors. On the fundraising side, Conservancy staff connected with Camp Arcadia, Watervale and Crystal Downs ⸺ communities that donated ⸺ and many family foundations.
Everywhere she went she listened. Memories poured out to her of family hikes along Arcadia’s coast, of having a first kiss on Old Baldy (an open dune nearly 400 feet above Lake Michigan). She heard stories of generations of farmers who made their living from its rich soil.
Without knowing it and quite by accident, she and the efforts of so many others were building a community of those with a connection to the area. Across backyards, farms, towns and counties. Across the state and country. Even more importantly, across demographics and political ideologies.
It didn’t happen overnight.
“Community (building) takes time, trust, heart and listening to each other,” Shumaker noted recently. “I don’t think it matters how it’s done, so long as it’s genuine. People will make missteps and be honest and carry on from there.
“We didn’t have a blueprint. We weren’t intentionally building community, but if felt as if we needed allies and we had to respect the people around us. So, I know that I felt like nobody had taught this in school … my work said you should just do this … I just felt that the people who live locally should be the first to know, not the last to know. And that was just basic human respect, but because of that instinct, we gained so much more, I think. The design on the conservation project and its success (is) because we got people early on engaged, and they felt like they had a say and they helped us create it in a way that was better than it could have been.”
Reaching the goal
In the end 5,000 donors, volunteers and advocates pulled off the Miracle of Ridiculousness. More than $5 million was raised by the Labor Day deadline.
The fundraising was not finished, however. More than $15 million needed to be raised over two years to complete the Coastal Campaign, which included two other coastal properties and funds for long-term stewardship of the land. GTRLC reached this goal with the help of thousands of additional smaller donations and funding from The Dow Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, The J.A. Woollam Foundation and the Walmart Foundation.
When these goals were reached, all the other funding pieces fell into place. Papers were signed. Announcements were made. Sustainability plans were created with input from farmers, conservationists, hiking trail experts and more. Best of all, the land officially known as Arcadia Dunes: The C.S. Mott Nature Preserve is now protected forever.
Reflecting on how emotionally gratifying that goal-reaching moment was, Shumaker said: “People who look back on it say it was one of the best things they did in their entire lives.” Then she added, almost with a wink in her voice, “It always helps if you work hard to have a little bit of luck here and there.”
So, this summer stop by one of those Arcadia Dunes’ trailhead signs on M-22 north of the village of Arcadia. Hike the trail to the shoreline. Go for a stroll along its magnificent coast. Gaze up at the beauty of Old Baldy. Fall in love with the land that so many fell in love with before you. Be filled with everything they achieved. It is now their timeless gift to you.
The Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy reports the organization has protected 46,875 acres of land and more than 150 miles of shoreline along rivers, lakes and streams. To donate in support of ongoing preservation efforts in Manistee, Benzie, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska and Antrim counties, go to: https://www.gtrlc.org.
‘Saving Arcadia’ author to appear at Interlochen
By Gordon Berg
Author Heather Shumaker (“Saving Arcadia”), formerly with the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservacy, will present “Preserving the Arcadia Dunes: Story of a Landscape”, 6-8 p.m., Wed., July 5, at Interlochen Center for the Arts. Her presentation is part of the center’s Sustainability and Nature Lecture Series. The cost for the two-hour program is $20. Those interested may register for the event through Interlochen’s website.
Shumaker’s “Saving Arcadia: A Story of Conservation and Community in the Great Lakes” (2017, Painted Turtle Books) is the winner of the 2018 Next Generation Indie Book Award. “Saving Arcadia” is the page-turning, real-life story of how local individuals and thousands of others from all walks of life and ideologies came together around one idea: to preserve a coastal landscape of stunning beauty and rich parcels of farmland.
The Next Generation Indie Book Awards calls itself the largest international awards’ program for indie authors and independent publishers which recognizes “the most exceptional independently published books in 80-plus categories.
Shumaker is the author of three other books, “It’s OK Not to Share”, “It’s OK to Go Up the Slide” and the children’s book “The Griffins of Castle Cary”. She has made several appearances around the area and is available for public speaking engagements.
“Saving Arcadia” is available for sale at Lily Pad gift shop in Arcadia and at MacBeth and Company in Onekama. A portion of the proceeds from book sales at these two retail locations will be donated to the Arcadia Lions. The book is also sold through local independent booksellers.
To learn more about the author, go to: https://heathershumaker.com.
The community of Arcadia will celebrate its annual “Arcadia Daze,” July 21-23. For a schedule of events and the latest news, follow Arcadia Daze and Lions Club on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/ArcadiaLions/
Gordon Berg is a descendant of Manistee’s Bergs, Swansons and Martinsons. His debut book “Harry and the Hurricane” is about his father’s life as a young boy and how he survived the Miami Hurricane of 1926. More at: www.harryandthehurricane.com.
More About Arcadia:
Art in the Valley
Happy Trails
Moving to the sound of Stoops’ …
‘Legacy trees’ protected at Arcadia dunes for future generations
A Big Lake and a Small Craft crossing
The Starke Legacy and Shifting Sands
Saving Public Access to Lake Michigan
Finding peace during a pandemic
Harriet Quimby: Queen of the Channel Crossing
Sally Manke: a many-layered life – Cover
A Spring Walk Through Arcadia Marsh – Page 4
Minnehaha on the move? – Page 7
Cookie Kindness – Cover
Isolation inspires local artists – Page 6
Arcadia Bluffs South – Page 6
Hear the Bells on Christmas Day – Page 7
Fate of Arcadia Bells up in the air – Cover
Minnehaha Brewhaha quenches thirst on Aug. 31 – Cover
New Arcadia Marsh Boardwalk Brings Nature to All – Page 3
Boardwalk completed at Arcadia Marsh – Page 5
‘Arcadia Daze’ made in the shade – Cover
More by Gordon Berg HERE
