Sailing north from Elmwood Harbor eight weeks ago, Brenin Wertz-Roth launched an odyssey that took him around the perimeter of Lake Michigan and into communities along the way.
A junior studying history at Reed College in Oregon, Wertz-Roth took a leave of absence from college for the adventure, which he had been dreaming of and planning for since last fall. He sailed a 25-foot Catalina called, appropriately enough, Friendship — reflecting his mission of outreach and education.
"I set off this summer with a goal of learning and sharing what it is to live on these lakes,” said Wertz-Roth, a 2003 graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy. "I wanted to study the lakes and create more of an awareness and a love of them.”
"There is no one heart, but everything about them pulses with meaning,” he added, tapping his poetic soul nurtured on the Great Lakes.
Before returning to school over the weekend, he described the undertaking to an audience of two dozen family members and friends. His talk Friday evening, held at the Great Lakes Maritime Academy, wove compelling stories and insights about the water, people and places with photos he took along the way. He also kept an online blog during his journey, which began on June 24.
From the initial stretch to Northport sailed with his father, Wertz-Roth then hugged the shoreline down to Chicago. Next, he sailed up the Wisconsin side of the Lake Michigan. The final leg was crossing back to the South Manitou Island and then home again around the Leelanau Peninsula.
Traveling the 1,600-mile of shoreline — not to mention countless miles tacking — throughout July and August, Wertz-Roth tuned into an inland sea system that touches eight states, two Canadian provinces and two nations. On the water, he felt the connections that forge a vast ecosystem and humans into a larger whole.
"The Great Lakes community is a living thing, it lives in us and it's so important for us to keep it alive — it's kept us alive throughout our lives and our daily actions,” said Wertz-Roth, who flew a flag of the planet Earth on his mast.
The massive size of the lakes on a human scale and the sense that they are limitless and eternal belies the need to care for them, cherish them.
"As I was traveling hundreds of miles this summer at four to five miles per hour, you really get a sense of how big they are,” said Wertz-Roth. "We have 20 percent of the world's water and of that only one percent is renewed each year.”
Sharing information he presented in talks throughout his travels, Wertz-Roth detailed some of the threats facing the Great Lakes, from overfishing and invasive species to pollution and ignorance. He also sketched the history of the lakes from their geological formation to the present day.
"What we are dealing with today is hundreds of years of misunderstanding of the Great Lakes,” he said.
Wertz-Roth noted that the Great Lakes are still geologically in flux as the Earth rebounds from the mile-high glaciers. Another force for change that some scientists believe has roots in man's behaviors is climate change. In a hydrological system composed almost entirely of precipitation and evaporation, the lakes are at a historically low level — the cumulative effect of years of changes.
"We're living in a changing period of the lakes,” said Wertz-Roth, who noted that predictions have the Great Lakes dropping by five feet over the next 50 years, which will dramatically affect the shoreline and ecosystem. "This story is still being written.”
For more information about Wertz-Roth's Great Lakes Odyssey, see the web site www.greatlakesodyssey.com.