Iris Idolizers
are ripe in the Land of Mears
When the grass gets high in June and the robins hatch and the ramblers bloom there begins to be the westward rolling of many cars in- through Mears . The caravan that speeds along the tarvia has one creasing purpose , to get to the sand . Not in all Oceana county is there any other geographical attraction that lures the people like the west : ern margin of Silver Lake . It is not so much the wetness of the water nor the fins that fan beneath it . By far the major interest in the land- scape is the sand elevation . Seven square miles of dunes lie in the area between the lighthouse and Juniper Beach . The climbers enter this world afoot at the northern edge of Silver Lake . To ascend these masses of sand and stretch out your arms to the sky , to see the far- view of dune after dune stretching to Lake Michigan , the ragged silhou- ette of the jack pines , is relaxing , refreshing for mind and body . Tired city workers can here drop the mantle of care . Children trickle the sand through their toes and their fingers or shovel it into gaily painted play pails . In one of my books . " The Gardener of the Dunes , " which appeared 19 years ago this month , I summed up the healing of the sand in a poem called " Medicine . " It runs like this : " I know now there is healing in the dunes . I have felt the medicine of these woods and the Galm of the sweeping winds . Walk in the sand - torm , it is a needle shower . Bask in the noontime , it is a solar lamp . Climb to the hill - top . it is good for limb and lungs : Slide on the sand - slope hilarious and free - And for the spirit there is the peace of forgetting . So shall you find freedom of movement And the joy of unrepression . Stretch up your arms to the sky . To the ether of unrestraint . Let the spirit soar as the gulls fy ! The sand trickles , the waves chant : Relaxation is written on the prescription of this air - bathed world - Relaxation and oblivion . " Having lived in the dunes several years , usually from early spring un- til late November . having slept in the danes probably a thousand nights . I have seen them at all times of the day and night , in all their changing moods of stillness and motion , and in all seasons , snow * torm , rain , the fury of the gale , the moonlight on the ridges , the sum mer dawn . In the verse , " On a Summer Morn " I have tried to picture The quiescence of daybreak in June : " Softly breaks the dawn In this calm still world at the desert's heart . The birds sing in my onsie : Along the cedar path frisks a little squirrel : The sun glints on the bright pebbles : A gopl er plays among the cans . Behold the dew on my
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