The Singing Sands in the United States

The Singing Sands : Saint Joseph, Michigan, United States

“The space…silence…darkness….light…atoms,” the calm monotonous voice guides me in my “personal journey of self-discovery” within the four tall white walls of the smallest room at Krasl Art Center. What does every single word trigger inside of me? Love, family, children, laughter, freedom…the memories were pouring back against my willingness to give in to them. Each of these small words was powerful in the dark room, lighted only by shimmering beams of white light. The ingenious artist who had arranged the modernistic constellation of silver sheets, mirrors, and glowing planets had, for a second, achieved her goal. I felt like I was another small planet floating independently, away from her orbit.
I often wondered why it took me so long to take that trip and find my way to the silver beaches and the singing sands of Lake Michigan. During the first several months I lived in the United States, after I arrived from Poland, I felt like someone dropped me in the middle of the ocean without a compass. I had no sense of direction and no sense of time, it seemed like all of my internal navigational systems were down. I felt vulnerable and that feeling was very frightening to me, even more than I realized at the time.

My whole geographical understanding of the world was completely lost in the flat land of Indiana. All of my senses were overwhelmed by the unfamiliar surroundings. I could not feel or smell anything. In Przemysl, my home city, I knew the seven hills surrounding the city center and how they are cut in half by the silver ribbon of the San River. It was very easily to understand where everything was in that small beautiful bowl with its mixture of medieval castles and baroque churches. I knew the smell of the city after the rain fell on the cobblestones, a mixture of static, rusted iron, and bus fumes in the arctic air. It took years of small trips for me to figure out North and South and that Chicago was not located in Ohio but in Illinois. I was like a little spider in Robert Laessig’s painting. I wove my silver web, making it larger and larger, expanding out from my home in Wabash, Indiana, until it finally reached the coast and the singing sands of Lake Michigan.

I heard somewhere that the sands of the Sahara Desert are known for the mournful sound they make as the wind blows across the golden dunes. The sound under our feet as my family walked across the beach of Tiscornia Park toward the waves of Lake Michigan sounded like something else. “The sand sounds like Spongebob Square pants!” my daughter, Makenzie, yelled as she kicked the sand several more times to make the sound before running toward the water as fast as she could. I ran after her, my feet making squeaking noises in the sand, until I jumped into the waves. Later that day while devouring jumbo shrimp called The Drunken Sailors at the best restaurant in town down at the local marina, Clementines Too, we found out that the phenomena of the sands is caused by high levels of mica in the sand. The concentration of this mineral gives the sands the ability to make this very specific, though funny, sound.
Over time, I learned how to use my new sense of direction in these unique local places and discover them with my own little family. I stopped feeling constantly numb and could finally feel the lake breeze on my skin, the warm soft golden sand beneath my fingertips, the hot surface of the lighthouse with its chipping paint, the sweaty little hands of my children, the rich taste of the drizzled chocolate cake at DeBrand Chocolate Factory, and the feeling of joy while watching my children climb on the large bronze Hippopotamus, a part of the outdoor exhibit at Krasl Art Center. I found my freedom is finding a new sense of direction and I no longer felt out of place.

About the Author: Sana Szewczyk, a native of Poland, earned a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Linguistics from Indiana University and Master of Business Administration in Human Resources Management from Indiana Institute of Technology. Her stories have appeared in over sixty publications. Her first collection of stories, “Under a Ginkgo Tree & Other Stories,” was released in February 2012. She lives in Indiana with her husband and two children.

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