DURING THE SUMMER MONTHS I WAS at the beach five times a week on average. It was a couple of blocks away from where we lived. My favorite thing to do at the beach was to build sandcastles. I had a small collection of various sized buckets I would bring with me to create castles, forts, mazes, walled cities, and swimming pools. I had an active imagination. One of my earliest memories is standing with a relative in the water, close to shore. I was holding onto her bathing suit to steady myself. A large wave suddenly came up and knocked me over which caused me to rip her bathing suit because I would not let go. During the summer, the neighborhood parents would always make a point of taking their children to the beach, so I rarely had to play by myself; there were a lot of kids in my neighborhood. Another reason I liked going to the beach was because from that vantage point, I could see the entire outline of our city’s downtown skyline. The tall skyscrapers fascinated me and though I tried reproducing them in sand, I never got past the second floor before the sand would cascade down into a heap. IT WAS NOT UNTIL WE STARTED studying geography in elementary school, where I discovered the lake I played in was an important part of a whole ecosystem in the Midwest. Up until that point, though I knew oceans were bigger than lakes, the only difference I could see between my lake and the Atlantic Ocean was my lake did not have saltwater in it. Otherwise, our lake had big waves, seaweed and when I looked out to the horizon, all I saw was water no land mass. In class, I discovered my lake was part of a group of five lakes that were known as the Great Lakes. The combination of lakes contained one fifth of the earth’s freshwater supply. All this time I had no idea how important my lake was; but, once I found out about all these facts, I certainly felt a sense of pride that I was lucky enough to have it walking distance from my house. As I got older, I started exploring more of the lakefront, even doing a road trip that went around the lake into other states. There was only one period of time when I avoided going to the beach and I totally forgot all about it until I saw it being discussed in this fascinating documentary. HAVING BEEN THE LIFEBLOOD AND ECONOMIC engine to so many people and businesses, a mystery began to unfold that would be a threat to every single living thing associated with the Great Lakes. Written and directed by Lindsey Haskin (Freshwater Seas: The Great Lakes) and narrated by J.K. Simmons (Red One, Saturday Night), I found this film more than just entertaining, it was informative and literally a walk back through time. Growing up and hearing only about the sensational news around the lakes, like one newspaper headline that read Lake Erie is dead and another one about the amount of dead Alewife fish coming onto shore, I enjoyed hearing about the history and impact of these and other events in this picture. I wondered if it mattered if viewers without any history to the Great Lakes would care about watching this movie and I think it would still be interesting to non-lake viewers. A lot of information was given in this film, but it was done in such a way that it was not tedious or overwhelming. Plus, the use of archival films and photographs made the information entertaining. For those who have a curiosity about such things, I feel they will appreciate watching the unfolding of a century of history in the middle of our country.
3 stars
