I've thought about what it would be like to go back in time just to see what was here long ago. Sometimes I close my eyes and try to imagine what it would be like. Mostly, I think about what it would be like to see all the dunes standing tall on the shoreline, especially Pigeon Hill.

I never saw Pigeon Hill. Situated on the south side of the channel on Muskegon Lake, the dune was totally gone, completely obliterated, by the time I was in third grade. Most of its vast bulk was gone long before I was born. I didn't even know of its existence until almost 30 years later when I came across a copy of a beautiful, ethereal watercolor painting done of the dune that now hangs in the local museum.

Finding out about the loss of Pigeon Hill was what propelled me to revive the fight to protect Michigan's sand dunes. My thinking was that I had to help save those that remained. Too many had been lost forever, to be seen now only in historical museums, photographs and antique postcards.

At over 300 feet tall, Pigeon Hill was likely one of Michigan's tallest dunes. It took up almost 200 acres and had a base that would have covered 40 football fields. The massive dune was located in Bluffton in Muskegon County, a historic duneland neighborhood that sheltered native tribes, fur traders and loggers and was the summer home of one of America's theatrical sweethearts, silent film star Buster Keaton.

Pigeon Hill was named for the millions of passenger pigeons that lived in the tall forests on its top. The pigeons disappeared more than 100 years before the dune was depleted--trapped in barrels, clubbed to death and sent out to eastern cities for the elegant dinners popular during that time.

The big hill was the focal point of the area--a landmark for sailors, lumber vessels, fishing boats and leisure boaters on Muskegon Lake. The dune itself was everyone's playground. Children ran up and down its steep hills. Teenagers labored to the top in the summer, lured by rumors of nude sunbathers. One new teacher at Bluffton School was admonished by the local ladies that her new adult role meant no more running up and down the dune every day after school. Pigeon Hill was a popular destination for the electric trolley that took visitors and local residents to the Big Lake where they could also ride a Ferris wheel and see a play at the lakeside theater.

At one point there was a chance to save Pigeon Hill. D.D. Erwin, owner of 74 acres of the dune, offered to sell it to the City of Muskegon in the early 1900s. City officials were not interested, and the property was sold to a local company after Mr. Erwin's death. In 1925, local citizens rallied to fight plans to remove the dune to build homes. These early conservationists took their case all the way to the Supreme Court but eventually lost. Removal of the dune began in earnest in 1936 and was expanded in 1944, when the company bought the remaining 94 acres of the dune. By 1967, Pigeon Hill was gone forever.

Fueled by the stories and photos I've gathered, I close my eyes and imagine Pigeon Hill, tall as ever, back again, children playing on its slopes and passenger pigeons hovering over its forested top.

This is why we environmentalists do our work. So we have no regrets. And so we have more than just dreams and imaginings of Nature.