Making the environmental medicine go down smoothly is not always easy, but Traverse City-area author Jerry Dennis does the job superbly in a new book, The Living Great Lakes. Published by St. Martin's Press, the book confronts serious Great Lakes issues but embeds them in a narrative of Dennis' journey on a refurbished tall ship making its way from Traverse City to Maine. Along the way, Dennis encounters and tells stories about the natural and human history of the Lakes and the lands that abut them.

Dennis has written for Sports Afield, Gray's Sporting Journal and The New York Times, while authoring seven previous books, including It's Raining Frogs and Fishes and From a Wooden Canoe.

Dennis answered our questions about his book and his Great Lakes discoveries.

MEC: What prompted you to write this book? A specific event or simply your longtime relationship with Lake Michigan in particular?

Dennis: I started taking notes in college, 25 years ago, for a book not much different in spirit from The Living Great Lakes. I remember wanting to write about the way dune grass draws circles in the sand. It took me a quarter century to figure out how to put details like that into a bigger, more sweeping book.

MEC: I appreciated your comment early in the book that you were getting "lost in the parts" as you considered how to write about the Lakes. Do you think that's a common problem, and do you think your book captured something bigger? How? Did you find "the heart" of the inland seas?

Dennis: Getting lost in the parts is a hazard of writing about any subject as large and complicated as the Great Lakes. It would have been easiest to include everything-every detail of geology, ecology, natural history, human history-but the result would have been an encyclopedia, and that's not what I wanted. I hope that The Living Great Lakes tells the story of the lakes while evoking the qualities that make them unique…If there's a single binding message in all my books, it is that achieving a deep engagement with the natural world is difficult, complex, elusive-and worth the effort.

MEC: As you cruised the Lakes, what surprised or impressed you about them that hadn't really captured your attention before?

Dennis: I was struck by the realization that in some essential ways the lakes are not much different than they were before the arrival of the first Europeans. They've been changed dramatically, of course, but seen from far enough away the shores along many parts of the lakes look the way they did to the members of the Cass Expedition, say, in 1820. Schoolcraft's descriptions of Sleeping Bear Dunes and the south shore of Lake Superior read like contemporary descriptions. I see this as reason for optimism.

MEC: You've traveled the Great Lakes Basin pretty widely. Do you see any difference in the attitudes of Michigan citizens toward the Lakes from that of people in, say, Chicago, Cleveland, Toronto or Buffalo?

Dennis: I'd hate to generalize. Michigan's people seem more involved and aware of the lakes than those in most states and provinces, but everywhere I've been I've met people who are passionate about the lakes. Of course I've also met many others who care not at all.

MEC: Do you feel more or less hopeful about the future of the Lakes and the people who enjoy them after studying them so intimately for this book? What do you think the greatest threat to their health is, and what can we do about it?

Dennis: I'm more hopeful than ever. It was immensely heartening to see the Great Lakes rise to prominence in last year's gubernatorial campaigns and to see how quickly candidates from every party jumped forward with plans to protect the lakes from diversion and petroleum drilling. But although there are reasons to be hopeful, that doesn't mean we can relax our vigilance.

I think the greatest threat to the health of the lakes is economic. Zebra mussels and other invaders entered the lakes because shipping companies weren't willing to spend the money to sanitize their ballast tanks or dump them in the Atlantic before they entered the St. Lawrence River. Cities use outdated and inefficient sewage systems that dump millions of gallons of virtually raw sewage into the lakes because it costs too much to build new ones.

It was easy to rally citizens to protest drilling beneath the lakes for oil and natural gas, as long as gasoline was available at $1.50 a gallon, but the moment the price rose to $1.75, many of those same people started reconsidering. When the price of fresh water rises high enough, and we find ourselves sitting on the mother lode, the temptation is going to be great to siphon off a few hundred million gallons for profit.

Clean water is good economics, of course, but primarily in the long run. The biggest threat to the Great Lakes might well prove to be short-term economic thinking.