We stood on the beach skipping stones into Lake Michigan, the Beach House Blowout at our backs. A steady wind in our faces, rolling waves singing across the pebbled apron at Indiana Dunes State Park.
A timeless and irreplaceable jewel, this day stretched out in lazy solitude under a white-blue sky. Across the lake, at 10 o’clock, silhouette stalks of the Loop on the horizon.
But then a disorienting sound – faint but closing fast and now exploding everywhere all at once. The heavy thwap of helicopter rotors, dozens of them, the swelling, deafening sounds of violins, trumpets, French horns!
From behind the dunes they burst over the trees – ancient, olive drab Hueys – so close we could see the faces of the door gunners, the glint off pilots’ aviators.
