On Saturday, July 12, we got up at about 4:30am to beat everyone to the communal showers in the Indiana State camp ground after a somewhat hot and humid night spent in our two-person tent.

We pulled up stakes, left the camp ground and drove the short trip to IHoP for a pancake breakfast. At around 9am we were on the beach and shooting pictures. We spent the rest of the day looking for wildlife on Beverly Drive and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and climbing Mount Baldy, enjoying the view. We then drove the two hours home, south of Chicago.

All of this mundaneness is just to set the stage for what followed on Sunday.

Unknown to us on the next day while we were in church, three young friends struggled to stay alive in a battle with a deadly rip current on the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. One friend swam to safety, barely making it out alive, another was rescued by some others nearby, but the third, DaVante Jackson, 14 went under the waves and his body didn’t turn up for several days.

A diver returns to shore during a search Monday, July 14, for DaVante Jackson, who disappeared while swimming Sunday along the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore near Chesterton. The body of the 14-year-old Chicago Heights teen was recovered Wednesday from Lake Michigan. Officials say he likely drowned after being caught in a suspected rip current. (Tribune photo by Kuni Takahashi / July 14, 2008)

The rip current that took young Jackson’s life isn’t a new occurance. All though  better known on ocean beaches like the southern Oregon coast where I grew up near Harris Beach State Park located in Brookings, these unpredictable beach backwashes are blamed for a handful of deaths each year. And, many are still unaware that the Great Lakes can be a deadly place to play on the beach if one is unaware.

I remember back as early as the age of about six or seven years old being warned not to enter the surf alone. Being the young boy I was, that warning didn’t stop me from testing the waters. I remember the exciting experience of standing in the very edge of the surf; not quite in the ocean—not quite completely on land, as the waves rolled in and then rushed past my small feet on the return trip back into the rough Oregon ocean; the sand under my feet being ripped out from under me, making it hard to stay vertical.

Before my big sisters could manage to drag me back onto dry sand, I remember wondering if I had just experienced the “rip tide” about which I had just been warned a few minutes earlier.

That is my first remembrance of a rip current as it impacted my life. Last Sunday’s death is the first time that I have been even remotely affected by rip currents since my child hood. We just don’t hear of deaths from rip tides and rip currents, mostly because they are not news making material like a drug related murder, or a viscious knife attack in a civil violence case. The only reason I learned of that recent, unfortunate weekend event involving a death was because of our common practice of conducting constant search engine results for any news stories containing the words “national park”. The story didn’t make it to the bulk of the national news lines as it should to provide proper warnings to the next batch of beach goers.

None the less, we need to make sure that young folks learn about these often occurring and deadly currents. Sixty drownings and near drownings have been recorded in recent years along lake shores in the US, according to the linked story.  [ more ]

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