The Pageant by Cathleen Allyn Conway

We nineteen are feted to a luncheon in the library
wherein they conduct the private interviews, asking
why we want to be this year’s ‘Diana of the Dunes’.

We are not posed questions about what berries are edible,
which fish Michigan stocks, or how to survive with less
than a blanket, a jelly glass, a knife and two guns.

So no one answers how oaks turn crimson and maples gold,
how the sand eats the beach grass, the trees, the road,
or that her name was Alice Gray, buried in an unmarked grave.

Backstage we are painted in Mary Kay samples, a parade
of old bridesmaid dresses and last year’s prom gowns.
The crowned ‘Diana’ will cut ribbons and wave from floats

while the ghost of Alice streaks from her driftwood cottage,
a banshee dancing to the shriek of singing sands, swimming
naked along the Great Lake shoreline, a berrybrown ondine.

Alice Mabel Gray (1881–1925), a graduate of the University of Chicago, abandoned her life in Chicago in 1915 to live rough on the shores of Lake Michigan in the sand dunes, where locals referred to her as ‘Diana of the Dunes’. She was a tireless eco–campaigner and through her efforts the south shore has largely been preserved as state and national parks instead of being eaten up by the steelmaking industry. Gray claimed city life was not conducive to the advancement of an educated woman. Her ghost is alleged to haunt the park’s shores. Each year the town of Chesterton, where the state park is located, holds a beauty pageant called Diana of the Dunes.

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