By Aimé Merizon PHOTOS BY Brian Confer

From the December/January 2007 Issue

Lake Magazine covers the hottest information on the Lake Michigan area.

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As a cub reporter for the Wilkes-Barre (Pa.) Times-Leader in March 1979, Schneider’s first story was the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant scare. Today, Schneider is the institute’s deputy director, overseeing the organization’s programs and managing its news desk. He is also a regular contributor to The New York Times, Detroit Free Press, Metro Press, Traverse and the Great Lakes Bulletin.

In 1989 I was living in the Washington D.C. area and was a national correspondent for The New York Times, covering global climate change. In September, I had to interview a scientist, and flew into Pellston. This was the first time I had been to northern Michigan. The only thing I knew was Hemingway’s The Nick Adams stories. I was astonished by the beauty. Unbroken forests and blue lakes and the palette of fall colors. I thought, wow, what is this place? It was amazing, beautiful, quiet. I ended up coming back and staying for two weeks at Crystal Lake. There was no fast food, no big box stores, one traffic light.

As a newspaper writer, if you’ve covered one plot you’ve covered them all. I wanted my work to have a more penetrating meaning, to help foster something better than what I found. I also wanted to write from the center of the country. This area was so untouched and beautiful, I ended up cashing out my Times stock and bought some land in northern Manistee. It’s a gorgeous piece of land, 90 acres plus a house, on a dirt road. At $50,000, it was affordable. This was November 1991.

The institute has been a big piece of a community that has embraced the view to succeed in the 21st century, based on green principles. It’s about how we marry the goals available to us to keep this place beautiful. Did you know more than half of the people in this region came from someplace else? The population has doubled in the past 30 years. People came because of these values and principles. I hope that 50 years from now this place is still beautiful, a magnet for people who come from all over. And I hope MLUI is seen as an asset.

One of my favorite places in this region is along the Manistee River. There’s a 20-mile loop trail. You get down into the valley and it’s incredibly beautiful – high grasses, tall trees, thick forest. Every time, I see bald eagles. Another spot is the Platte River and Bay, at the end of Peterson Road in the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore. I run and cross-country ski there. At any time of day or year there’s never more than a handful of people at that beach. I love road biking in Leelanau County, too. It’s scenically gorgeous: hilly, and always close to a lake, so you can stop and swim if you’re hot.

Everything we do [at the institute] we learned in that first campaign, against natural gas in Manistee County. They underestimated us. We kicked butt. We banned oil and gas drilling on the coast.

In 2005 we led the campaign to leave Lake Michigan beaches open to public walking. It worked. The law was with us, but ideology often trumped it. But now every mile of Great Lake beach in this state is open to be walked by the public. I walk the beach all the time. One of my family’s favorite places is Watervale. We picnic on Old Baldy. We usually go once or twice a year. It’s one of the most incredible places. We have three children, three dogs, one cat. My wife, Pam, is a school board member, ski instructor, and operates the climbing wall at Crystal Mountain. I have a dog named Ellie Mae; the vet thinks she’s the oldest dog in northern Michigan.

I also love Traverse City, because it has found a way to sustain itself with smart things like rezoning, making it better for entrepreneurs to settle here. Look at Hagerty Insurance: It’s the first billion-dollar company intent on staying downtown. They don’t want to go out in the sprawl.

The institute has a project in Saugatuck right now. One of the richest men in America, Aubrey McClendon, an oil and natural gas executive from Oklahoma, bought 400 acres of beach and dunes at the mouth of the Kalamazoo River, paid cash. His attorney says he’s preparing to make public a development plan for the property. But there are three local governments who are really serious about protecting that coastline. They hired us to help them understand their options.

The institute’s intent is to find the better alternative, not to stop things. Chicago understands this. Cities that were once the place for the poor are beginning to thrive again. These are economic transitions that are affecting the country. Years ago we seemed like radicals, but not today. We are pro-development, but we believe it’s gotta be done better.

People meet me and know right where I stand. I think I’m real smart, a bulldog. There’s very little I take personally. I’ve been here a long time and have some credibility. I do here what I do best. I find a path through the complexities and make it clear for people, help them understand what to do. That’s what I do here, help people see.