When you get caught with your pants down, run like hell.
If you were to stick the point of a compass in the middle of Oma Tupa and swing a two-mile radius, you wouldn’t find much in the way of retail or entertainment. You’d encircle a small store where AAA batteries and mosquito spray, two essentials for northern Minnesota survival, cost the same as a good bottle of wine. There’s a small resort with a building converted into the Illgen Jail, complete with stuffed cloth prisoners poking their heads through the bars. There’s the Fish Out of Water (because that’s how the big city owners felt before opening it) Gift Shop. You’d find a road that leads you to the 200-mile Superior Hiking Trail. And of course, you’d find a lot of lake.
East and West Coasters may snicker, but we Midwesterners lay claim to Lake Superior as our ocean. It is oceanlike in its immensity, in its dangerousness, in its variety, and in its ability to inspire. It lacks only the saltiness and cruise ship debris.
The fact is, 1.1 billion years ago, Lake Superior was a single gigantic-shift-in-the-tectonic-plates away from becoming a saltwater ocean. The entire northern portion of what is now the United States began parting ways with the rest of the country. The land separated as if a gigantic zipper — with the pull starting at the tip of Superior and the teeth extending along what is now the course of the Mississippi River — began unzipping. It was on its way to dividing the USA into two continents, with ocean in between, when the zipper snagged somewhere around Nebraska, and Mother Nature pulled her zipper back up over the next few million years in an act of geologic modesty.
During this time Mother Nature tossed and turned. Lava oozed. Minerals crystallized into gemstones such as amethyst and greenstone. Agates, Mother Nature’s surprise in the Cracker Jack box, were created. Basalt amassed in such quantities that its iron content can swing a compass 50 degrees off course and its density can increase the pull of gravity to the point where it can affect one’s energy level during a long hike in some areas. Volcanic activity, sedimentation, upheaval, glaciers, and erosion kept stirring the pot.
About 10,000 years ago, a blink of an eye in earth science measures, the last ice age went into recession. Vast amounts of water were trapped in the deep indentations left behind. Five massive lakes — great lakes to be exact — each resembling a gourd left in the backseat of a car on a sweltering day, were created. These squiggly lakes, a cartographer’s nightmare, eventually created much of the border between what is now the United States and Canada — and the shoreline upon which Oma Tupa sits.
Lake Superior holds ten percent of the world’s available fresh water: over three quadrillion gallons. If you throw in the other four Great Lakes, this freshwater monopoly increases to twenty percent. When mathematicians try to put Superior’s vastness into concrete terms, they come up with images such as these:
Superior is 383 miles long and 160 miles across at its widest point. Its 32,000-square-mile surface area is equal to that of Maine. If you traversed all the coves and points that compose the shoreline, your pedometer would read 2,980 miles. If you lowered the Freedom Tower into the deepest part of Superior, only the top four floors, plus the satellite needle, would be visible.
By surface area it’s the world’s largest lake. By volume only Lake Tanganyika in Africa and Lake Baikal in Russia contain more water. Superior is so vast that — like the oceans — it doesn’t merely affect the weather, it creates it. The average winter temperature of the water is 40 degrees; in summer it warms up 1 or 2 balmy degrees. The notion that Superior “never gives up her dead” is based in fact; the microorganisms that cause bodies to bloat and float can’t survive the frigid waters.
Lake-effect snows can dump 22 inches on the shore and none a mile inland. On an average of once every twenty years the lake freezes over, though “freezing over” is a misnomer. It merely becomes logjammed with a mass of ever-shifting ice floes. Residents of Madeline Island can drive the two miles across the ice to Bayfield, Wisconsin, on a Monday, only to discover stretches of open water blocking their return on Wednesday. An acquaintance who winters on the island keeps two railroad spikes ganged together with rope on his dashboard, so if he breaks through, he at least has a prayer of grabbing them, busting out a window and clawing himself back onto the ice. A two-story home sits on the bottom of Superior between Madeline Island and Bayfield, the victim of an overconfident house mover and an underconfident ice pack.
Four million tourists visit Superior annually, but the lake has a much larger working side. It’s been used for transportation, shipping, and commercial fishing for hundreds of years. Massive ships — the largest measuring 1,013 feet in length and 100 feet in width — help provide scale. The Titanic, by comparison, was 882 feet long. Many ships are driven at the breakneck speed of 16 to 20 miles per hour by pairs of gigantic diesel engines sporting twenty cylinders and 20,000 horsepower.
You can halfway guess where people hail from by what they call these monsters. If they call them “boats” — which is something that can be taken out of the water — they’re most likely inlanders. If they call them “ships,” there’s a pretty good chance they’re from a coastal state. If the word “freighters” rolls off their tongue, there’s a pretty good shot they’ve spent some time in a port town somewhere. But if they say, “Look at that laker!” you’re listening to someone who lives within spitting distance of a Great Lakes port.
Regardless of what you call them — ships, freighters, lakers — nothing that floats is a match for the Great Lakes when they’re in a bad mood. Fall puts the lakes in their foulest temperament. As with hurricanes the largest storms are given names, and some are legendary.
In November of 1913 the weeklong “Great Storm” on Lake Huron sank ten vessels, ran twenty more ashore, and claimed two hundred and thirty-five lives. In terms of lives lost and intensity, most people mark it as the worst storm to ever strike the Great Lakes. It was reported that 60-mile-per-hour winds blew for 16 hours straight, creating waves 35 feet high.
The 1905 “Blow” on Superior took out thirty ships, including the William Edenborn, which was smashed ashore at Split Rock twenty miles south of Oma Tupa. In another horrific episode during the same storm, 40,000 citizens of Duluth watched helplessly from shore in the 13-degrees-below-zero cold as the 430-foot Mataafa was smashed in two against the rocks. The lake too rough and the distance too far to attempt a rescue, people manned their bonfires along the shore that night, then chopped nine dead from the icy grasp of Superior the next morning.
The storm that took down the fabled Edmund Fitzgerald on November 10, 1975, was no sissy. When the “Fitz” was launched in 1958 it was the biggest object ever dropped into fresh water. It took waves of over 30 feet to destroy the 730-foot-long freighter. With no survivors the exact story behind her sinking will never be known. One thing is for certain — the boat went down fast, probably in less time than it took Gordon Lightfoot to run through his fourteen-verse song commemorating the tragedy.
None of these storms or tragedies are record holders in terms of sheer number of lives lost. That dubious distinction goes to the passenger liner Eastland, which capsized in the Chicago River within a stone’s throw of shore on a calm, sunny Saturday morning in 1915. Eight hundred thirty-five people heading out for a pleasant excursion drowned when the boat rolled over in the harbor. Water ballast tanks that hadn’t been filled made the boat unsteady to begin with. But, it’s hypothesized that 2,500 passengers all shifting to the port side for some unclear reason may have made her barrel roll.
Many are the tales of small-scale fishermen doing hand-to-hand combat with Superior with predictably mixed results. On a miserable November day in 1958 — a day so wretched most people wouldn’t even stand on the shoreline — Helmer Aakvik launched his small wooden skiff to go in search of Carl Hammer, his twenty-six-year-old neighbor and the man with whom he shared a boathouse, who’d gone missing. Aakvik, figuring Hammer’s boat had developed mechanical problems, loaded an extra motor, gas, and an ax in his own boat and headed out to where Hammer usually set his nets, hoping the young man had tied off to one of the net buoys to await rescue. Hammer was nowhere to be found, so Aakvik cut his engine and let his own boat drift, hoping he would travel in the same direction as Hammer. The gale kept getting angrier and angrier. Aakvik’s boat kept taking on water and ice. He threw the extra motor and gas overboard to lighten the load. When he kept sinking, he threw his own motor, gas, and everything else overboard. His hands were so cold he could no longer grip the oars, so he let his hands freeze to the handles so he could row. With no hands to chop ice, his feet froze to the bottom of the boat. He’d been out twenty-four hours when the Coast Guard found him — alive — and pried him out of his boat. Hammer was never found. When I overhear someone at the gym telling his buddy to “man up” by putting an extra ten pounds on the Cybex machine, I think of Helmer.
Lake Superior is a 32,000-square-mile Rorschach inkblot test, a singular thing that everyone perceives a little differently. Some people see it as a thing of action — they sail across it, wade into it, skip stones along it, pull fish out of it, scuba dive through it, surf over it. Others see it as a contemplative thing — they stare at it, write about it, sketch it, photograph it, nap next to it.
One stormy afternoon we head down to our beach with friends Tom and Nan. The northeast wind is driving the waves dead ahead into the thumper hole, creating plumes that crash 60 feet into the air. We all see different inkblots. Tom sees a science experiment and throws chunks of wood into the surf to see how they travel. Nan sees a chance to get her adrenaline going and creeps perilously close to the edge to watch the pounding. I see a percussion instrument and count waves to find what time it’s beating to. Kat sees a photo op and clicks off pictures of the crashing and bashing. It’s one lake, but we all see different things.
Not long ago someone looked over toward the thumper hole and saw something different yet — two moons rising over Superior. Kat and I had been installing siding on one of those days where the air was thick as a sauna. We needed refreshment, and Superior’s 3 quadrillion gallons were calling. We scouted the beach from above to check for passing boaters or agate pickers. None. We clawed our way down the embankment and checked once again for humanity. None. We set up the towels and Dr. Bronner’s “all-in-one-Jaweh” peppermint soap. Among a cluster of boulders we stripped and scrubbed. I only had on my flip-flops and Kat was two articles short of that.
Kat and I subscribe to differing schools of lake bathing. I am of the “lather and plunge” persuasion. Once you’re soaped up head to toe, there’s no turning back. You plunge. Kat uses the bed-bath technique; a little soap and water on the washrag, scrub a square foot of skin, rinse and repeat. In frigid Superior my approach is death by firing squad; Kat’s approach, slower, like being drawn and quartered.
Kat, without glasses but radar fully extended, detected humanity on the beach. Since the beach is accessible only by water or one of the properties flanking it, we figured these were neighbors, one of whom, according to Dick, was a Methodist minister. This was not how we’d envisioned meeting the neighbors; we were thinking clothed would be more appropriate. Swimming out into the lake spelled sure hypothermia. We managed to get on skivvies, but that was it. We made a run for the border, scrambling up the hill, never looking back for fear of making eye contact. We’ve yet to meet the neighbors.
Scribe a larger circle around Oma Tupa, and you’ll find three unique towns — Duluth, Grand Marais, and Ely — each robust in its own right.
Duluth at first glance looks like a dirt-under-the-fingernails industrial town — and while there’s dirt under some of the nails, it’s not under all. The city of a hundred thousand wraps its twelve-mile-long arms around the western tip of Superior. It’s the eleventh busiest port in the United States, quite a claim for a town 2,300 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. Mile-long trains hauling taconite from the Iron Range, grain from North Dakota, and coal from Montana pass over 35W delivering their booty to the loading docks.
Beyond its hardcore infrastructure lies a town of surprising grace. It supports a symphony orchestra, a ballet troupe, three colleges, a minor league baseball team, the Bayport Blues Festival, Grandma’s Marathon, and the world’s largest freshwater aquarium.
Canal Park along the lake is now the epicenter of the artsy-touristy-gotta-see part of the city. Six-foot metal sturgeon spout water arcs across sidewalks, and horse-drawn carriages plod up and down the street. Lakewalk, a boardwalk made from teak, hugs the lake, then runs another 3 miles along the shore, passing sculptures, parks, and a Vietnam memorial that looks like a football helmet.
The aerial lift bridge in the harbor is the Eiffel Tower of the North — metallic, massive, awe-inspiring. A series of blasts and bells signals its intent to raise itself to all or part of its 120-foot height so a barge, ship, or catamaran mast can pass below. The maritime museum in its shadow is a wonderland for little kids and little kids at heart. It sports 12-foot-tall pistons from old freighters and an 11-ton, trampoline-size bronze propeller.
Grand Marais, fifty miles north of our cabin, is a small town packed with big diversity. SPAM-filled canoeists and vodka-filled yachtsmen rub elbows at the Angry Trout restaurant. There’s a vibrant theater, music, and arts scene. The variety of courses offered through North House Folk School — northern bog ecology, Swedish Potato Sausage making, casket building — attests to the wide range of citizenry that call Grand Marais home. Over the course of the summer you can attend the Shakespeare, Scandinavian Music, Boreal Birding, and Summer Solstice Festivals. Citizens and tourists have banded together to keep the Burger Kings and Walmarts at bay, though a Subway was able to latch onto the outer fringes.
Nowhere else but on the Grand Marais public radio station can you get a play-by-play broadcast — complete with color commentary — of a dogsled race. The station has some of the best music programming on the planet — at least if you’re a boomer: there are four straight hours of blues, a jazz hour, a Grateful Dead hour, and a program of contemporary bluegrass. The station is like the town — diverse, fun, a little odd.
Ely completes the triangle that surrounds our cabin. It’s home to the International Wolf Center and gateway to the one-million-acre Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. It is aptly nicknamed “City Where the Wilderness Begins.”
You can visit the Dorothy Molter Museum, the place that honors “The Root Beer Lady,” who lived a solitary life in the BWCAW for fifty-six years; solitary, unless you count the 7,000 canoeists and campers that visited her a year. She brewed a wicked root beer using eight-gallon crocks, and cooled it right through August using ice she’d hand cut from the lake. Charles Kuralt visited her, National Geographic documented her, and two people wrote biographies of her. When the government banned private residences in the BWCAW in the 1970s, enough root beer lovers raised a stink so they let Dorothy stay. When they banned retail sales in the BWCAW, she gave her root beer away and people gave her “donations.” Dorothy was a woman with some steel wool in her britches. After she died, volunteers disassembled her cabin log-by-log, hauled it to Ely via snowmobile and dogsled, then put it back together again. You can still guzzle one of her Isle of Pines root beers while sitting on a picnic table outside her relocated cabin.
Kat and I have watched eagles, wild turkey, fox, deer, raccoon, squirrels, and a dozen different types of birds cavort outside our living room window — in Stillwater, a stone’s throw from the Twin Cities. There’s not nearly as much diversity around Oma Tupa. There are deer aplenty — they sleep in the woods behind the cabin in the summer and bed down on the warmth of the septic tank come winter. Dick talks about having shot a troublemaking black bear out of a tree at the campground one night, quickly dispelling the notion in young campers’ minds that bears are cute, wear neckties, and are mostly concerned about forest fires. Occasionally a moose with a lousy sense of direction will drift through the area. But most inhabitants have fins or feathers, with the feathered providing the most visible entertainment.
A pair of loons — their moniker derived from their loony stride — reside in the bay outside our door. Every spring we see the two, cruising around the bay with two or three rubber-ducky-size offspring, home schooling them in the ways of eating, diving, and being loony. The same backset legs that make them awkward on land make them torpedoes in the water, allowing them to dive 200 feet while holding their breath for up to five minutes. They’re one of the few birds with solid bones, which aid their underwater velocity. Loons may also be loony because of their vulnerability to attack by land (raccoons and weasels), air (crows and eagles), and sea (muskies and pike). Though baby loons are precocial — able to swim and dive at birth — they often ride on a parent’s back for protection. Minnesotans are so fond of them they’ve been designated the state bird. They have a number of distinct calls, one of which is often described as one of “maniacal laughter.” Like all good Minnesotans, loons mate for life.
Seagulls also abound and are so numerous we’ve nicknamed the bus-size rock 50 feet offshore where they congregate “Seagull Rock.” They’re quirky things. If they could talk they’d sound like Gilbert Gottfried. As a group they’ve been known to stomp their feet in unison to simulate rain, thus tricking earthworms — one of their favorite snacks — to come to the surface. They’re adaptable critters, too; a special gland above their eyes acts as a filter, allowing them to drink either fresh water or salt water. Just as pigeons have been branded “rats with wings,” seagulls have been marked as “garbagemen with wings.” The nickname comes from their propensity to eat anything and everything; a plus, since they keep picnic areas, boat launches, and carcass-strewn beaches tidy.
A pair of bald eagles maintained a massive nest in the upper reaches of a nearby spruce until high winds took off the top of the tree. Their abode was not as impressive as some — they’ve found eagle nests 9 feet in diameter, 16 feet in height, weighing over 2 tons — but it had an undeniably commanding view. They still use the tree as their hunting shack; from it, the occupants — with eyesight four times keener than ours — can spot a fish a mile away, then, using their 7-foot wingspan, hit speeds of 100 miles per hour, to nab dinner with talons ten times stronger than the grip of a human. With their hooked beaks, paring knife–size talons, and perpetually pissed-off look, they create a foreboding presence. Nonetheless I’ve seen birds one-eighth their size engage this National Emblem in a dispute over culinary rights and win. They’ve been known to snatch already-caught food from osprey, otters, and, on occasion, unsuspecting fishermen. If you’re an optimist you call this behavior “opportunistic.” If you’re Ben Franklin — no fan of old baldy — you call him a bird of “bad moral Character,” that “does not get his Living honestly.”
But whenever Kat and I see an eagle soar overhead we’re certain it’s a good omen — a manuscript will be accepted, good fortune will befall one of our kids . . . maybe the plumber will actually show up.