Notes From the Field

Autumn takes a hard turn…

The low pressure system that for the last week sat stationary over the lower Great Lakes and brought miserable weather to the midsection of the country while spinning persistent showers up along the south shore of Superior has finally been nudged on. Clouds that for days gently cloaked the tops of the Bessemer Bluffs greeted dawn this morning as fierce portents -- roiled, fractured and ominous. You didn’t have to pay really close attention in order to know the jig was up.

I began yesterday by canoeing one of my favorite lakes in the Ottawa National Forest and if I’ve ever spent a prettier morning there I don’t recall it. Overcast with just a hint of fog, the water was as glass and mirrored the colors of the forest that rings it.

The ripples on the surface came from my canoe. They radiated out across the entire lake. And either the intense yellow trees about fried the sensors on my Toy Canon SLR. Either that or I’ve not yet figured out how best to use it.

Later in the day I packed in to Nonesuch and there found autumn in all its quiet splendor, fallen leaves dressing the hard black stone of the old mine's crumbling foundations. Quietude unknown in any city.

By the time I walked back out to the car I was warm and moist with sweat. It was a joy to scoop handfuls of ice water from the bottom of my cooler and splash it over me. Did some good work while there, I think. Though as is always the case with film you don’t find out you haven’t until it’s too late to do anything about it.

Regardless, it was about as fine a day as could be had.

I suppose it’s true in all big sky country, but for most of us it’s rare to plainly see a season turn upon a single day and so this one did today. By midmorning, the breeze had picked up and the clouds began to spit. By afternoon the storm was full blown and it was 48 degrees, the wind a steady 20/25 mph from the NW with gusts I’d guess as high as forty.

Ravens hung in the air like kites. Geese, for all their squawking persistence flew backwards trying to seek safe haven in a field, their big heavy bodies caught up in the wind. Trees roar, when bent so far.

It’s tough to tell just how much rain fell in horizontal sheets. It can’t be enough, as the region’s been locked in drought for a long time now, but maybe it’ll feed the rivers enough so that fish can finally come in from the big lake and do their autumn thing.

Time for that grows short. As does time for everything that thrives this side of freezing.

The rain slackened with sunset and a great hole appeared near the horizon to the west. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight”, they say. We’ll see. The weatherman can’t ever seem to get it right up here, maybe old sailors can. What’s true is that clouds still race across the heavens.

I’m looking forward to roaming the woods tomorrow, as what leaves can fall will have fallen to cover the forest floor with fast fading brightness and everywhere it’ll be different than it was even just yesterday. No matter how bucolic some days going forward may yet be, this place has today turned its face toward winter and now, there’s no going back.

A Most Superior Place

Lake Superior is aptly named. The greatest freshwater sea in the world, like an ocean it makes its own weather. Around Superior's basin, resurgent wilderness feeds from it -- a rich and evolving emerald necklace draped over the shoulders of a watery god, resolutely indifferent to human concern.

Within an easy day’s drive of this wonderland live more than 20 million North Americans. Most of these people are at least vaguely aware of its existence. Some have even seen it. Few know it well.

Those hardy folk who know Superior best live within its reach. That’s not an easy place to be. With  few exceptions, the towns there are small and getting smaller, as populations age and young folk leave, drawn away by an urban song promoting opportunity as the one true way to easy living.

If not that, then a new kind of wilderness at least.

What most of us consider routine goods & services are, in this region, too often hard to come by or don't exist at all. What most of us might consider poverty is commonplace. How many people do you know that must scrounge wood so to stay unfrozen in their homes through the long, dark winter?

These towns and villages are remnants of a robust past. At different times Voyageurs roamed the rivers and forests, taking furs. Lumbermen then cut those forests to the ground, with the magnificent hardwood and fabled pine used to build cities like Chicago and Detroit. Miners blasted and dug six dangerous days a week in order to scavenge copper and iron that helped fuel the Industrial Revolution, which led to the United States of America as it is today.

Quintessentially American, places with names like Bessemer and Ironwood, Ontonagon and Grand Marias were settled by waves of immigrant workers from across Europe and beyond. And of course, before any of these were the Potawatomi, Ojibwa and Sioux, whose cultural memories of this place far precede any invasive white folk and whose presence on this land remains vibrant, which keeps ancient memory alive.

Over the next year or so I’ll explore many facets of the Superior basin. You’re invited to come along, in more or less real time.

Whether you already know and love the region, have visited upon occasion, or if you’ve never come within 10,000 miles of the these northwoods, together (if vicariously) we’ll come to know this Superior place and its people better. Whether by seeking them out and listening to their stories, or by eavesdropping on locals in their diners.

I guarantee that if what you take from rural U.S.A. is all that the media spits up on a daily basis, some characters in the story of this lake will surprise you.

We’ll slog through swamps, hike forests, paddle streams and lakes, meaning primarily to document ruins of failed construct before multigenerational despair and resurgent wilderness eats them. Take periodic rest beneath the shade of a hemlock beside shining waters so blue it hurts the eyes to look. And together, we’ll sit in awe on the Superior shore after night falls, the heavens ascend and the Northern Lights dance.

It’s time to hit the road to see what we can see. Maybe even learn a bit along the way. Feel free to ride shotgun -- that seat is reserved for you.