There really is nothing like it, Lake Superior, with its vastness, great depths, sounding waves and their bubbles, and the wildlife — birds, fish, rodents — that go about within it. I read of others calling it a fresh water inland sea and I can surmise where they found this thought adrift. If one looks long and hard enough they can see the earth’s curve on the distant eastern horizons of Wisconsin.
I found it while eating berry pies one time at a restaurant along its shores long ago. My father told me of his experience with this sight as I chewed down sugary sweets. And, as my father, I will always remember this talk of, and the lake itself, Lake Superior, as one of a kind. He took me to it first, and told stories of it before our journey.
The color of Lake Superior is many. Eyes must adjust to the tint that it offers. One can see sheer whites, greens, reds, violets, and azules reflected a million times, scintillant kaleidoscope, before where they stand. Big words have nothing on objective awe; I couldn’t expatiate enough to suffice. Even on a grey day it is not just that. There is no monotone, only a diverse spectrum playing coy.
An old artist, a master, had his blue and his rosa period; in the same fashion Lake Superior captures colors and seasons and moods and times. Its hue is to be taken like a strong herbal potion gauged for all its deep, rich tones and notes. And when fragile pupils take this saturation a person is carried away. I don’t actually remember the first time I saw the lake itself, but each time I view it, I view it with the same amazement: something spiritual.
Trips to and near Lake Superior make me feel cleansed as if I am anew, mentally, physically, metaphysically. I can take strong ale along the shores and damn near freeze to death and still smile at the situation. I have slept alongside it through winter nights in winds that tear rain tarps off with godlike ease and precision and throw them into the sheltering pines. I have awoken in blinding morning light to put instant fire to a stove to French press coffee on the tailgate of a rusting truck. Rubbing my hands I had to reflect the night before, had I not known the lake was so close — then, now I could smell it. It was laying some 100 feet or so away, headwinds sighing through tree tops just above.
How ill-prepared we must be when we remember in our aloofness. When I am away from Lake Superior I think of the numerous visits, and I think I know as others do. I have taken it as a child and an adult and never in the same capacity. Though, one thing remains steadfast: this mass of water makes me feel a humble being, it takes me down a notch and splashes me to my common class. How Melville’s snowy hills made Moby Dick (or The Whale, or Moby-Dick) in his cold season, and he was a poor man in his lifetime for such fine words. I am nothing near this natural creation; I am nowhere close to its majesty — and I don’t even touch upon the brilliance of its pebbled shores, or of the inexplicable sunsets it has been the privy framework and foundation of. And still I write haphazardly, unprepared, on a magnum opus.
There would be so much to say if it were not more important to just behold. To stand and watch and fancy thy self as a clear eye, as a crisp lens, taking, creating that image out of chemical on the circuit board of the mind. However, a person can read, interpret, paint a picture, take photos and view photos, and imagine oneself staring into it, but they are truly ill-prepared unless they have been, unless they have seen Lake Superior for themselves. Unless color and feel and sound disappeared into the depths, and darkness fell all around the shoreline and what it encompassed, and ruled — crashing beyond the world’s fourth wall, it would still make my heart beat faster and faster, this lake.
