Lake Superior’s magnificence leaves a lasting impression on most everyone who sees it. For myself, I experience immediate equanimity as I overlook the ocean-like expanse of water, the ever-changing sky, the light and the mercurial waves.
Sue Leaf was equally mesmerized as a young woman. Newly married, she moved with her husband, Tom, to Ashland, Wisconsin, in the early 1980s. Later, when they moved back to Minnesota for Tom’s work, they decided the South Shore needed to still be part of their lives. In 1989, they bought a cabin near Port Wing, about 50 miles east of Duluth.
In a new collection of essays, “Impermanence,” published in January by the University of Minnesota Press, Leaf blends memoir and history with cultural and environmental studies to produce an extended love letter to her beloved lake. The 250-page book is an easy read, broken down into 22 short chapters that stand alone.
Leaf, a trained zoologist who has taught environmental science, is in a unique position to describe the radical changes to her property she’s witnessed over the years. The sandy beach that existed in 1989 now sometimes totally disappears. Waves continually eat away at a 20-foot cliff overlooking the lake. Part of the reason she and Tom recently built a new cabin was the very real possibility that the old one would — at some point soon — be consumed by the lake.
Leaf conveys the science behind the geology in layman’s terms. She documents instances where human interference has wreaked havoc on shore, namely the mining and logging efforts of years past that have caused permanent changes to the ecosystem. Leaf calls this a “familiar American pattern. We destroy first and rue later.”
As I was reading the book, I was thinking about recent threats to the lake. The ongoing dispute over a copper mine proposed for Minnesota’s Iron Range is tied up in the courts. The project is stalled — for now. Most alarmingly, the travel guide Fodor’s recently added Lake Superior to its “no travel” list, citing environmental concerns caused by humans, such as algae blooms on the western end of the lake and the fact that 150,000 cruise ship passengers visited the region last year.
Despite this depressing reality, Leaf also documents the efforts of people to save the lake. For example, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa fought against a taconite mining project that would have threatened the Ashland area’s Kakagon Sloughs, a rich source of wild rice. The mining company eventually withdrew its plans due to high costs, the company said, but the project could be resurrected at any time.
On the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan, the Black Creek Nature Sanctuary protects 1,500 feet of shoreline. The sanctuary exists because of a generous couple who donated their land to the Michigan Nature Association. The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore is also a feel-good story where people recognized the need to preserve these fragile islands.
I’m always struck by the vast differences between the South Shore and the North Shore — rocky and craggy to the north but sandy and soft to the south. The Apostle Islands and South Shore environment are home to a different way of life and culture than one might find just across the border on the Minnesota side of the lake.
Leaf writes about the point-to-point swimmers who brave the chill of Lake Superior to swim two miles from Bayfield to Madeline Island (this is on my bucket list). Or the “bobbers,” the fishers who plant themselves far out on Lake Superior’s ice, casting about for trout (this is not on my bucket list). Or the skiers, snowshoers and other winter enthusiasts drawn to the region for its massive abundance of lake-effect snow.
This book has a little bit of everything — culture, history, science. I learned so much: how a ship goes through locks; the visions of wild rice that lured Anishinaabe to the region; the boom and bust of copper mining and its effects on South Shore towns.
After reading “Impermanence,” I will treasure my time near the big lake even more. I can only hope that generations after me will have the same opportunities.
Rachael Hanel is the author of 2022’s “Not the Camilla We Knew,” a look at the life of St. Peter native and Symbionese Liberation Army member Camilla Hall, and the 2013 memoir “We’ll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down.” She teaches creative writing at Minnesota State University.