 Look
at it. The immense, expectant calm that usually rides on its endless watery
blue plain makes Lake Superior great.
But storms make the lake magnificent.
When Lake Superior awakens to thrash and bend its back against
the bonds of its shores, you witness a true “force of nature.”
How to describe the lake’s frequent winter changes from infinity
to immediacy, from that far-horizon feeling of forever to the pounding
reality of the here and the now?
Most storms start in small splashes against the shore. Soon,
with rising winds and waters churned to a gun gray-brown, the lake begins
to heave towering waves of power against the edge of its resistance. The
usual steady lapping crescendos to a leonine roar - the resonance known
to stop a big cat’s prey in its tracks. But this is a hundred times magnified,
without pause and unending. Even those of us who live beside the lake,
who accept it as horizon, cannot ignore it. Again and again it draws our
eyes and our imaginations, powerless spectators of this timeless energy.
Some declare such displays to be the angry moods of the Great
Lake. If I rode the tempestuous lake on the deck of a suddenly diminished
1,000-footer, perhaps it would feel like anger and it would reignite an
ancient fear within me. Lost souls perished below me, I would remember.
And then, made a believer by its awful magnificence, I would remember to
pray: Oh Lord, thy sea is so large and my boat is so small.
Here, though, from my foothold on the land I don’t see rage
… only raging. The magic - the mystique - in a Lake Superior storm is that
the lake is not angry. Stand beside it as long as you’re able, buffeted
by its steely breath and knifed by the icy spray that saturates the air
around it. Despite its strength, you’ll discover that this Water Being
harbors no hate (although one can imagine its intolerance for those who
disrespect it). This is Kitchi Gami - the awesomely Great Water spawned
by Kitchi Manitou, the awesomely Great Spirit.
Still the storm continues. Rippling sinews of waves grab
high onto cliffs or far into gentler slopes. Will the lake muscle its way
beyond the shores? Freed from its basin, it is said, Lake Superior could
swallow all of North and South America under a foot of water. During storms,
a snowy mist obscures all, including the lake’s intentions.
The vitality of our winter storms remind us that the 10,000-year-old
lake, ancient if measured by our lives, is but a young upstart if measured
by the billion-year-old rocks that restrain it. It reminds us, too, that
our angers, our conflicts are puny beside a warring water. Even the rocks
will wear away.
By tomorrow, or by two tomorrows, calm will return. By spring,
the progression of storm upon storm winds down. Yet those of us who have
seen the lake’s winter power know that the endless blue plain of water
capped with an infinite horizon simply masks with calm the inevitable,
incredible, invincible storms that distinguish Lake Superior.
You don’t need a compass to know the true direction of this
lake. Just look at it.
Konnie LeMay
Editor
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