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Any Time Is Maritime
For as long as I’ve known, I’ve known about Lake Superior’s
big boats. You cannot grow up in Duluth oblivious to the floating
behemoths that frequent our city - many of our lakeside cities - via
the waters that stretch to the horizon.
Infants in Lake Superior cities, especially Duluth, become aware of their surroundings in an order something like this: my mom, my dad, my nice sister, my teasing brothers, my dog, my Big Lake, my
Big Boats on my Big Lake. Oh yes, and then there’s that metal gate that
goes up and down to let the boats out of the boat corral. (Later we
learn to call it the Aerial Lift Bridge.)
It’s only when you get to the skeptical age of say, 6 years
old, that you realize A) those boats don’t just magically appear, they
cross the water from somewhere; B) there’s no way that big metal boats
can really float on water, and, finally, C) metal airplanes can’t
really fly, either.
It was probably B and C that ultimately led me to this career
and one of the best kept secrets about reporting: It’s fun to interview
people about what they love to do.
 As
for A, well, once you know that those boats come from somewhere, you
start wondering exactly from where. When you discover that some of
those boats are oceangoing ships and actually come from halfway across
the world right to your hometown doorstep, you’re hooked. All Lake
Superiorites, by nature, are boatnerds to some degree.
For this issue, we asked writer (and boatnerd) Al Miller to
look into the current concerns for the Great Lakes maritime industry.
His special State of the Lake report gives an overview of this critical
and vital Lake Superior economic key. It’s also packed with cool facts
and figures about those boats and what they carry.
Maritime activity, of course, is something that we cover all
year long, and even a Lake Superior-capped, aging editor sometimes
still gets to go out to talk to youngsters entering maritime careers
(such as these two cadets in the Great Lakes Maritime Academy). Just a
note - on the academy’s training vessel, State of Michigan, I
not only found cadets but also met up with author-photographer-maritime
historian Wayne Sapulski, whose photographic work has graced our pages.
Wayne, who snapped this shot, happens also to be a graduate of the
academy. It was another example of the small world that is the big Lake
Superior.
There can be no Highway H2O, of course, without the H2O
and you will also find in this issue a special look at what’s up when
the water’s down, as it certainly is right now on the lake. The
prospect of dropping below Lake Superior’s low-water record, perhaps
even by the time you are reading this, raises many concerns from lake
dwellers about those big boats to the smallest of fishes and what
effect a reduction of water may have. Our Managing Editor Bob Berg
tackles that topic with the aid of some experts on the near and far
future.
Finally, I can’t let you wander aimlessly through the pages
of this issue without directing you to one of the truly delightful
annual “events” for us. Within these pages, we unveil the winners of
our 12th annual Lake Superior Photo Contest. From the dear to the deer,
the variety and quality of entries continues to amaze us year after
year. I hope that you have as much fun second-guessing our judges
(Which one would you pick for Grand Prize?) as our judges had making
their original choices. Ultimately, we all get the honor of seeing this
lake - our Big Lake - through other eyes that love the region as much as we do.
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