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Wintering Over on Isle Royale
 No,
I’ve never done it. But after a lifetime of listening to the stories of
those who did, I’ve concluded it is an experience that I wish I’d had …
but not one I want to go through.
Isle Royale is an island, 45 miles long, in the middle of
Lake Superior and isolated from Canada, the nearest mainland, by 15
miles of open water. In winter, it is a desolate place with only a few
animals who probably wish they were somewhere else. It is almost
inaccessible in winter.
With very few exceptions, the island was a summer place to
visit, from pre-historic times until now. Some woodland Indians years
ago stayed over to hunt, trap and to be on hand for sugar making in the
spring. Miners worked all winter in the late 1800s, as did a few
loggers later on.
 The
stories that my family and friends tell are about the commercial
fishermen who wintered over during the depression years of the ’20s and
’30s when living on the island was cheaper than living on the mainland.
Pete Edisen was one of the few winter residents who spent
several winters at Rock Harbor on the northeast end of the island. “The
finest thing a man can do,” Pete said, “is to winter over on Isle
Royale.”
There are those who would disagree.
To stay on in winter, Pete and his wife, Laura, brought half
a cow, a 100-pound pig (live, I presume), 25 pounds of pork chops and
peaches and pears by the case. Other staples needed to last the winter
would include smoked hams, eggs, flour and possibly hundreds of pounds
of sugar, if you were to make home brew. And, of course, moose and fish.
Pete, who fished at Rock Harbor from 1916 to 1978, was a great storyteller, as were many of his neighbors.
“I remember one time,” recalled Pete, “I was skating to visit
the caretaker at Rock Harbor Lodge, 6-1/2 miles down the harbor. There
was a moose that was trying to cross over from Mott Island to the
mainland. He figured if I could go that fast on glare ice that he’d try
it, too. By gosh, when he got out on that slick surface, his feet went
out and his chin hit the ice.”
“Pete Edisen Showing Off” by Howard Sivertson
Around the point from Pete’s fishing shack, my Aunt Myrtle
and Uncle Milford Johnson shared living quarters with Milford’s brother
Arnold and Arnold’s wife, Olga, in the old abandoned Rock Harbor
lighthouse. Arnold and Olga lived on the second floor while Milford and
Myrtle lived on the first floor. Arnold made beer on the second floor,
which sometimes exploded, raining beer on Milford on the first floor.
The last mail, freight and passenger boat left the island in
late November each year, leaving winter residents totally isolated
until the following April. Myrtle found out she was pregnant with her
first child shortly after the boat left one winter. Luckily, she made
it back to the mainland in the spring to give birth to Milford Junior.
When asked the question, “What did you do on the island all
winter to pass the time?” Milford said, “We fished until the bay froze
over, hunted moose, trapped coyotes, cut wood and cut wood and cut
wood.”
None of the island buildings was insulated, so the only place
barely warm was a 2-foot area around the woodstove. They dressed in all
their winter clothes during the day and put more on to go to bed. They
watched the long process of ice forming, then breaking up and forming
again until mid-February when it finally froze as far as one could see.
Finally, too, it became silent. The constant roar of the
waves crushing and piling ice gave way to dead silence. Except for a
few ravens croaking, moose grunting and handsaws swishing, solitude
settled in. Big time.
Before the lake froze solid, winterers used their fish boats
to go visiting neighbors 10 to 15 miles away. Skadbergs, Olsons,
Seglems and Bensons from Siscowet Bay and the Holgar Johnsons,
Simonsons and Savages from Chippewa Harbor, and the Johnsons, Edisens,
Bangsunds and others from Rock Harbor bent a special effort to see each
other once or twice each winter. After the lake froze, they snowshoed
to the neighbors.
The Simonsons who I mentioned above were not a commercial
fishing family, as were most of the others. Dorothy Simonson, a school
teacher of the Holgar Johnson children in 1932-33, recorded her
experiences in her diary, now in book form, in The Diary of an Isle Royale School Teacher, published by the Isle Royale Natural History Association.
Dorothy’s impression on arriving at Chippewa Harbor in
September 1932 was typically romantic as she described in poetic terms
her first view of the island: “The clear turquoise water sparkling in
the autumn sun … sheer rocky cliffs peopled with slim spires of
evergreens. This is truly Isle Royale the beautiful.”
After the last steamship left in November and she began to
realize the consequences of total isolation, her attitude changed
considerably.
She recorded days of minus-40-degree temperatures. Snow 10
feet deep. Moose hanging around her little school house. Coyotes
howling at night. And more …
Nov. 2: “Hauling wood and stoking that devilish stove!
Isle Royale and its romance, blah! It’s a hunk of mud. My feet are like
ice. My fingers frozen stiff and my hands look like a coal heaver’s.
Gee, I get disgusted!”
Thanksgiving: “White fish and moose for Thanksgiving. Sewed and gabbed and listened to football games on the radio.”
Christmas: “Went to Malone Island to get Ben Benson for Christmas dinner.” (About a 20-mile round trip.)
March 18: “Ice is piled 4 feet thick in harbor.”
April 5: “Still snowing! At least 3 feet fell
yesterday. Heavy seas outside have filled the harbor with ice. We’re
out of kerosene so can’t read. Almost out of gasoline, butter, coffee
and canned goods. I’m sick of moose meat and potatoes. The compressed
yeast is gone and the other has soured.”
Although she complained about her situation throughout the
bitter winter, she did have some good times listening to her radio and
her music programs, comedies, news and football and enjoying the
Johnson family and a few wild adventures visiting neighbors in boats
and on snowshoes.
“It is hard to imagine how one winter could have been so hard yet so rewarding,” her son, Bob, wrote about his experience.
The magic of Isle Royale - even in winter - gets under one’s skin in spite of everything.
Each fall I left Isle Royale to attend school in Duluth,
Minnesota, where from my cozy house I’d imagine exciting times,
wintering on Isle Royale: Going to the outhouse on snowshoes, chasing
away the moose on the path, catching fish in the sparkling turquoise water under the sheer rocky cliffs peopled with slim spires of evergreens, etc.
How romantic.
How poetic.
But as I already said, I’ve never experienced the reality of wintering over on Isle Royale.
This issue’s “Journal” writer:
Howard “Bud” Sivertson is from one branch of the legendary
Sivertson fishing family of western Lake Superior, although the
artist-author-raconteur never got over his seasickness enough to take
on that role. He has a series of books that tell the history of the
lake region in words and paintings. His books, published or distributed
by the publishers of this magazine, are Once Upon an Isle, Illustrated Voyageur, Tales of the Old North Shore and Schooners, Skiffs & Steamships.
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