I spent this weekend snowboarding up at Lutsen with Chris and his family. High points: amazing powder, not falling off any lifts, finally linking turns, feeling pretty good about my skills after not going out at all last winter. Low points: the wind on the cliffs this morning shutting down the gondola to Moose Mt, and wonking my knee twice. Knee is unwonked, and I am home and sitting with a heating pad.
This was my first time seeing Lake Superior since I’ve been back in the country. The lake never fails to hold my attention, and as soon as we cleared Duluth, I sat in the back of the car and watched the water. I’ve seen the ocean before, but Superior commands a different kind of respect. Part of this could be due to my dad intoning “The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead when the skies of November turn gloomy.” At some point I realized that the line was from the Gordon Lightfoot song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” but it still rings as a ghost story. The lake is so large, so deep, and so cold.
Stepping outside of the car last night by a gas station on Highway 61, I could hear the lake. The wind was up, and a few octaves lower than the howling was an almost supernatural growl. It wasn’t waves breaking, or anything that sounded like water; it was more like a second kind of wind. I went to bed freaked out, and asked the shopkeeper this morning about the sound. She said that the lake is churning ice, grinding it out against the rocky shoreline.
Of course, I made a polite “Hummm” sound, and made small talk about the snowfall while purchasing a local press book called “Haunted Lake Superior.”
Filed under: Dailys | Tagged: lake superior, snowboarding, winter
