Blue Highways: Superior, Wisconsin

Unfolding the Map

We have crossed into Wisconsin, a state with which I am very familiar, as we continue our eastward trek with William Least Heat-Moon through the northern part of the U.S.  We'll breeze through Superior on our way south into America's Dairyland.  To find Superior, look at the map!

Book Quote

"On Superior Street I ate smoked cisco, then crossed the bridge above St. Louis Bay into Superior, Wisconsin, then down broad and empty Belknap Street running from the ore docks past old walk-ups and corner taverns, on to route 35, and out of the city."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 11

Downtown Superior, Wisconsin. Photo by "Thundertubs" and posted at Skyscraperpage.com. Click on photo to go to host page.

Superior, Wisconsin

Wisconsin is special to me for many reasons.  For the first 22 years of my life, I was a California boy.  I rarely left California.  In fact, the only time I was outside of California in that time was in 1979, when my parents decided to take advantage of cheaper prices and bought a cruise to Alaska out of Vancouver, British Columbia, for our family. 

An interesting side note to that trip - when we took the cruise the Soviet Union had just begun to occupy Afghanistan and the ship we were to take, the M.V. Odessa, was a Soviet-flagged cruise ship with a huge hammer and sickle on the smokestack!  As a result, our vacation was not as cool as it was supposed to be, because the U.S. shut off ports and the iconic Glacier Bay to our ship except for the port of Skagway, Alaska.  All we could do was cruise om and out of the Western Canada fjords (which we could do because the ship had side screws allowing it to turn 180 degrees in one place).  I developed a heavy crush on our Russian meal server, Larisa (who kissed me when I left!  My heart still flutters remembering that!).

But I digress.  After college, I joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  I lived there for nine years.  To date, besides California, I haven't lived anywhere else for a longer period of time.  22 years in California, nine years in Wisconsin, seven years (and counting) in New Mexico, six years in Texas, four years in Louisiana.  I anticipate, barring a complete life change, that my years in New Mexico will overtake Wisconsin sometime, but Wisconsin will remain special to me because it was my first break with what I knew.  Wisconsin gave me a chance to discover myself, address issues I never knew I had, provided opportunities for personal growth, and introduced me to new challenges.  Without Wisconsin, I would have never developed the adventure for travel and exploration that I did.  I wouldn't have thought about living anywhere else outside of California if I had not taken that step to live in Milwaukee's inner-city, volunteer in an inner-city school and for unemployed people, and make it my home.  It was a home that was very difficult to leave when I eventually did, and I still look back upon the state with a lot of fondness and wistfulness.

One thing I remember about Wisconsin, and Milwaukee in particular, is the corner tavern.  LHM mentions the corner taverns in Superior in his quote.  I don't know if Superior is like Milwaukee, but in Milwaukee you could live anywhere within the city, it seemed, and be steps away from a corner tavern.  In Wisconsin you'd see Pabst, Schlitz and Old Style signs beckoning you into the smokey environment within.  When I walked into a corner tavern, there was often four or five people at the bar, maybe 2 together and the rest drinking alone.  Sometimes there might be someone playing pool, darts, shuffleboard or some other gaming amusement for the patrons.  A TV might be on in the corner, showing the Bucks, Brewers or Packers, but silent, to make way for music from a jukebox.  Or the place might be silent save for the clink of the glasses.  What was a mystery to me was how these places stayed in business, because if I went back even months later, often the same patrons were there, and nobody else save for the one non-regular guy like me who was just looking to duck in and have a beer.

It didn't matter in the neighborhoods I lived in whether I went out my door and turned right or left.  At the end of any corner was the tavern.  It was a bar, but it was always more depending on what you needed.  It could be a shelter from the weather, a place to bide your time if you needed a place away, a psychotherapist's office if you needed to talk to someone, a place to meet friends, a place to meet potential dates, a place to forget the troubles of the world, or a place to rail about the troubles of the world with perhaps a sympathetic ear.  It was a place for politics, for religion, for love, and sometimes a place for anger and fighting.

Another thing I remember about Wisconsin was how guarded people were about themselves.  You could tell that Northern Europeans were the main early settlers of the state because everyone tended to avoid outbursts of emotion and anger, and were hard to read.  I didn't think about it much while I lived there, but it only made an impression on me when I had lived in Texas and New Orleans for awhile.  Texans are big and boisterous, filling up the space around them because there is so much of it and so much of them.  New Orleanians are outgoing and industrious people with an opinion on everything.  Ask a New Orleanian about the New Orleans Saints, the local professional football team, and you're in a for an hour-long discourse on everything that is good and bad about the team, detailed opinions on what the coach did well or did wrong, and prognostications on what will happen in the rest of the season or next year.

In contrast, we visited Door County, the long thin peninsula that stretches out from Wisconsin into Lake Michigan.  It is a beautiful area, especially in the fall when leaves are turning.  We walked into a shop and were perusing things, and my wife tried to strike up a conversation with the person behind the desk who was wearing a Green Bay Packers jersey top.  Brett Favre, the quarterback at the time, had just set the record for touchdowns thrown in a career.  "Pretty amazing about Bret Favre, huh?" my wife said.  "Yep," the shop owner said.  That's it.  Nothing else.  It doesn't matter whether the issue is something exciting or something deeply personal.  Wisconsinites tend to maintain a flatter aspect about things in general.

Which is why it is always surprising when you hear about major protests taking place in Wisconsin, like we heard of this past summer in the state capital of Madison.  Yet, Wisconsin has a history of political innovation, populism and protest that belies the pastoral images that comes with being "America's Dairyland."

For what they keep under their vests, Wisconsinites are very generous and very giving, but like I learned in Germany (which to me Wisconsin most resembles), it can take a while to develop relationships.  However, some of my best relationships and friendships were forged in Wisconsin.  The state is an integral part of the colorful tapestry of my life and I will always treasure the time spent there and the people I knew there. 

Most importantly, it was in Wisconsin that I met my wife and where we married in 1995.  For all these reasons, I can heartily say On Wisconsin!

Musical Interlude

Another thing I remember about Wisconsin was the awfully dreary winters.  I seem to recall that during the month of January or February, one could go a month or more without seeing the sun, just a gray dark overcoat in the sky above.  Joan Baez sings a song of northern Wisconsin called The River in the Pines where she makes mention of "Wisconsin's dreary clime."  It also references the lumber industry that was so prevalent in that area of the country.  It is not a happy tale.

If you want to know more about Superior

City of Superior
Superior Telegram (newspaper)
SuperiorTrails.com: Superior
University of Wisconsin-Superior
Wikipedia: Superior

Next up: Pattison State Park, Wisconsin

Blue Highways: Duluth, Minnesota

Unfolding the Map

It's our last stop in Minnesota, and after this we'll head into Wisconsin.  It is also, to my knowledge, the only time that LHM stops by Lake Superior.  I'll give a few recollections and thoughts about this vast Great Lake, to me the most mysterious of them all.  If you want to see where Duluth sits on the edge of Lake Superior, the map is waiting for you.

Book Quote

"Downtown Duluth, if you ask me, hangs a little precariously to a volcanic bluff that drops six hundred feet to Lake Superior.  The city revived in cool air that began to move off the blue lake stretching far eastward, finally so blending with sky that a horizon was almost indiscernible.  It was as if Duluth sat on the edge of infinite blueness.  The largest fresh water lake in the world (its volume is considerably greater than all the other Great Lakes combined), Superior is so big it has a three-inch tide."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 11

Downtown Duluth. Photo by J. Belote and hosted at Panoramio. Click on photo to go to host page.

Duluth, Minnesota

Once, a long time ago it seems, I passed through Duluth.  I don't remember much about it except that we ate there in a restaurant underneath what I would label a hill, but which is probably a mountain in that part of the Midwest.  It was a rustic bar and grill, more bar than grill, but the food was good and I think I might have even ordered deep fried cheese curds, which is a delicacy particular to that part of the country.

What I remember most about Duluth are the stories of the horrible winters.  LHM, in his next paragraph after my quote, states factually that Lake Superior often freezes over up to 21 miles out from shore, and that this might thwart the dreams of Duluth to become another Chicago.  It is, however, the most western Atlantic port as ships that ply the Great Lakes from the Atlantic seaboard make their way to Duluth.  It is also out of the harbor that Duluth shares with Superior, Wisconsin that great ore ship of American legend and song, the Edmund Fitzgerald, sailed on its ill fated voyage that ended with Lake Superior claiming the ship as its own.

The Great Lakes have fascinated me since I lived in the Midwest and resided for some years in Milwaukee, on the shores of Lake Michigan.  My first sighting of a Great Lake was when I flew east from California to join the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.  I was going to live in inner-city Milwaukee, but before I went to my posting I was to take part in a retreat in Benton Harbor, Michigan.  I flew United to Chicago, my first trip in a jet, then boarded a little propeller puddle jumper operated by Air Wisconsin (I later learned that their nickname was Scare Wisconsin).  We took off from O'Hare, flew out over the city, and then suddenly over water.  The largest lake I had seen up to that time was Clear Lake, in Northern California.  I had an idea that lakes may be big, but not that big.  So I figured that it would take 10 minutes to fly across Lake Michigan.  A half an hour later, we were still over water.  It was only then that I began to realize the vastness of these lakes.

And then there is Superior.  That lake is most fascinating because it is most mysterious.  The other lakes are huge, but they don't exude the menace that Superior does.  Lakes Erie and Ontario are mostly shallow lakes.  I know less about Lake Huron but it doesn't really capture my imagination.  But Superior is a lake like no other.  It is very deep and for all intents and purposes is like a small ocean.  I have driven along its shores in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and I have even stepped foot into its cold waters and tried to swim.  Everything about it seems different.  If you are in the Upper Peninsula in the summer and swim in Lake Michigan, the water is warm, inviting and friendly.  The beaches are sandy, and the small waves break in soft music.  The color of the water is a light blue or, if the silt has been stirred up, a kind of gray.

Then you go a few miles to the shore of Superior, and there are no beaches.  The bank drops down to a shelf of rock.  I didn't remember any waves.  And the blue that LHM writes about is as deep as you can think.  Along this shore there are many shipwrecks, some of which can still be seen.  Superior seems to suffer your presence, not invite it like the other Great Lakes.  The winters along Superior are said to be bitter and difficult.  If you are on the lake, the storms that whip along it can create ocean-like conditions and dangers.  It is thought that the Edmund Fitzgerald, for instance, was the victim of a series of rogue waves, called Three Sisters, that broke one after another over the ship and overloaded it with water.  It is no ordinary lake that offers conditions like that.

The Gordon Lightfoot song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald has a line which also fascinates me.  "Lake Superior, they said, never gives up its dead, when the gales of November come early."  I wondered what that line meant.  I thought it meant that those caught on Superior in November gales would probably die.  But Wikipedia provides a really interesting fact.  Lake Superior's water temperature below the surface is a constant 39 degrees Fahrenheit.  Normally, bacteria growth in the bodies of drowning victims creates gasses which propel a body to the surface of the water eventually.  But the water temperature of Lake Superior is so cold that bacterial growth is inhibited, and therefore bodies tend to stay at the bottom.  Thus, bodies from Lake Superior shipwrecks are not often recovered.

I am not sure if, knowing how cold and bitter it gets, and how cold and menacing Lake Superior seems, if I would want to live there.  For some reason, it seems that my ability to withstand cold weather and harsh conditions has lessened considerably since I left Wisconsin and let the warm air of the Southern United States soften my hardiness.  Yet it is difficult to deny that Lake Superior has beauty, savage though that beauty may be.  To see it is to never forget it.

Musical Interlude

You know the musical interlude, given the post, has to be The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.  Here it is, with lyrics.

I also found a song, by a band named Father Hennepin, called I Like It in Duluth.  The video is kind of cheesy, but then again, so is the area!

If you want to know more about Duluth

City of Duluth
Duluth Budgeteer News
Duluth Breaking News
Duluth News Tribune (newspaper)
Duluth Seaway Port Authority
Duluth Shipping News
Perfect Duluth Day (blog)
University of Minnesota Duluth
Visit Duluth
Wikipedia: Duluth

Next up: Superior, Wisconsin

Littourati News: Try Out Pinwheel!

In December, a person who stumbled onto Littourati contacted me to ask if I would be willing to become an alpha tester for a new website.  The concept was interesting - the site was founded by a team led by Caterina Fake, who had previously founded Flickr - and it allows you to leave a note about places on Google maps.  You can also post photos.  The site, called Pinwheel, is now online to view and you can find it at Pinwheel.com.  You can sign up to be a beta user if you want.

I'm seeking ways to integrate Pinwheel with some of what I do on Littourati.  I've a great time using the site in the little time that I've had to use it.  Try it out!

Michael Hess

Blue Highways: Jacobson, Minnesota

Unfolding the Map

We stop with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) to skip rocks across the Mississippi.  Rivers are life, rivers are powerful, rivers are death.  Most of all, rivers are real and illusions at the same time.  Read on to find out why.  To find out where we cross the Mississippi this time (our fourth time in this journey), skip on over to the map.

Book Quote

"I came to the Mississippi again at Jacobson and stopped to get off the hot asphalt.  The river was wider here, and it took me three attempts to shy a rock across.  I walked up along the banks.  The Mississippi, not a hundred water miles from its source, already flowed in olive murkiness."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 11

Mississippi River near Jacobson, Minnesota. Photo by David Peterson and hosted at Panoramio. Click on photo to go to host site.

Jacobson, Minnesota

When I was very young, and we used to go to our property on the Noyo River in Northern California, I always wondered why the water looked green.

The river in the summer was small, meandering over rock and sand through redwood forest, with alder and oak trees lining the bank.  In sunlight, the river had an olive green look to it.  The water, depending on the depth, could look a brownish green in the light shade to a deep, dark green in the shade.  The water wasn't murky - in fact it was mostly clear so that rocks and objects on the river bottom could be seen quite easily, of course with a green hue.

It confused me because when I scooped the water out of the river, or got a bucketful, the water was clear like water should be.  But in the river, it clearly didn't look like clear water.  It had color, which gave it an otherness.  I knew it was water, because it splashed and flowed like water should.  But I wasn't quite sure, because it had that color.  It was as if the river were something else entirely.

Of course, my Noyo River introduced me to illusion even though I didn't know it.  Those of you reading will say "duh, Michael, the river bottom had that color and therefore the water looked like the same color.  But at five, or six, or even seven years old I didn't understand that.  All I knew is that water in the river looked different, and that it made a magical transformation into real water once you pulled it out of the river.

In fact, water is a master of illusion.  Put a pencil in a glass of water and watch how the light refracts so that the pencil appears to bend or even be broken.  Watch ocean water go from a bright blue in the midday sun to somber gray in the fog or under clouds, to mirrorlike glassiness on a calm day at sunset.  Which is it?  It's all three.

Water is probably the most powerful and destructive force we have on Earth.  I listen to, and am comforted by, the soft pattern of rain.  Yet that soft patter, if allowed to work for years or decades, will eventually find cracks in my ceiling, and entrances into my walls, and eventually ruin my house.  The mightiest and hardest stone may stand unyielding for eons, but over the millenia it will change and erode because of the constant battering of water.  We happily play in and splash water over each other, and yet water is a party to some of the most destructive occurrences on the planet.  Flooding caused by incessant rain, especially in low lying areas, or storm surges driven ashore by hurricanes, or tsunamis forced up by an ocean floor earthquake.

Look at a river like the Mississippi.  Not here, in Jacobson, Minnesota but farther down in Saint Louis or even New Orleans.  The surface seems to flow along at a slow, steady pace.  We have pictures in our mind, put there through literature, movies and television, of leisurely rafting along its surface.  Yet beneath the surface raging currents boil.  Logs are often sucked down, held under for a long time, and then suddenly come shooting to the surface, propelled by their own bouyancy and the river's forces.  In New Orleans, it is madness to jump into the river.  Many who have done so have disappeared, and only turned up miles downstream when the river decided to release its drowned captive from its cold embrace.

Water, in this way, is like a living thing with a mind of its own.  The Mississippi, until the Army Corps of Engineers dredged, channelled, leveed and locked it, tended to move around like a snake in the grass.  It would cut channels and happily flow by them for years or decades and then, suddenly overnight, break free through some weakness in the banks and cut a new channel.  Sometimes its changes would take whole villages or towns from riverfront to landlocked property overnight.  The mouth of the Mississippi has, throughout its history, moved from the Panhandle of Florida all the way over into Texas.

For example, look at this map picture of the Mississippi at Jacobson.

The map only hints at the wildness of the river.  Sure, the river twists and turns because water finds the most accessible route downhill.  There are some circles and some loops, called oxbow lakes, that don't appear to connect with the river.  But look now at a satellite view.  You can see what the map only hinted at.

This river has moved, a lot, in its past.  Channels have been cut and abandoned, leaving loops unconnected with the river, old channels that are dry, and river passages that end nowhere.  The system looks like a Gordian knot, or intertwining serpents.

The efforts of the Army Corps of Engineers currently keeps the Mississippi in its channel in its navigable length, but this is the elusive power of water and the river.  The maintenance has to be continual.  Water strains against all efforts to contain it.  The bulk of the Mississippi wants to move and twist along its bulk just like its tail twists and turns near its source.  Water may allow itself to be contained for a while, but eventually, water will always win.  All our dams, levees, channels and locks, built to contain and tame the river, will eventually crumble away.  All our efforts to control nature can only be temporary at best.  Water knows us, inside and out.  It is us, and because of this, it will always be more powerful than us.

Musical Interlude

A wonderful song about the Mississippi - or really any large river - written by Roger Miller for the musical Big River, based on the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

If you want to know more about Jacobson

Lakes 'n' Woods: Jacobson
Rootsweb: Jacobson, Aitkin County
Wikipedia: Jacobson

Next up: Duluth, Minnesota

Blue Highways: Whipholt, Minnesota

Unfolding the Map

We whip past Whipholt, on the shore of Leech Lake, but not before we notice the wake robins dotting the aspen woods in this glacial lake country.  What are wake robins?  I have a hint for you, Littourati...they aren't birds.  Also, find out where Whipholt sits by whipping over to the map.

Book Quote

"The highway out of Walker went through Whipholt, past the roads to the Indian towns of Boy River, Federal Dam, and Ball Club.  The land alternated between marsh and aspen woods filled with white blossoms of wake robin."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 11

Plaque marking the spot of the Sugar Point Battle, said to be the last battle in the US and Indian Wars, in Whipholt, Minnesota. Leech Lake, Minnesota's third largest lake, is in the background. Photo located at Waymarking.com. Click on photo to go to host site.Whipholt, Minnesota

I never paid much attention to flowers, other than to notice that they were pretty and often smelled nice.

I don't know why.  I guess I just was interested in other things as a kid.  Flowers were seen as girl-stuff, and I wanted to be into boy-stuff like sports and hunting and jumping my bike off insane ramps and other things boys did.  Of course, eventually I started paying attention to girl-stuff...when I started noticing girls.  Flowers were something girls liked, it seemed, so when I did pay attention to flowers, it was because I wanted to make a girl happy with a flower, or because I was in high school going on prom dates and I had to think about getting my date something nice in the form of a corsage for her dress.  Once in a while, I would notice the large installations of flowers at the few funerals that I attended.

It is only now, in the latter part of my first half century, that I find myself paying more attention to flowers, and other things that involve beauty and color.  I think maybe it was living in Texas for a few years that really made me notice wildflowers.  Lady Bird Johnson had put a lot of support behind an initiative there to beautify the highways by planting wildflowers in medians and on verges, and one could not help but notice the bluebonnets and indian paintbrush on drives through the Hill Country that exploded in color every spring.  My eyes would feast on this floral delight and I never got tired of it.

I also became very fond of orchids.  One flower that I noticed when I was young were tiger lilies that grew on the banks of rivers near the town in which I was raised, and orchids seemed very like them.  To me, they seemed like a cross between another world and ours, a fantastic life form whose geometry and color almost sucked me in.  A neighbor hybridized and grew orchids for shipment around the world, and he showed me his successful experiment in hybridizing tiger lilies with an orchid.  At least, that's what I remember him showing me.  To this day, I often send an orchid when I want to send flowers to someone who means something special.  That the orchid symbolizes love, luxury, beauty and strength, wisdom, and thoughtfulness lends it even more power.  It's name comes from the Greek word for testicle, giving a reproductive and earthy aspect to its symbolism as well.

Later still, cactus flowers caught my attention.  Living in a desert, I barely notice cacti, until in the spring when they burst forth with intensely colorful flowers.  That something of such beauty can come out of something so stingy in its adaptability to dry climates that it hoards water within itself and grows sharp spines to protect itself seems simply wrong.  But every spring, a riot of color breaks out among these thorny, prickly things and proves that even the most hardened bit of life can also have its moments of beauty and glory.

So, it was with interest that I saw LHM refer to wake robins in his post, which he sees after passing Whipholt, a town that one probably would miss if they blinked while passing by.  I didn't know what wake robins are, but discovered that the name is an alternative for trillium, and refers to the fact that the trillium blossoms in the spring about the time the robins come out.  There are many different varieties of trillium, but it appears that the type that LHM must have seen as he drove in this area of Minnesota might have been the Trillium grandiflorum, or the white wake robin.  They appear to be interesting plants, which depend on ants to disperse their seeds.  The name trillium comes from the three leaves which they sport (the number three being very symbolic and a sacred number to some), and this type of trillium is not only the state wildflower of Ohio but it is also the symbol of the province of Ontario.

There is not much I can find about the symbolism of trilliums other than their association with Ohio and Ontario, but they have been utilized for food and folk medicine.  The young leaves can be added to salads.  The root, when prepared properly, has been used as an antiseptic, a diuretic, to treat spasms, and as an anti-diarrheal.  It is also known by the name birthroot because of Native American uses for childbirth and to promote menstruation, and it was considered a sacred female herb.  It also appears to have many other actual and potential uses.

One of my goals, someday, is to have a garden where I have a mix of domestic and wild flowers.  I recently read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and the idea of a wonderful garden, rich with flowers that draw other types of wildlife, appeals to me.  I hope that I can realize that goal someday, and I think that my budding (no pun intended) interest in flowers will help keep that goal in front of me for some time to come.

Musical Interlude

I wanted to find a song about trilliums, and did find the name of a classical piece called The Trillium composed by George Whitefield Chadwick as part of his A Flower Cycle, but I couldn't find an actual recording of the song on the internet.  However, LHM refers to trilliums as wake robins, and I did find a song called Wake Robin performed by jazz musician Bob Acri with Diane Delin, George Mraz, Lew Soloff, Ed Thigpen and Frank Wess.  I don't know if it is named after the flower, but it's a nice jazz tune.

If you want to know more about Whipholt

Sorry, folks.  There really isn't anything on the internet about Whipholt. However, LHM mentions some other "Indian towns" to the north that he didn't visit in his quote, so here's some information on them.

City of Ball Club
City of Federal Dam
Lakes 'n' Woods: Federal Dam
Wikipedia: Ball Club
Wikipedia: Boy River
Wikipedia: Federal Dam
Wikipedia: Leech Lake

Next up: Jacobson, Minnesota