Tammy Brice
Sue Leaf in an author photo and the book cover, which shows waves and pink-blue clouds on Lake Superior.
Sue Leaf examines elements of the south shore of Lake Superior from Superior to Sault Ste. Marie.
The north shore of Lake Superior — from Duluth north to the Canadian border — gets a lot of touristy attention. Minnesota has seven state parks along that stretch of Highway 61, and the Superior Hiking Trail parallels the dramatic, rugged shoreline.
The south shore — from Superior, Wisconsin, east to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan — gives a different vibe. Its shores are often sandier, its ecosystems more varied. There are the Apostle Islands, miles of sandy beach, sailing mecca Bayfield, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, and the Soo Locks, which level out the difference between the great Gitchee Gumee and Lake Huron and create a shipping lane for the big ore boats.
Author Sue Leaf grew up a North Shore devotee. But as a young adult, she and her husband found themselves drawn to the south shore when they tried cycling from Ontonagon, Michigan, to Duluth. Later the couple bought a cabin outside of Port Wing, Wisconsin, on Lake Superior.
The differences between the north and the south shores are both psychological and geological, as Leaf writes in her new collection of essays, Impermanence: Life and Loss on Superior’s South Shore (University of Minnesota Press). “The North Shore’s bedrock is volcanic,” she explains, made of hard igneous rock. The south shore’s origin is more recent, made from Cambrian sandstone, red clay and glacial lake sediment. Hence the sandier beaches and more recreation-friendly lake access along much of the south shore. It’s also a more malleable landscape more susceptible to climate change. Leaf has witnessed many changes since her family bought the cottage in Port Wing; at first they thought it was too far back from the lake. Now they fear that beach erosion means it may fall into Lake Superior “in our lifetimes.”
Impermanence is a frequent theme in the 23 essays that make up the collection, sometimes in evident ways — like the erosion of a large dune on Leaf’s property, or the vanishing of copper mining on the Keweenaw Peninsula — and sometimes in less obvious ways, like the natural succession from logged forest to aspen to pine.
Leaf, a zoologist by training, incorporates the personal lightly; there are no overly revealing epiphanies — at most, tales of canoeing adventures through Hemingway country in the UP. More often she tackles subjects like a journalist. She paddles the Kakagon Sloughs with Mike Wiggins of the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa discussing the tribe’s long relationship with the waterway and talks wild rice with the tribe’s April Stone. She explores Frog Bay, the first Tribal National Park in the U.S., with Lisa Melberg, whose family cabin was once on that same land. After she discovers Black Creek Nature Sanctuary, a hidden gem outside Calumet, Michigan, she tracks down Ruth Sabich, the woman responsible for creating the sanctuary, and interviews the 95-year-old about its preservation.
The most charming essay is “The Lake Breeze Hotel,” which details the romantic evolution of an early 20th century tourist “tearoom” in Eagle Harbor, Michigan, through its development as a full-fledged resort, to its status today — a motel that’s open for a limited time only each summer, catering mostly to regulars who’ve been visiting there for years.
Fans of the region — newbies and veteran explorers alike — should find visiting these sites through Leaf’s eyes joyous as well as educational. But the everpresent signs of climate change make Impermanence both a celebration and an elegy.
Great Lakes, Great Read is a new communal reading project focusing on the Great Lakes sponsored by Wisconsin Water Library at UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Library Association. The project, new in 2024, will announce this year’s titles (one for children, one for adults) on Earth Day, April 22. Nominations for books can be made at askwater@aqua.wisc.edu.
