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Went to the North Shore
Aug. 31st, 2023 07:08 pmWhen people in Minnesota say we are going to the north shore, we mean that stretch of land between Duluth, MN, and Thunder Bay, Ontario, along the north-western shore of Lake Superior.
This is the land the glaciers made.
It is granite and iron, carved by temporarily-misplaced oceans as they clawed their way south across the continent and then were dragged, kicking and screaming, back to the liquid state they occupy today. These formerly-known-as-oceans, the glaciers, sunk holes so deep, so impossibly wide, that Duluth -- DULUTH, of all fucking places -- is the farthest-inland ocean port in the world.
Duluth, MN, is an ocean port because ocean-going vessels can dock there. A cargo barge, loaded with timber and iron, can and does float out of Duluth and traverse the entire eastern half of the continent to reach the Atlantic.
That's what the water gave us.
It is impossible to stand on the shore of Gitchi-Gami and not be aware of the tens of thousands of years, the hundreds of thousands of humans, who stood on those immoveable rocks and met the lethal vastness of the Great Big Sea. We estimate that over 550 ships rest on the bottom of the lake, but that's only since us colonizers began keeping score.
I spent my week up at the north shore.
First, people lived there minding their own business.
Then commerce came, trading for furs.
Then colonialism came, looking for trees, and the logging industry brought Europeans in droves. The trees were floated out in the rivers and along the shoreline of Gitchi-Gami. In winter horse-drawn sledges would pull up and down the ice, using the water as a road. Original ice road truckers. Once at the coast, ships would carry the timber to mills in Chicago and other ports.
Then came the mines. Iron, iron ore, taconite - the mines and the railways marched hand-in-hand. The ore traveled by train to the ports, and from Duluth the ore of the Iron Range floated across the globe.
Northern Minnesota was once the frontier, a land worth nothing but what colonizers could extract from it. Fur and timber and ore, and now the north shore has done what Monteverde, Costa Rica, was doing in the 90s when I visited. It's turned to ecotourism. Voyageur National Park is there, the state Boundary Waters parks are there, it's a place for fishing and hiking and camping, a place that still makes its living off of being used briefly and left behind.
But nothing changes the sound of the water gently lapping the overwhelming stone cliffs. Nothing changes the smell of spruce and pine. Nothing changes the late-summer asters growing wild along the gravel roads.
The north shore is the land the water left behind.
This is the land the glaciers made.
It is granite and iron, carved by temporarily-misplaced oceans as they clawed their way south across the continent and then were dragged, kicking and screaming, back to the liquid state they occupy today. These formerly-known-as-oceans, the glaciers, sunk holes so deep, so impossibly wide, that Duluth -- DULUTH, of all fucking places -- is the farthest-inland ocean port in the world.
Duluth, MN, is an ocean port because ocean-going vessels can dock there. A cargo barge, loaded with timber and iron, can and does float out of Duluth and traverse the entire eastern half of the continent to reach the Atlantic.
That's what the water gave us.
It is impossible to stand on the shore of Gitchi-Gami and not be aware of the tens of thousands of years, the hundreds of thousands of humans, who stood on those immoveable rocks and met the lethal vastness of the Great Big Sea. We estimate that over 550 ships rest on the bottom of the lake, but that's only since us colonizers began keeping score.
I spent my week up at the north shore.
First, people lived there minding their own business.
Then commerce came, trading for furs.
Then colonialism came, looking for trees, and the logging industry brought Europeans in droves. The trees were floated out in the rivers and along the shoreline of Gitchi-Gami. In winter horse-drawn sledges would pull up and down the ice, using the water as a road. Original ice road truckers. Once at the coast, ships would carry the timber to mills in Chicago and other ports.
Then came the mines. Iron, iron ore, taconite - the mines and the railways marched hand-in-hand. The ore traveled by train to the ports, and from Duluth the ore of the Iron Range floated across the globe.
Northern Minnesota was once the frontier, a land worth nothing but what colonizers could extract from it. Fur and timber and ore, and now the north shore has done what Monteverde, Costa Rica, was doing in the 90s when I visited. It's turned to ecotourism. Voyageur National Park is there, the state Boundary Waters parks are there, it's a place for fishing and hiking and camping, a place that still makes its living off of being used briefly and left behind.
But nothing changes the sound of the water gently lapping the overwhelming stone cliffs. Nothing changes the smell of spruce and pine. Nothing changes the late-summer asters growing wild along the gravel roads.
The north shore is the land the water left behind.