The Rejuvenating Powers of Superior Lake

First off my daughter calls it Superior Lake, not Lake Superior and I love it.
Second, for six summers the family and I have been getting up to Lake Superior. Usually about three nights. A stop in Duluth. Maybe a stop at the Delta Diner (get the pancakes with the jalapenos). But the destination is Bayfield. We stay right in town. We hit the ferry to Madeline Island maybe once, maybe twice. There are two beaches we like in town. One is called the Ferry Beach. One is called the Edge of Town Beach. Swimming in Lake Superior is a very physical experience. You might be giving me the same face as my wife when I say that. . .”obviously it’s a physical experience you jackass, you are doing it physically”. What I mean is that it is physically impactful. I can feel it in my skin, I can feel it deep in my body. And it’s not purely physical, it’s emotional as well. When I am in Lake Superior I feel like I am stepping into something more connected to the Earth, more deeply of this world than the majority of things I touch and feel. On top of that, I get to swim in Lake Superior one weekend a year. It’s a chance for a snapshot with my soul, with my body, with my family, with my wife. This year felt magical. I feel like the therapy I’ve been deeply involved in (couples and one on one) has helped change my character. I love myself more easily, I forgive myself more easily, I am less of an asshole* to my wife during hard times, I am more gentle with my children. It’s a beautiful thing to witness, it’s slow and it’s not every transformation I wanted to see. Some of the things I struggle with in my life are in my estimation here to stay for the long haul. But it’s about managing them, interrogating them and also just identifying them, having a word for them, having a space to understand these things as a part of me. And as that cold lake water is surrounding my body, so still, so frigid, so powerful, I feel strong, I feel proud, I feel loved and I love the world back.

Night one I am jonesing to get to the beach. It’s cold, but the lake has a draw where I want to get to it as many times as I can. Me and my eldest go to the water and tip toe in the water but it is just painfully cold. Slowly I convince myself to get all the way in. The nuts, the belly button, the nipples, they are all stages of good pain. I’m reminding immediately of how powerfully cold the water can be. Sadie focuses mainly on the sand situation and a rando momma and kid help build her up into a sand mermaid. Her excitement, her curiosity, her joy it’s all beautiful. The mom we are hanging with is smoking cigarettes and my daughter is always just so confused by that process. I don’t even know if kid’s her age will go through a smoking phase. I did. But we are thirty years apart. It’s beautiful to think of her never smoking. Maybe she’ll make a different decision, but she seems legit just confused by it.

On the first morning me and the daughters wake up earlier than Rachel, but still later than usual. One of the best things about a vacation for young parents is the return to BREAKFAST OUT. It just isn’t really sensible or sustainable in regular life. It’s expensive and the real pain in the ass is you still have to have breakfast at home before you leave because kids can’t handle a twenty-five minute wait unexpectedly. Let’s be honest, neither can Rachel. So I only eat breakfast out on weekdays with friends or business associates. But a breakfast out on vacation is. . .magical great easy. For the first morning me and the girls decide to go to Gruenke’s across the street. We arrive at 6:52am and the restaurant doesn’t open til seven. I love the about to open energy. I can see there are workers in there getting ready for the day. I am not the asshole who will knock on the door at 7:01. I’ve worked just enough “open up the shop” jobs in my life to know that me getting in there before they are ready is only slowing down my breakfast. So we play on the grassy area in front of the restaurant. I am playing tag in flip flops desperately nervous I am going to twist an ankle. As we approach the restaurant my three year old elects to vomit on the stairs leading up to the restaurant. This is one of those “not to worry and not too gross” vominos, just a lot of snot to be gross and honest with you. We walk her back to the two bedroom rental we have and Rachel watches after her. The vomit toddler is feeling fine. Me and the six year old head back with paper towel to clean up the throw up and to build up an appetite for BREAKFAST. I love Gruenke’s. They’ve got record sleeves stapled up all over the ceiling. Sadie notices the cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter” out of the hundred fifty or so we can see. “Daddy, look at that man pointing his hand next to the woman”. I just can’t bring myself to dive into the complicated discussion of the fact that Joni “One of My All Time Favorites” Mitchell sported blackface for the cover of that album. Maybe next summer we’ll get into it. We talk about serious stuff, and we discuss race. But I don’t know if I’m ready to explain what is wrong about a white woman coloring her face to appear black this morning. The speaker is playing some kind of Sirius Rock Station with a lot of Beatles in the mix. Anytime they come on it’s clear that it’s only the right channel located in our dining area. We are getting served all kinds of George Harrison guitar and John Lennon vocals. I imagine some other room where they are only getting Paul and Ringo. What a treat. But the music is enjoyable and the food is great. An older gentleman sits next to us and tells us that Jimmy Buffett died. We agree that the man created an empire but neither of us are big time parrotheads. He says there’s a record of Jimmy’s up on the wall. There’s not. We talk about the area, he recommends a walking path in Ashland. A young waitress comes in to get some breakfast before her shift. 10th grade. First day of class was on Friday. She gets the omelette and I can’t hear what’s inside of it. Our server is named Corey. We had him as a server last year. He works during the year at Kwik Trip and then picks this up for the summer. I told him that my wife and I just joined the loyalty program at Kwik Trip. He could give a shit. I could give a shit. Nobody gives a shit. But it’s classic Sean to bring it up. There is a wall in Gruenke’s devoted to a single visit that JFK Jr. made to Bayfield. Yes he ate at Gruenke’s. He even rented a room. Yes he tipped. Yes the lady that owned it back then still owns it. I miss reading the old newspaper article format that was basically “a famous person did something in our little ass town”. Classic, the details. You always get what they ordered, and you get the server with the single quote of something like “he asked for an extra glass of ice”. It’s all so dumb and great. The heartfelt coverage of the non-viral, local story is sorely missing in our modern era.

Day one we get out to Madeline Island. Riding on a ferry is a beautiful thing, and everywhere I’ve taken them they all feel kind of the same. The water is different, the views are different. But it’s a combination of working people, tourist people and commerce related travel. A plumbers truck next to a Harley Davidson next to a $1500 mountain bike. Everyone making their way to this island that we adore. We bring our car out, we want to get to the State Park, which we’ve never been to before. The water is beautiful. This is my first real long swim of the trip and it doesn’t feel nice, it feels epic. The water stays cold. It gets better, but it doesn’t get tolerable. But there’s something epic about that. We head back into town to go to the restaurant we both hate. But guess what, we hate it cause it’s full and cause ordering is stressful. But if you walk in there prepped, and the kids have something to do, the food is actually good. The food is actually legit good ass basket food. Even if you’ve never heard the term “basket food” you know exactly what I mean. I had a black bean burger with onion rings. Onion rings are amazing. And god bless a black bean burger. I don’t need my veggie burger to bleed. I don’t need it to taste just like beef. That’s great technology, it’s important. But I’ve been rocking veggie burgers long before they were impossible.
We went back to the State Park after lunch and found an amazing part of Lake Superior. I can’t tell you why but I have millionaire feet. My feet can't stand the rocks in the lake. I can’t handle it. I handle a little of it, but I really struggle, it hurts bad. But my sweet daughter saw a spot with no rocks when we were out on the big boardwalk walk and it was just magical. Hot sun, frigid lake, quiet, beautiful, epic. Lingering out there. Loving life. Back to town, one margarita at the world’s greatest bar, Tom’s Burned Down Cafe. And in the same way that I communicate with Lake Superior every summer, taking some kind of inventory of myself in those cold waters, I do a version of that at Tom’s. How do I relate to the servers? To the customers? Who do I feel connected to? What are the new stickers, what are the vibes? This year both of my visits were rushed. Now you might say that if your wife watches two kids while you get to suck down a SINGLE MARGARITA you should be thankful. And indeed I am thankful for that. But you have to admit that you get the feeling for the bar on maybe that second drink. You start to recognize the voices, understand the playlist, use the bathroom, ask the bartender a stupid question, notice something you hadn’t noticed before. I didn’t get quite there, but regardless, it was so nice to be at this bar I have such warm feelings about.
We catch the ferry back and we make the strong executive decision to just pick up pizza and to not try to pull of a whole dinner out situation. Sometimes you are just aware that the universe would be better if you and your family stayed home and kept it all inside and that’s exactly what we did. Good pizza, frankly unnecessarily good pizza. Also, my family doesn’t eat pork at our own home and that sort of has led us to not eat much pork elsewhere. And that lets me embrace one of my favorite pizza toppings: hamburger. Not meatball, not sausage. . .hamburger. I don’t know, I just dig it. Hamburger, green pepper. That’s a good dish. Sausage can be a lot. Pepperoni is great, but again, we aren’t going to be bringing any pepperoni home. I bought a six pack of Finland’s national malted beverage, Long Drink. Why this shit has not caught on in the US is one of history’s mysteries.

We still had enough gas in the tank for me and my oldest to get a little extra night swim and we went out to our favorite beach, the Edge of Town beach. It’s so wonderful. There’s something very industrial about it. It’s around a number of boat yards and it feels like a boat on a working lake. Which of course, is what it is. It’s wonderful. The water is cold but it’s been hot all day and the water retains that heat. I’m swimming, I’m overjoyed. My daughter is in her own world shaping sand, trying projects. But we are in our own worlds together and it’s a quiet magic I can’t duplicate with the larger family unit. But just me and her, some silence, some peace, the great feelings that come with that. A walk home after dusk, asking and answering questions, exploring things briefly. It’s one of my favorite moments of the trip, I’ve already decided that.

The next morning the kids stage a strong mutiny and say they want to “explore Bayfield” and don’t want to go back to Madeline Island. You know what? Fine! I love Bayfield and the best vacations are not about sticking blindly to a plan. We explored Bayfield. We walked to a playground up away from the Lake. It was beautiful. There was a swing that was sturdy and wide enough for me to swing on and I was reminded what a beautiful action it is to move your body in a swing. Exhausting, but beautiful. We ran into a mom from North Carolina who had bought land up in the area for the climate crisis. I didn’t realize people are doing that. Or rather, I didn’t realize people who rented Honda CRVs and didn’t appear to be bajillionaires are doing that. Okay, so everyone is going to come to Lake Superior and make it an even more impossible spot to live in if you aren’t loaded with money. We’re fucked. The lady was nice. She found some basil and put it into the water her kid was drinking. That sounds good, have to try it. We eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and carrots with dip next to a fountain and it’s some of the best food I’ve had. Food is sometimes all about location.

We did end up going to Madeline Island that afternoon and it was a special one as a trip to Madeline Island always is. We didn’t bring the car, so no easy way to get to the parks. But we went to the town beach. I carried our three year old multiple blocks to get her there cause she wasn’t tolerating the stroller. That was hot as hell, so by the time we actually got to the water, it felt just amazing. It was a hot day, the water was easy to get into and it was easy to stay there. Just playing and laughing with the kids. Exploring, swimming, laughing. I am communing with the water and with my family. I am communing with who I was one year ago, two years ago all the way back to when we started coming here. If things go as planned I will spend one weekend of every year of my life here, as me and my family age and change and evolve. Superior Lake our aquatic journal, taking our stories, and so many other stories, and keeping them cold until we get the next round.

*I am still often quite an asshole.