Sault Ste Marie

The city of Sault Ste Marie squats at the southeastern tip of Lake Superior, on a channel that separates the United States from Canada. This particular channel holds significance in that it’s home to a somewhat famous lock system which regulates the fifty foot difference in water level between Lake Superior and Lake Huron, and allows the incredibly massive bulk lake freighters to pass through. The city also holds significance in the fact that it is at the end of Whitefish Bay, which is commonly referred to as the Shipwreck Graveyard, due to the unusual amount of vessels that the treacherous rocks and waters have claimed over the years, including the infamous Edmund Fitzgerald which disappeared into the icy depths in 1975, claiming every crew member aboard.

Each of the five Great Lakes has it’s own personality, one that shapes the ports and cities that rely on it for business and livelihood. I grew up in a small elegant town on Lake Michigan, whose calm beauty attracts a more refined sort of port city. Lake Huron, an hour away on the other side of the state, is a bit more rugged and island littered, and the port cities that line it’s coasts are similar to those of Lake Michigan, but have a slightly cheaper, and more of a casually run-down sort of atmosphere to them. Sault Ste Marie, however, resides with the unforgiving mother of all the other great lakes; Lake Superior.

Try as I might, I can not do justice to the different emotions that these enormous bodies of water invoke. Lake Michigan is clear, and light blue…the color of the sky. The waves at the beaches are small and ripple-like, and meandering ducks are more common than seagulls….but Lake Superior is completely different. The water there is deep deep blue. Scary blue. God-only-knows-what’s-down-there blue, and the waves don’t ripple, but rather chop aggressively against one another. While Lake Michigan invokes tranquility, and a sense of peaceful invitation, Superior just inspires fear and a queer sort of vertigo. I always tremble at the sight of it, with the irrational thought that the lake is going to call together some great force to pick me up and suck me out into the waves. It is this particular atmosphere, hardened by respectful fear and brutal weather, that dominates the ports and shores of the lake…and it is this particular atmosphere that I seek to identify and preserve.

It began to snow as I pulled into town; small, fine snow…the only snow that the incredible winds would permit. I took the last exit before Canada, and found myself weaving through the old industrial section of town; smoke stacks adding some more gray to an already abysmally overcast sky. The streets were ill maintained, and bumpy, and the houses that filled the space between the factories and the rail yards were old, decrepit, and stripped– but still strong, and on their feet. I followed the weathered main drag along the lake and into the old downtown section of the city, which was little more than a few square blocks of run down 19th century brick buildings with faded advertisements still imprinted on the sides of them. Pulling into the first sleazy hospitality joint I saw, The Lock View Motel, I booked myself a room for the night before setting out again on foot to explore. After only a block of progress, I found I had to turn around and fetch my serious winter garb, as the wind tearing off of Lake Superior was far more brutal than I anticipated. The city smelled like a combination of oil, grease, dirt, and ice, and as I strolled I noticed that I was the only person out walking around. The downtown was not without it’s intentional charms, and benches, and so forth, so it seemed a bit strange to me that nobody else was around; not a single merchant, customer, or simple stroller like myself. The sense of isolation and death, made all the more potent by the bitter and merciless northern gale, was enormous. It seemed like almost every storefront window was dusty and abandoned; old hand scrawled 80% Off Going-Out-of-Business Sale signs still clinging (barely) to the insides of the glass. It was like a city clinging a ledge, on the edge of ghost town status…but still the stacks smoked, and the monstrous iron boats made their frequent visits…heralding their approach with foghorns that shook the very foundations of the city. A small life support system for an otherwise deceased town.

What I admire about this place, and what I admire about most places, is the sense of integrity that lingers in the stubborn foundations and faces left behind by suffering old men, long since dead and gone. It’s the knowledge of the fact that what is there is only there because it’s strong enough to withstand nine months a year of frozen landscapes and Superior’s hurricane like winds…and although the lake frightens me, it is an intoxicating and revitalizing fear; one that alleviates the consequential anxieties of the calm and complacent ambiance of my own lake.

Does any one know where the love of God goes
when the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
if they’d put fifteen more miles behind ‘er.
They might have split up or they might have capsized;
they may have broke deep and took water.
And all that remains is the faces and the names
of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

"According to legend, Lake Superior never gives up her dead. This is because of the unusually low temperature of the water, estimated at under 36 °F (2 °C) on average around 1970. Normally bacteria feeding on a sunken decaying body will generate gas inside the body, causing it to float to the surface after a few days. The water in Lake Superior is cold enough year-round to inhibit bacterial growth, and bodies tend to sink and never surface."