It is easy in a place like this, if there even is another place like this, to get swept away by the bigness of everything. The overwhelming scale and power. It is easy to see the vast power of Lake Superior’s fury, calmness, and captivating movement. The lake doesn’t care about you one way or another. I for one, enjoy knowing I am small and insignificant. This place does not need me. It would take but a few years for all the trails to be swallowed up by the creeping pines and swamps. It is a privilege to get to be in such a place. Technology both makes the world small and separates us, for all its promises of bringing us together. Looking something up gives a false sense of understanding a place. Can you know something without experiencing it? Yes, this knowledge can add to an understanding, appreciation, history, possible future. But it does not tell of what a place truly is. The shadow of a canoe at the bottom of impossibly clear aquamarine water. The crash of powerful waves on black weathered rock. The stare of a moose to whom you seem no more than a passing curiosity.

I feel a connection to the past in a place like this. Distance takes on an incredibly different meaning when it must be covered under your own power. Experiencing just a small fraction of a place takes all day with significant effort. A distance that takes an hour by car or six by ferry may take six days to cover on foot. We all have something in common here. Conversations with a stranger that never would have happened as we attempt to courteously avoid each other in daily life may happen here with ease….even for an introvert like me….as we all have something in common here. Something drew us all to this place. We are all seeking something that gets harder and harder to find. As the tentacles of connectivity reach ever further we have to reach further to escape, for a few days or weeks. To get away from those consuming things that seem to matter so much that actually matter so little. To just be with the earth. To matter a little less. To be less needed by others and more by yourself. To know you need much less than you think you do. To appreciate the challenge of human history and the unnoticed bravery that was life in the past. There are people who have returned here many times. I hope to someday be among them.