Mother Superior

In preparing this note, I stumbled across a description of Lake Superior by Julian Ralph, a 19th century reporter whose work was read around the world: “This lake is like a colossal diamond—clear, pure, sparkling, laying like a heaven-lighted gem in a bowl of rich greenery fringed with a lacework of chromatic rocks that take on the most weird and enchanting shapes.”

Had I been Ralph’s editor, I might have asked him to tone down the flowery language. Still, I appreciate the gemstone comparison. Lake Superior is like a diamond. It’s tough and pretty and assumes different appearances depending on how it’s lit and the angle from which it’s viewed.

Mary Hoff’s Young Naturalists story on Superior views gichigami from Minnesota’s rugged North Shore, where the lake stretches out forever, an inland sea in our own backyard. In simple, vivid, decidedly unflowery terms, Hoff does an expert job describing this extraordinary natural resource for a school-age audience. “Vast blue expanses of water, pebbled beaches, rocky shorelines, and bountiful burbling streams all make the big lake a go-to place for people in search of nature’s natural refreshment,” she writes.

Hoff’s primer is the latest in a long line of Superior-themed stories that have appeared in our pages over the decades. One of the first references to the lake appeared in a 1958 article about the invasive sea lamprey’s impacts on trout populations. The story ended with an urgent plea: “It is … essential that haste, tempered with thoroughness mark every effort to control sea lampreys first in Lake Superior and then in Lakes Huron and Michigan.” (Since that article ran, management efforts by U.S. and Canadian natural resource agencies have reduced Great Lakes sea lamprey populations by 90 percent.)

Another story examined rare plants—including bog rosemary and arctic onion—found on Superior’s islands (“Remote Islands in Lake Superior Shelter Unique Plants,” May–June 1987). And more recently, MCV tackled the effects of climate change on the lake. “Superior’s age and immensity make it seem eternal, immovable. But below the frigid waters and along its evergreen shore, a sea change is coming for North America’s largest lake,” wrote Amanda Kueper in her 2019 story “Sea Change.”

What draws the magazine back to Superior again and again? On a practical level, so many plants, animals, and humans depend on the massive lake that there will always be a new story to tell. On a poetic level, its primordial beauty continues to inspire our writers and photographers year after year. Just ask former MCV managing editor Gustave Axelson, whose 2006 story “Lake Superior, Winter Dawn” recounts a winter hike he took with a friend. Like old Julian Ralph, Axelson was attuned to Superior’s jewel-like qualities, noting “the magnificent diamond sculptures the lake carves along its shore.”

Later in the essay, Axelson perfectly captures the quiet worship that the massive water body demands: “We speak in hushed tones. Amid this crystalline palace, it almost seems inappropriate to speak at all.” Amen, Gustave.