Last Days of Spring Break

Last day in Duluth, and the weather couldn't be better! In the forties with sheets of rain and huge winds! Loving it!!!

...when the winds of November come early (in April)...

Sherry is bundled up and staring moodily, probably because she's had a hard morning in the hot tub. It's placed in the open air on the roof of the hotel, and with the bitter winds, the water has to be actually hot, which it wasn't, plus people at a HUD convention in the next room were staring.

Surfing bird:
And the trashmen. Note the nasty beer cans in amongst the lake litter. Why can't people JUST PICK UP AFTER THEMSELVES? Sher and I usually bring a plastic bag along for just such occurrences, but today we forgot.

There's a thriving surf scene in Duluth - today a surfer waits hopefully for the wild waves (note preceding video) to get a little more rideable.

Get your (almost) live 2 minute Superior wave experience here! (Here's what the surfers are worried about.)

Now we are leaving the hills and cliffs of Duluth, sadly. I love the ocean, easily reachable from where I live in Brooklyn, in fact, Kingsborough where I teach is on the ocean, but there is something about Lake Superior impossible to find anywhere else. The clarity of the water, the moods from absolute stillness where the horizon and sky merge as one, to what we see today...the colors, the refractive clearness of the air - what's a little bad weather now and then? Okay, a lot of bad weather, long, cold winters, ice on the steep streets, interminably slow springs...but then there are those three days of beautiful summer weather! Come on!

I don't think of this as bad weather, to paraphrase Tyra Banks: it's fierce. I grew up here, it's in my blood.

On through the saturated fields and woods of North Central Wisconsin:
I've never seen such a wet spring, all the land in the Midwest full up with water, flooding everywhere. The farmers are no doubt getting a little frantic to get on their John Deeres and Allis Chalmers and get out into the fields. Well I remember my farming days of mud and manure and constant worry over the next natural (or otherwise) disaster. Will the cows get hit by lightning? Will it rain on our hay? Will the tractor fall apart? All these things of course did happen. And so many, many more...Even my brother's normally dry back yard is currently a wetland.
Back on the plane, rising over the city they call the Mini-Apple, here seen in the mist:and home again, home again where the weather is still gloomy and wet.

Here is the Big One, lurking moodily on the horizon:

And through a scrim of spring trees:

I've gone from bridge to bridge, Duluth Aerial with its ups and downs...

And the one in Brooklyn, for sale...

Lake Superior Vision Quest

We leave the placid shores of Lake Minnetonka

for the shining big sea water, Gichigami. (Kitchee Gummi?)
Our destination, Duluth, is a gem of a city nestled into the cliffs of the north shore of Lake Superior, on the far western tip of the Great Lakes.
Duluth is an industrial harbor, servicing mining and grain corporations. Taconite iron ore pellets and wheat abound. Big water, big boats, big machines.
The mixture of natural beauty and industry in Duluth has always seemed oddly magical to me. Minimalist sculpture in landscape. I always think that more R&D should be done with this combination, giving nature a chance to work on some of the problems created by industry instead of just being destroyed.The first part of our vision quest is to visit my father's grave - it is the 6th anniversary of his death.
The day he was buried was bitterly cold with icy snow flurries, but today the weather is warm and benevolent - unusual for April in Duluth.He is buried next to my brother Mark who died at the age of five from an inoperable brain tumor. I was three at the time, and my sister Sherry was born soon after his death. Yellow roses were Gordie's favorite flower. The day he died Shirley, Sherry and Dan were in his hospital room as the rising sun moved slowly up his white-sheeted body, making him glow gold as his soul flew away. I will always be sad that I missed these last moments by just a few hours.Next we drive to Canal Park to our hotel - here is our first view of the famous Aerial Bridge:Finally!!! Ahhh, a sigh of huge relief and joy. The air, the water, the light! The sun! The warm land breezes braiding into the cooler winds off the lake!Sherry and I walk the shores of Park Point, a kind of barrier penisula nearly six miles long that divides the lake from the bay, then take a break and enjoy our driftwood cigars.

Beach creatures abound. Sherry wants this particularly beautiful piece of driftwood for her birthday. Where is Brett when you need him? Or maybe several Bretts? Here is Sherry skipping a rock with excellent form:

The water is no more than 35 degrees F., a bare - brrrr! - three degrees above freezing. And that's about where it will stay until August or so, barring the odd southerly wind blowing warmer water from the south shore this way. That happened one year, bringing people down to the lake for the unusual occurrence of swimmable water, and several people had to be rescued by surfers with fins and boards after being caught in rip currents.One young man actually did drown. It was one of those sad small-world events as he happened to be the grandson of my godmother Elizabeth, at the lake with his fellow house-mates from their home for the developmentally disabled. No life guards on duty because there's not usually a lot of swimming in this part of the lake - except for the hardy few, it's too cold! This is how Duluth keeps the riff-raff out - were the weather better and water warmer, it would be as crowded as the Mediterranean. I put my feet into the crystal clear water with rubber boots on and the cold goes into my bones. We see a little boy about two years old sitting and playing in the tiny waves, his bare feet and legs beet red. There are numerous young adults chatting on the sand and I am wondering - should I say something? Do they not understand HOW COLD THIS WATER IS? - when the baby pushes himself up and hobbles red-legged up the sand to his parents.On the way back we go through the Aerial Bridge in the sunset, then eat dinner at the fabulous Lake Cafe in Canal Park - Sherry has liver and onions which she loves in spite of my gagging. Here she tries to cover it up with the figs so I will stop making annoying faces: My mom and I get into a bit of a raised-voice to-do about Fox News, which she watches religiously every morning because they give her the stories that she doesn't get anywhere else.

I say, excuse me? that's because they lie? which makes her mouth go into a little 'O' as if I've said, sorry, Shirley, there is no Santa Claus. She feels beleaguered and put upon by her children who CAN'T STAND TO BE IN THE SAME ROOM WHEN THAT STUPID NETWORK IS SPEWING VITRIOL AND DISTORTIONS AND MISINFORMATION. But we get through this testy moment and upon leaving the restaurant find that the temperature has gone down about twenty degrees during dinner. Later she buys me two beautiful glasses that resemble the ones in the Dutch still-lifes that I coveted, these made by Anton Vojeck of Oulu Stained Glass in Oulu, Wisconsin.

What's not to love about Duluth!