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We’ve all seen the guy. He’s an old timer and he is in the film to tell you he was part of the team. That’s his vanity. Not that he was a key man or the best paid man, just that he was part of a team that did something important, Maybe built the Empire States Building or the Hoover Dam. That’s me. I was part of the team that cleaned up the Great Lakes. One of many and my pride is a pride of association, because we did it. They said it couldn’t be done and we did it.
The last of the Great Lakes, Superior, was formed 10,000 years ago. I can imagine a tired God having completed this great undertaking thinking to himself, even those pesky humans will not be able to wreck this! Alas by 1970, after we had been around in any number, for only about 150 years, we were well on our way to wrecking it. Erie caught fire regularly. Ontario, furthest downstream was a witches brew of toxins. Oxygen levels in the lakes were low and Superior had raw sewage floating offshore. However, the environmental movement in America was being born with wise leadership from Ed Muskie and a handful of others. In 1972 as Nixon contemplated a race against Muskie, Nixon and Prime Minister Trudeau signed an agreement to clean up the lakes. The agreement gave the International Joint Commission the responsibility of measuring the progress of each country thus acting as a prod to footdraggers. For almost 2 years in the late 1970’s I was a full time consultant to the IJC. My principal role was acting as a communications link with state lawmakers from Great Lakes states. Letting them know what was happening on the national/ international level and helping them access the consequences of state action.
I traveled the 8 great lake states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York to understand the issues as they presented themselves locally. I met with lawmakers from both parties in Detroit, St.Paul, Madison, Springfield, Indianapolis, Lansing, Columbus, Harrisburg, Albany, Duluth, Erie and Buffalo. The competition between the parties that I dealt with was which was best on the clean up. I had been a state senator back in Maine and in those days the experience left us feeling there was more that united us than divided us. Somehow back then we appreciated that we all had weaknesses as well as strengths. We all could remember a time the other party was right about something. We all could recall a complete jackass in our own party. These shared imperfections made room to find common ground and share many enjoyable evenings with lawmakers from both parties.
I never had the satisfaction of the riveter on the Empire State Building of being able to point to the rivets I put in, but I was part of the team whose success was faster and more complete than even the optimists had predicted. You do not have to take government’s word for this. None other than the doctor of uncommon sense, Dr. Seuss is on record on this issue. In 1971 in the poem The Lorax Seuss wrote:
They'll walk on their fins and get woefully weary
in search of some water that isn't so smeary.
I hear things are just as bad up in Lake Erie."
Fourteen years later such progress had been made on the cleanup that the reference to Lake Erie were removed.
As Hudson and I made our way toward these magnificent bodies of water, these 5 lakes which contain 20% of the fresh surface water on earth, I did so anxious to revisit places which awed me as a young man. If there is a place on our continent that represents life itself it is here where fresh water is so abundant and I was gratified to see that the successes of our endeavors in the 1970’s could be witnessed everywhere. What an opportunity to have known Senator Ed Muskie whose passion and wisdom were so central to the effort. What a delight to return with my dog and a friend and witness a clear example that when we humans set out to do a good thing we can accomplish even more than we dream of. The magic ingredient is faith in each other and maybe remembering past successes will inspire us to try again.
We approached Lake Superior at the Duluth end. And as we got closer and closer I remembered a man I met almost 50 years ago when I was motorcycling across the country. I was in a glass front diner in Iowa having breakfast. My BMW was right there in the front window with its Maine plates inches from the diner’s window.. My helmet was on the table beside my pancakes. I noticed a farmer in his middle years looking at my bike and then me. Finally he brought himself to speak. “That your machine?”
Me “Yes sir.”
Farmer “Headed for California?”
Me “Yup”
Farmer “I drove out there once, All the way to the ocean. Didn’t amount to much. Couldn’t even see the other side. Just sand then water as far as you could see.”
Me. “Yah that sounds a lot like the Atlantic, but up in Maine its rocks and then water.”
The farmer thought about this for a minute, then got up to leave, then turned back for a last word. ”I tell ya where you should head, to Las Vegas. They’ve got everything there. Women, gambling you name it. Not much need to go beyond Las Vegas. That’s what I learned.”
The first time I ever looked at Lake Superior. I remembered the farmer’s lament that you couldn’t even see the other side. Something we expect of an ocean, but on some level surprises us in a lake.
Growing up in Maine, a state blessed with a magnificent ocean coastline and hundreds of pristine lakes and ponds, a favorite argument was which is better a place to vacation, a lake or on the ocean. The arguments broke down into swimability, lakes got warmer, quicker and some people object to salt, and mood. We have some good sized lakes in Maine but the largest can be contained by a few towns and crossing in a fast boat is measured hours or fractions of hours. These bodies of water are quiet and restful and usually welcoming. Safe boating on these lakes requires little skill. The ocean is always changing, often challenging, deceivingly powerful and requires us to watch closely and adjust to it’s whims. The debate often ended with the simple summary: if you want relaxation go to the lake, if you want challenge go to the ocean.
When you approach the Great Lakes, prepare for an ocean and you will not be disappointed. There are magnificent bodies of water are not quiet and embracing. Yes they can have cozy harbors and when nature didn’t make one breakwaters are constructed to provide shelter for the fleet. Like the oceans there are major lines of commerce here. I can remember my first time coming to Duluth. I arrived from the airport late at night. Asked for a high room with a lake view, went up and went to bed. In the morning I opened the curtains and saw everything but a horizon. The ships were longer than I was used to seeing but narrower. They were built for the lakes. They are ships by any objective standard but they are boats in the parlance of the men and women who make their living on the waters of the Great Lakes.
Grain, ore, minerals, wood: the raw materials that drive our economy, are floated across these lakes. In the harbors are the machines that facilitate the loading and the unloading. Just like every commercial harbor you see new technology leaving the old standing unused like a dinosaurs skeleton. In Marquett
e Michigan my friend Jim and I studied an old ore dock trying to figure out what it was and how it worked. Once these things bristled with work trains filling the bins and “Lakers” pulling down the chutes and filling their holds. Now self loaders have left these great structures with no more purpose that an old retiree sitting at a bar.
But remember these are great lakes and there are parts of the lakes that are surrounded by suburbs, farms, and wild open places as well as old industrial cities. The Great Lakes encourage a sense of distance, a separation from other places. If you are from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula you are surrounded by huge bodies of water and it is easy to believe that for better or worse this is your place, distinctive and unique.
Our first real stop was in the heart of the UP Marquette, Michigan. Here is a place to experience this lake. When we got in town we saw a pleasure boat Marina next to an old Ore Dock. Jim picked up a local attractions map which showed beaches, on after another along the lake. We drove East. Soon the board was going by one Beach after another with signs that said no dogs. Then there were beaches without such signs and we walked down through the sand to the shore, The water at the end of May was still very cold but Hudson had a GREAT SWIM IN THE GREATEST LAKE.
