Shining Big Sea Water: The Story of Lake Superior

preface

xi preface This book was a labor of love. In my childhood I spent many happy hours wading—never able to fully immerse myself—in the icy waters of Lake Superior on the beach at Ashland, my grandfather’s home. When our own sons were able, at the ages of four and six, to make their first camping trip (sleeping in the back of a station wagon), my wife, Connie, and I took them around Lake Superior. I shall ever remember a moonlit night in a tiny campground at the falls of the Baptism River in Minnesota. In doing the final research for this book, Connie and I made a second trip around the perimeter of the lake. We were aided in this quest by a superb guidebook, Hugh E. Bishop’s Lake Superior: The Ultimate Guide to the Region (2005). The idea for a cultural history of Lake Superior was actually that of Greg Britton, then the director of the Minnesota Historical Society Press and now publisher for the J. Paul Getty Trust. This is the third of my books to be inspired by Greg. Ours has been a long and very productive friendship. As in the past, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the superb editorial staff of the Minnesota Historical Society Press and to the many excellent suggestions of its unnamed reviewers. My greatest thanks, however, go to my wife, Connie: my most resourceful editor and fearless critic. Norman K. Risjord Middleton, Wisconsin xii SHINING BIG SEA WATER 1 2 ...