[August, 2005] Lake Superior is of course one of what they call the Great Lakes. And I again, say I suppose anyone that knows me, knows I’m married to a Peruvian, woman, which is a treat of course, or can be. She never did much traveling prior to meeting me, and when I asked her to marry me she asked for one thing (and it wasn’t traveling): “A lot of loving,” and she meant it. Oh well, I’m learning. Anyhow we travel a lot, Rosa and me; and August is her birthday month. So I told her: “You know, I’ve taken you around the world 11-times, but one of the world’s greatest geological wonders is but 220-miles from our home here in St. Paul, Minnesota.” Which is Lake Superior of course; having said all this, I asked if she’d like to go there for a weekend, but make it during the week days, so there would not be so much traffic, and she was-–as always—anxious, but not sure what Lake Superior was in the logic of bigness.

So we drove from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Bayfield, Wisconsin. Exactly 220-miles Northeast if I recall right; highway 94 East to 64 East to 63-north, and onto, highway 2 East and 13 East the rest of the way; and there you are in a little village of a town, perhaps 3000-people or less; a town on the edge of the Great Lake Superior. After checking into our Bed & Breakfast, we went down to the harbor, caught a boat over to Madeline Island, a 20-minuted boat ride, and we both took mopeds, Rosa riding one for the first times; 50cc motorbikes, that is. If anything scared her, it was the mopeds not the jumpy waters of Lake Superior, it was her first time on one, but she’s a quick learner, quicker then me.

Matter-of-fact, Lake Superior, the biggest fresh water lake in the world, can be very choppy, at times, very dangerous. There has been something like 350-ships [not boats], lost in the waters of Lake Superior, sunken to its bottom of some 1400-feet, the average is about 450-feet. It is so huge, you cannot see across it. It is 350-miles long, and 160-miles wide, about the size of the state of Minnesota. It holds 10% of the earth’s fresh water. Rosa was in awe, when she saw it. I suppose it is like seeing Machu Picchu, for the first time for an American born person like me, as I was in awe; to a Peruvian I say, it was breathtaking. I repeat it is a geological wonder of the world, there is nothing that can compare to it. You can put the other two Great Lakes, into Lake Superior twice over. But as I was saying, the water was choppy, and when we got on the Island, the waves were a few feet high already, slapping the coast line. Rosa’s comments were: “It looks like the ocean.” I had been to Bayfield in the past, several times, so it was nice to be back, but it is always nicer to see the face of someone first experiencing it; Happy Birthday Rosa.

Dennis Siluk, she his most recently published book of poetry on Vietnam and Peru, "The Spell of the Andes," at http://www.alibris.com or http://www.alldirect.com

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