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The final leg of the journey through Lakes Huron and Superior was the fastest. There is one stop at Soo Locks between Lake Huron and Superior, and the ship cruises at top speed the rest of the way. We were in the Detroit River when I woke up the second to last day. After coffee and an omelet, Detroit appeared like a house of mirrors off the port bow. From there we steamed past Belle Isle into Lake St. Clair, through the St. Clair River and Lake Huron. Sometime that night we turned north up St. Mary’s River to the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie and continued west across Lake Superior.
The fog set in on the last night, and I couldn’t see the bow of the ship. The dampness and cold penetrated my jacket on deck, and beads of water formed on my eyelashes. There were no buoys, ships or rocks. You could see them on the radar but not through the windshield. “Lake’s too cold,” the wheelman said.
I woke in the middle of the night and looked through the porthole. The fog had lifted and Superior was black and calm. The average depth of the lake is 483 feet. Off Grand Island, the bottom drops to 1,333 feet. Somewhere down there the Midcontinent Rift, a giant scar of hardened magma where the North American continent split in two a billion years ago, runs across the bottom. Deepwater ciscoes swim through the deepest trenches of the lake. Native lake trout and lake herring circle above them. Sleek black loons, herring gulls, harlequin ducks and oldsquaw dive at the fish on the surface, and eagles, falcons, terns and plovers glide above.
Before I went to bed, I had packed my things. I couldn’t imagine riding a boat for three months, much less 30 years as a career seaman. I stared at the ceiling for an hour, wondering if I would fall asleep. I imagined the 100-foot cliffs that border the northern shore of Lake Superior passing by, and gray wolves and black bear wandering through stands of paper birch and pine.
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