A Hopeful Beauty
Almost fiery temperatures in December and a deep January cold set the stage for the kind of hike that can leave you grateful, speechless, and hopeful for the beauty of the world.
Beauty is often born of tension, the push and pull of light and shadow, color and darkness, form and shape stretched until it seems like something has to snap. It is that battle that stirs the human soul.
That battle between the elements has been at play in the Apostle Islands — the warmest December on record in many locations keeping the lake at historically low levels of ice coverage and then a plunge into the deep freeze of winter’s heart with temperatures below zero.
The result is the kind of beauty that can literally stop you in your tracks.
I am stopped in my tracks this cold January day at a lookout off the Lakeshore Trail along the mainland section of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. The world around me is a kaleidoscope of ice and rock and water and fog. Deep green waves are drumming against the red sandstone cliffs. The red sandstone cliffs are festooned with ice falls growing longer with the spray of every wave. And all of it is swirled in ribbons of fog that make the whole scene seem an apparition, a trick of light and time.
But it is not.
This far north, the New Year is usually ushered in with sparkling champagne, streamers, and the glitter of ice in cocktails and on Lake Superior. This New Year’s Day, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), just 0.35% of the Great Lakes were decorated in ice for the holiday, the lowest figure in at least 50 years and far below the 10% which is average historically for the first day of a new year. It doesn’t take a meteorologist to figure out why.
December temperatures were eerily spring-like in the islands. The average temperature in Duluth was 12 degrees above normal, the warmest December ever recorded in a place where the records go back 139 Decembers to 1874. In the wake of those almost fiery temperatures, there was an eerie sound where ice should be: open water.
Then came January, flying on stage like an actor that had missed her cue. All at once, temperatures plummeted to the double digits below zero. Winds rattled the bones of winter trees by gusting 43-56 miles an hour creating waves of 12-15 feet at Devils Island. Winter came with a crash, jousting with the spring-like conditions of December. Something epic and elemental was happening in the islands. Lying in the dark, listening, I envisioned the battle going on at the Mawikwe Bay caves and knew right where I would go as soon as the storm passed.
It was like walking in the tracks of a grizzly. The storm was mostly over by the time I reached the Lakeshore Trail that winds above the sea caves like a tightrope but it was clear that something powerful had passed this way. The red pines were caked in ice, creaking eerily in the gusts of leftover wind. The birch looked tinseled, caught by surprise by the cold. The cliffs, where days ago there was only rock, now wore the armor of ice. It was a landscape enchanted.
In the face of such beauty, it is sometimes overwhelming, wanting to see every viewpoint, hurry to every overlook, take it all in. Instead, I stopped.
I found a place near the edge but still somewhat sheltered from the wind and just sat, trying to still myself. All around me trees were swaying, their trunks and branches crackling like old bones, sawing together in otherworldly whines and screeching sounds. Below, the open water was a kind of wet thunder, drumming into every hollow and grotto of the caves, its cadence taking on something like a heartbeat.
Too often in nature, I am so focused on my eyesight, what it looks like, capturing something on my camera, that I forget my other senses. National parks can become a kind of postcard scenery, flat and superficial. Not this time: I set the camera down, closed my eyes, and felt the bite of the wind, tasted the spray against my lips, listened to the bass drum percussion of the waves below and the stringed instrument sounds of the wind in the trees above. The elemental music of nature.
I sat listening until the chill seeped deep and my body began to shiver, whether from the cold or the beauty I was not entirely sure, and then began the long walk back. The waves were so big that even deep into the woods the sound of them drumming the shore was still echoing through the trees. With that sound came probing thoughts of those freakishly warm December temperatures, the concern over lack of ice coverage on the lake harming wildlife, causing increased shoreline erosion, worry over the coming changes in the face of global climate change.
But I stopped myself, stilling those thoughts the way I had stilled my restless body moments earlier. There is a time and a place for such thoughts, I told myself. This, however, was a time and a place for something else — to let the beauty of it all wash away the shadow of worry and fret, if just for the moment, to relish the still-glimmering world around us, the light that shines through all of those shadows, and let it bring hope back to your heart.
I turned in my tracks, returning to the edge of the sandstone cliff. There, with the wind buffeting my whole body like the shove of unseen hands, I braced myself, looked that wild beauty straight in the face, pressed my hands together at the chest, and bowed.
I just bowed, grateful for all that I had seen.
— Jeff Rennicke
My favorite views coated in snow and ice . Love the mysterious haunting pictures ! I am reminded this year with the unseasonable weather conditions this week and next that there was a similar January in 2006 . We had just purchased our cabin, and my son and I had come up to visit about mid month . It was 50 degrees and I was out cleaning windows on the sunny side . Later we drove to a very still and quiet Meyers Beach and encountered a lone Kayaker who was boasting about having just paddled to Devils and back . Despite the warm temps and the still lake , it seemed to us a foolhardy thing to do by yourself ,but he was high on his adventure .
At the time having just gotten my dream of a place to call our own in Bayfield ,I was very concerned about what was happening then to the the Great Lake , and hearing reports of the lake being low . That was about 18 years ago , and tho I am not in denial about global warming I have known El Niño before . Yes to just enjoy the beauty that presents itself as we experience it day by day .
Sweet! Love your photos--almost ghost-like, super-natural. Ethereal. We had a similar experience here, although we don't have the lake to help us see the immensity and grandeur of nature. But we have been locked in cold, wind and snow for nearly two weeks. Enjoy!