And I Quote

A peek behind the famous and not-so-famous quotes from Apostle Islands (an occasional series)

“Silent Cal” they called him. And, during his 1928 visit to the Apostle Islands, President Coolidge did little to dispel that image, his simple signature in the logbook of the Devils Island lighthouse as loquacious as he got while in the islands.

But, if “Silent Cal” did not give us lasting words worthy of carving into sandstone, others have. In this first installment of what I hope will become an occasional series, I offer a look, and offer context for, statements, famous and infamous, that still echo through the history of these Apostle Islands. And I quote …

“The Lake is the Boss.”

Julian Nelson knew Lake Superior. Born right here in Bayfield in 1916, Julian would spend the entire century-long span of his life on the shores of Lake Superior except for a short stint in the military. As a young man he worked with his father at his Stockton Island fishing camp, put to work so young at chores like mending nets that his father had to saw the legs off a chair so that little Julian could keep his feet securely on the ground for balance while doing the intricate work.

(Bayfield Heritage Association photograph)

In addition to fishing, Nelson was also active in local politics acting as the Bayfield Mayor during the debate over the creation of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Coming out in favor of the proposed designation of the National Lakeshore was a decision that cost him his job as mayor. Still Nelson maintained right up until his death in 2017 that it was the right one for him: “It was not a popular position. But, I’m very comfortable with the position I took, and I grow more comfortable every day.”

Still, it was fishing, not politics that ran deepest in Julian Nelson. Julian bought out his father’s business in 1938 at the age of 22, famously floating the fish shack that came with it to a new location on Rocky Island (after two tries, the first attempt thwarted by rising wind and waves). There, Nelson would settle in to nearly a half-century of fishing the big lake aboard his boats Beth Suzanne and later, Mermaid, a career that taught him well the power of the big lake.

(Wisconsin Historical Society photograph)

Lake Superior is a force — 350 miles long, 160 miles wide - it is clawed and raked by winds that have sculpted thirty-foot waves like crystal mountains on its surface and spelled doom for an estimated 550 ships now laying wrecked in its depths. The “Unholy Apostles” have been thought of as a place for ships to run for a lee to hide from storms but here too the lake has claimed more than its share of ships — the Lucerne whose sailors froze solid to the masts trying to climb out of the killing spray, the Fedora and the Herring King that were taken by fire, the Sevona and the Pretoria that both went down in separate storms in September 1905, and more.

In his decades on the water, Julian Nelson saw plenty of Lake Superior’s weather moods, storms that destroyed docks, tangled fishing nets, sent boats scurrying for a lee, and cost the lives of too many of his fellow fishermen. One of his earliest island memories, Julian once told me, was swimming on the 1905 wreck of the Noquebay a wooden schooner that caught fire and sank in the shallow, sandy waters of what is now known as “Julian Bay” on Stockton Island.

It was a lifetime of watching waves and weather, and the lived experience of the power inherent in Lake Superior. Every moment of that life on the water sits at the heart of his famous quote: “The lake is the boss. No matter how big you are or what kind of a boat you’ve got, the lake is still the boss. Mother Nature dictates a lot of things.”

Good advice for all who venture out on Lake Superior from someone who would know.

— Jeff Rennicke (all photographs by the author unless otherwise noted)