A Fortunate Fog

What can be learned by purposely steering a boat into a Lake Superior fogbank? Turns out, a lot.

The warnings are all over my weather app, that funny cloud symbol with the three lines beneath it like the stairway to heaven. “Dense fog locally” exclaims the robotic voice of the near-shore forecaster that comes on every trip aboard the weather radio, “Limited Visibility on Lake Superior’s south shore and Apostle Islands.” So I can’t pretend I am unaware of the potential for fog. I am, in fact, very aware and even anxious for it as I steer the Little Dipper up the West Channel to round Red Cliff Point toward Frog Bay hoping the fog will be there. Why would someone willingly steer toward a Lake Superior fogbank? Good question. Let me explain.

Lake Superior is, at times, a veritable fog factory with the weather station at Duluth registering an average of 52 days a year of “thick fog.” And that doesn’t include the countless mornings of localized fogbanks drifting like lost spirts over secluded bays or tangling in the tree branches in ribbons of white. The differences in temperature between air masses breast-stroking across its surface and the cold waters of the lake itself make the lake a perfect cauldron of rising strands of fog so thick they could be “used for rope” as the old saying goes.

And they can come up quickly. Just ask Captain Cornelius Flynn. In June of 1899, Captain “Corny” was at the helm of the packet steamer R.G. Stewart when a fog bank arose so quickly he barely had time to slow down and ended up running headlong into Michigan Island. Or, the crew of the Charles Weston which ended up on the rocks at Outer Island in May of 1907 in a fog so thick it obscured the beam of the lighthouse.

To combat those dangers, many of the Apostle Islands lighthouses were outfitted with shrieking foghorns, contraptions so loud, one Bayfield County Press reporter claimed in the June 4, 1925 paper, they could “scare the navigators of most any boat plying the lake out of about 10 yrs. of growth.” That enterprising writer even ventured his own written description of the sound imitating the La Point Light foghorn on Long Island: “It starts its blow with a long drawn out high-pitched sound,” he wrote, “ending up in a deep-throated, quick spasm, something like wha-o-o-o-o-yah!”

Hearing no “wha-o-o-o-o-yah!” over the water today, I spin the wheel rounding the buoy at Red Cliff Point and smile. There it is, a fogbank dancing over Frog Bay, just as I had hoped. The conditions for it are perfect: little wind, the water temperature 68 degrees, the air temperature a chilly 54 degrees, and the dewpoint 55. I point the bow of the Little Dipper right into the thick of the beckoning fog until I am enveloped in it, encased, and then cut the engine - sounding my own little handheld airhorn as a foghorn and leaving the anchor light on just in case. Then, I just drift, floating in what Thoreau called “an anchored cloud.”

It is as silent as any moment I’ve ever experienced on Lake Superior, so quiet I can hear the mist whispering against my hood. Every other sound seems swallowed by the fog, erased along with the sense of sight. I think of an early-rising kayaker I saw walking the beach on the Oak Island sandspit as I passed, watching me disappear purposely into the fogbank. If she were to ask why, I could mention the silence, or say something about waiting for the sun to light it up for photographs or the idea of experiencing the fog to make me a better Lake Superior boater and safer aboard the Little Dipper in those times I couldn’t avoid the fog. But the truth is more complicated than that, and as difficult to pin down as wisps of fog.

In literature, fog has long been a symbol of uncertainty, confusion, and doubt. It hovers over scenes of horror and chaos. It shrouds identities, blurs motives, adding mystery and suspense. Robert Louis Stevenson used fog to cloak the transformation of the amiable Dr. Jekyll into the violent Mr. Hyde in his 1886 novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde which he called “a fine bogey tale.”

Yet fog, and in particular clearing fog, is also symbolic of revelation and the process of slow but sure understanding. I think of the way “the fog lifted … as though it had to go elsewhere” after the mysteries of an Arctic oasis are revealed at the conclusion of the short story “Pearyland” by Barry Lopez or of 1 Corinthians 13:12: “We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright!”

Being in the fog this morning aboard the Little Dipper seems more like a revelation than a terror. It is a victory of sorts, a milestone in my quest for developing a sense of place in these islands. You see, I knew the fog would be here even before the Little Dipper left the dock. I knew that the warm waters of Frog Creek flowing into Frog Bay would keep the shallow bay warmer than the deep blue depths of the surrounding lake. I knew the delicate dance of air temperature and water temperature and dew point, if they were going to weave any fogbanks, would weave them first in the protected, shallow, warm waters of Frog Bay. And I was right.

That is really why I am here, alone in this thick fogbank aboard the Little Dipper watching the morning sun untangle itself from the rising mist. I want to feel this place, on my lips, on my skin, in my heart. There are few objective measurements you can look for in the quest for a sense of place, no light that comes on when you have achieved it, but this fog is a sort of wispy proof that I am making progress. I want to know what beach the northern lights might be visible from, where there might be bear tracks on the bog, where the lake ice shoves and the fog first rises. I want to put myself in the path of the forces that march across this lake and weave the tapestry of these islands. One thread of that tapestry, on this morning at least, is woven in these gray threads of fog.

I give one more distinctly un-”wha-o-o-o-o-yah!” blast on my tiny hand-held fog horn, as much in celebration as in warning, and then drift, afloat in the earthbound cloud until the rising heat of the coming sun unravels the fog before my eyes.

— Jeff Rennicke

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