Julian's Streetlight

An Apostle Islands postcard

This sea stack on the northeast side of Stockton Island reminds people of many things — the ruin of a castle wall, an exclamation point gone to stone. But ever since a story told to me by Julian Nelson, the legendary Bayfield commercial fisherman famous for his “The Lake is the Boss” quip, I can only see one thing in that rock: a streetlight. Let me explain.

For Julian Nelson, fishing was in his blood. His father, a Norwegian immigrant, started commercial fishing as early as 1919 from a camp on Stockton Island near what is now called “Julian Bay.” Julian was put to work at the family business at a young age, a very young age. “You need your feet under you when you mend nets,” he told me in an interview for my book Jewels on the Water: Lake Superior’s Apostle Islands, “and I remember that I was so little that my dad had to cut the legs off a chair so that my feet could touch the ground.”

Life at fish camp meant a lot of chores for young Julian. Still, he remembers picnics, swimming at the wreck of the Noque Bay, a ship filled with lumber that burned just off shore. But his favorite thing to do was to jump in his father’s skiff and row along the shore. “They cut me loose pretty young,” he remembers, reveling in the memory of that newfound freedom. “But, they were really stern about laying down the law that I could row no further than Lone Rock.”

For most of us, it was around the block for our first forays alone on our bike on summer nights, or “just down to the streetlight and back.” When I mentioned that to Julian during the interview, I remember him smiling, nodding, and saying “Yeah, I guess than that old rock was my streetlight.”

Julian has been gone eight years now, passing away at 100 on February 17th, 2017 after a lifetime on the lake he loved. But still to this day, sometimes on a lazy summer evening when I am out in the Little Dipper feeling my own sense of freedom, I will get to what we now call “Balancing Rock,” stop for a while and then go no further. “I guess that old rock was my streetlight,” I hear like an echo in the back of my mind. So, I turn around, power up and head straight home racing the dark to get there before the streetlights turn on, and somewhere Julian Nelson is smiling.

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

If you would like to read that and other stories of the Apostle Islands, the book Jewels on the Water can be purchased through Friends of the Apostle Islands by clicking below.