Superior Connections—2008 Article

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Paddling in the Montreal canoe

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is Superior Connections.

A new liberal education program at Northland College, Superior Connections takes a cohort of fifteen to twenty students through a series of nine interdisciplinary courses, all focused on the Lake Superior watershed. The program is a new way to complete the general credits every student needs to graduate, but it offers participants more than just a broad base of knowledge: it emphasizes the interconnected nature of the world. Rather than viewing each class as independent from the others, the twelve professors dedicated to the program are revealing connections. Students are not just studying art and biology, for example, but how the two affect each other.

This May Term trip, the culmination of the first year of the program, is a month-long circumnavigation of the big lake. The students, led by Alan Brew, associate professor of English, and Grant Herman, experiential outreach educator, began their journey in the last week of April. From Ashland they traveled west to Duluth to meet with photographer Craig Blacklock, then up the North Shore of Minnesota, with stops along the way including the Folk School in Grand Marais and Fort William, a historical site near Grand Portage. I joined the group at Naturally Superior, an outfitter and guiding service near Wawa, Ontario, for the paddling portion of the trip, and ten minutes into our four-days together I am already falling behind. As it turns out, paddling is a lot harder than sitting at a desk, and that’s pretty much the only thing I’ve been doing all winter.

Making Round Stones

Text & Photos by Bob Gross

Just past the marker light at the mouth of the Michipicoten River, I turn to watch the rest of the group flow out into Lake Superior. Low against the water, a few kayaks slide past quietly, but the Montreal canoe, a replica of the big birchbark canoes used during the fur trade, holds my attention.

More than thirty feet long, the boat contains most of our group and much of our equipment. All hands paddling in unison, the canoe bounces softly over the standing wave where the rushing current meets the lake. I dig my paddle into the water and turn to follow as the boat disappears into the fog. > Journaling while Dry-suits warm in the sun

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For the students on this trip, however, this sort of thing is status quo. Over the last two semesters their courses have included intensive hands-on experiences throughout the Lake Superior region. From day one of their Outdoor Orientation trip, a circuit around Chequamegon Bay in three Montreal canoes, they have been in the field regularly. Now, after completing their first year and spending the past two weeks on the road together, they are moving like a well-oiled machine. I, on the other hand, am feeling a little bit like the tin man. fall 2008

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Mouth of the Michipicoten River

Paddling in smooth unison, some of the students singing to keep the rhythm, the group dynamic seems ideal. Like any large group, though, there has been tension from time to time. There are those on this trip who would rather not be sharing their tents and meals with one another. Even in my brief time as an addendum to the trip, I have seen a couple exchanges that betray shortened tempers and past disagreements still to be forgiven.

But that’s part of the experience, too.

The goal after all is not to create a class of automatons only capable of parroting information, but, rather, a group of thinkers, true problem solvers who can see all the angles— including human ones—and find real solutions.

We land for lunch on a short stretch of gravel, and the group divides effort-

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lessly into their small cooking teams of three or four students each. Accustomed to living out of backpacks, the groups spread themselves out along a rocky outcropping at the edge of the beach and set to preparing lunch: cutting fruit and cheese, distributing trail mix, and chatting among themselves.

Lunch complete and the boats repacked, the students set to another familiar task: exploration. They stroll the thin strip of open land between the forest and the lake, skipping stones or perusing the edge of the woods for wildflowers. At first glance their activities seem aimless, but on closer observation they are not. The students are collecting information.

One student points to the high water mark on the beach, another gathers stones that tell the history of the glaciers, another notes where berries

will grow in the fall. I am actually only playing with a stick, but I try to make it look more intellectual. Finally, Conor, the guide for this portion of the trip, calls everyone to the boats and we are off again. Back on the water, the early afternoon sun begins to cut through the clouds, warming cold fingers and reddening cheeks.

In the last weeks, the water temperature has slowly risen the few critical degrees that separate liquid from solid, but, as we skirt the shore, some sheltered bays still harbor the last few lonely blocks of winter ice. We are all clad in matching drysuits, protective gear with sealed feet and rubber gaskets at the wrist and neck to protect against the frigid water, and each time we land on a beach I’m reminded of the scenes of the “away team” in old episodes of Star Trek. Well aware of

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Students preparing lunch

Conor, the guide from naturally superior, gathers the group before heading out for the afternoon.

> talk abouta great view from the classroom.

my dorkiness, I keep this thought to myself, but my inner monologue takes on a slight Captain Kirk quality.

Last Day of Superior Connections 2008, Wave rly Beach

From the stern of the big canoe, Conor points out sites of interest along the shore: locations of old settlements, changes in the bedrock, swathes of unique vegetation. The information is passed by “telephone” to those who are too far to hear, and collectively the group begins to tell the story of the shoreline on their own.

Parts of the stories that Conor is telling are the same as other places they have already been. The rock is similar to the granite of the Minnesota North Shore, the story of the aboriginal people is similar to stories all around the lake, and even much of the vegetation is familiar. For me most of these stories are new, but to the Superior Connections students they are just chapters in a bigger volume of knowledge. As they hear the new pieces, you can see them fit together with what they already know—just another thread in the larger web.

The next several days are filled with the steady rhythm of paddling and meals, the easy movement of the group as one, always collecting something new that fits with something old. Even the few pieces of the puzzle that I have been here to collect are starting to show an image. In the evening, the group gathers driftwood along the beach and circles around a fire to discuss the day. It’s amazing to the see the connections that the students are making between the geology and the natural history, between art and science and sociology.

We are camping at the mouth of the Dog River, my last night with the group, and the discussion begins as usual with Lake Superior. As words and ideas flow out into the night the conversation begins to reach beyond the watershed to touch other parts of the world.

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From this remote section of shoreline on Lake Superior, the students are beginning to make ties to their homes spread across the country. Connections are made to streams running through farm fields in the midwest, to city parks in the arid reaches of the southern states, even to mossy green forests on the Pacific coast. Immersed in the intimate details of this watershed, these students are seeing the inner workings of watersheds across the nation and around the globe. They start by seeing the differences between where they are now and where they have come from, but more and more they are also finding similarities. They are seeing similarity in the kindness

of the people, the themes of the art, the local culture and the flora and the fauna—in everything. This collective story they are learning to tell is not just about the Lake Superior watershed anymore, but about every watershed that any one of them has touched. I imagine the watersheds they will touch after today.

The group is continuing on their journey by road. They are heading for Sault Ste. Marie, Pictured Rocks, and other sites in Michigan’s Upper Penninsula. In a week and a half they will make their way back around to Ashland. I am heading home by road in the opposite direction: through southern Canada to the Minnesota

North Shore. Wawa, Ontario, being roughly equidistant from home in either direction around the Lake, it made sense to continue on around rather than return on the same route by which I came. This will be my first circumnavigation, too.

The road plays out before the car—a thin, black ribbon dipping and rising with the folds of the earth. Somewhere to the south is Lake Superior, the largest body of fresh water in the Western Hemisphere. At high points in the road I catch shimmering glimpses of the lake before dropping back into the hollows of the land. To the north, a vast expanse of towering spruce and stone-capped hills roll as

far as the eye can see. Where the hills are too steep to climb, passes have been cut for the highway. Here the road is hemmed in on both sides by high stone walls, and there is nowhere to go but onward.

Every few miles, in some places every few yards, the road crosses a stream tumbling down the hillside into the lake. I am constantly reminded of the immense power of water to create change. The Lake Superior shoreline is dotted with beaches covered in round stones. Worn smooth by the action of the waves, they sit like piles of colored eggs shining in the springtime sun. Among them you can find a collection of other objects

similarly worn smooth by the waves: bits of broken glass ground smooth, pieces of drift wood polished to a sheen. With every wave that breaks on the shore of this inland freshwater sea, everything along this coast is affected at least a little bit. By putting something in contact with the water for a period of time, it will be changed— smoothed and polished by the Lake.

That, in a way, is also the idea behind Superior Connections. 1 Bob Gross is a Communications Specialist in the Office of Marketing and Communications at Northland College and takes many of the photographs seen in College publications. To learn more about Superior Connections, visit www. northland.edu.

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