Wish you
could be here with me. It’s beautiful. Pea green sea fills the channel
that separates Bayfield from LaPointe. In summertime like this, northern
Wisconsin juts out into Lake Superior as red cliffs defend the mainland
from the nibbling lap of fresh water. Surrounding the jut, the Apostle
Islands rise randomly out of the lakewater like sentries guarding the
shoreline from encroachment by invasive species. Most of the smaller
islands are currently uninhabited due to their inaccessibility. In fact,
the only community of any note is the town of LaPointe. Like a beacon
for Midwestern vacationers, LaPointe sits precariously along the
southern edge of Madeline Island. Ferries chug over from Bayfield at
regular intervals and flow year-round, doubling the number of passages
under the hot sun of summer. In wintertime, a Coast Guard cutter
maintains open water for the few surviving inhabitants of the island.
One time (I heard this) the island joined with the mainland in the midst
of the harshest winter via a frozen area of lake too thick for even the
Coast Guard. The people trekked across dragging their groceries on
sleds. The Bayfield Courier printed a series of articles ruminating
about the ice, the isolation of the island, and that persistent rumor of
a Bering Strait crossing of Mongoloid peoples into North America many
years back. While nobody knows for sure if the Indians walked to
Wisconsin all the way from Asia, I do recall family stories of the old
ones on snowshoes, walking through days of frozen forest and fishing the
ice near LaPointe, pulling in catfish so large the whiskers slapped the
sides of the icehole (or something like that) but the catfish don’t live
there anymore and the Indians too
have now walked on
to greater
profit.
