Bayfield Wisconsin acts as the gateway for kayakers to the Apostle Islands, a set of islands known as the destination for US kayakers in the Midwest. In early May, when I was there the town is sleepy, but the rest of the summer, it provides a great tourist destination for people looking to get a little taste of harbor town life.

My impression of the town is that it has either a group of people working towards a common vision or a strong set of codes that creates a tightly unified vision of what the town looks like to visitors. I did run into a little anti-vision sentiment, which is typical in tourist towns. I found an anti-kayaker sticker on a car, and a few posters demanding the harbor be given back to the people.

Only a few stores and restaurants where open, so I didn’t sample much that the town had to offer, but I did find that the coffee shop and the grocery store (IGA) were both within a short walk from the harbor. There’s a nice sand beach next to the harbor and directly behind the Trek and Trail kayaking shop to land on.

Free wi-fi is available at the coffee shop and at the library, which is just a short two block walk uphill from the harbor.

Bayfield Gallery

Bryan with boat loaded and ready to go.

It was 41 degree F, partly cloudy and winds out of the West as Bryan began to pack his boat for his five month journey. A small crowd turned up to wish him well. He was filled with great excitement as he headed off into the Lake Superior, paddling out from the Harbor. As he ventured off he headed West. The wind picked up slightly and the sun came out. He stopped at lunch time for a short rest and lunch at Cascade Restaurant with Ilena. After some much needed food, he suited back up and ventured out into a strong West head wind. Several more hours of paddling and he arrived at his first camp spot, at Lutsen Resort to meet up with a friend, Jeff and Ilena. Good food and company with a few visits from friends, made for a good evening for Bryan.  It was early to bed and early to rise for Bryan on his first night. Bryan hit the water on his second day with continued 10-15mph West winds, making paddling a challenge. By late day the wind calmed some, helping to ease the challenges of the wind and the new adventure. Tonight Bryan will be having a treat from Jeff, homemade camp pizzas and brownies. It should be a nice evening. The temperatures have warmed to the 50′s and the evening is looking calm and cool. Bryan would like to thank everyone for their support and hope you will continue to follow along on his journey.

Next Rest Area Grand Marais, MN

The journey begins. Paddle on!

Written and Edited by: Ilena Berg

Cascade River State Park is located in Minnesota directly on the Lake Superior. It’s 10 miles east of Lutsen, Mn and 10 west of Grand Marais, MN. There is a kayaking campsite on the Grand Marais side of the river with a three-sided lean-to and a good beach for landing near the river’s mouth.

When paddling near Cascade River State Park, it’s worth landing on the beach and hiking a short trail from Highway 61 up along the river to a bridge and back down again. This section of the Superior Hiking Trail leads past some of the prettiest waterfalls in Minnesota, and in spring, you may see whitewater kayakers plunging down the waterfalls.

Here’s a video from a hike I did on April 25, 2009:

The Witch Tree, Manido Gizhigans, Spirit Little Cedar Tree in Grand Portage, MN

Manido Gizhigans, which is translated into English as Spirit Little Cedar Tree or commonly known as the Witch Tree, is a white cedar tree seemly growing out of a rock. It’s located on Lake Superior near Grand Portage. It is over 300 years old. Paddlers should leave a pinch of tobacco as an offering to help protect them on long journeys on Lake Superior.

One of the stories of the Witch Tree that I’ve read suggests the tree was a woman who had a vision and found her way to Hat Point to serve as a lookout for a change (white man) that was coming via Superior. That story struck a cord with me, because when I look at the tree it seems to be serving as a lookout. (From Northern Lites: A Fireside Reading Companion (Mysteries & Horror).)

Ilena in a reproduction of the 1959 Kenneth Taylor kayak near The Narrow. Pigeon Point, MN.

Several times, I’ve paddled out to the Witch Tree on my way to the Susie Islands. The Susies are 13 rocky islands mainly owned by the Grand Portage Reservation, but also by the Nature Conservancy. On the Nature Conservancy’s island, there’s rumored to be an interesting old mine. Paddling past the islands is one of the most exciting trips on the MN north shore. A one-way 15-mile paddle will take experts from the Fort at Grand Portage around Hat Point through the Susies and around Pigeon Point to a take just the US side of the US/Canadian border. A hard but short portage at “The Narrows” allows Pigeon Point to be skipped.

Wikipedia’s short entry on the tree:

The Witch Tree as it is commonly known, also called Manido Giizhigance, or Little Cedar Spirit Tree by the Ojibwa Indian tribe is an ancient Thuja occidentalis growing on the shore of Lake Superior in Cook County, Minnesota. The earliest written records of the tree by Europeans in the Americas are by French explorer Sieur de la Verendrye in 1731, who commented on the tree as a mature tree at that time, making it at least 300 years old today.[1] The tree is held sacred by the Ojibwe, who traditionally leave offerings of tobacco to ensure a safe journey on Lake Superior. Due to its sacred nature and vandalism problems in the past, the tree is considered off limits to visitors unless accompanied by a local Ojibwe band member.

The tree is small for a mature conifer, as it is growing out of bare rock on the shoreline. Its gnarled, stunted, and twisting branches have been the subject of many photographs.

Additional Resources

• Great Lakes National Program’s Visualize the Great Lakes has a picture of the Witch Tree.
• Travis Novitsky, a Grand Portage native, has photographed the tree extensively. His site is worth visiting.
• Some friends at the Wilderness Classroom visited the Witch Tree on one of their adventures.

Map

View Larger Map

PLEASE NOTE: Access to the Spirit Tree is restricted. The Grand Portage Reservation has closed the trail to public usage to help protect the tree. Access is only permitted by taking a guided tour with a naturalist from the Grand Portage Lodge.

Lake Superior Provincial Park is home to an impressive set of pictographs, including a painting of the Lake Superior monster, Mishipeshu:

The most important underwater being for the OJIBWA is Mishipeshu, which means “the Great Lynx.” This fantastic dragon-like animal resembles a feline with horns, symbols of his power. It has palmed paws that enable him to swim fast, and his back and tail are covered with scales. Mishipeshu lives in the depths of big lakes. Although he has a feline shape and is an amphibian, he is always described as a reptile. He is feared by all Ojibwa because he is the cause of waves, rapids and whirlpools, and he even breaks the ice in winter, thus claiming numerous victims. In the area of CHURCHILL River, there used to be a game called “Mishipeshu” that symbolized this being’s drowning power. A child, randomly selected, held the role of the aquatic monster; he had to catch his friends and throw them into the water.

Visiting the pictographs at Lake Superior Provincial Park.

Mishipeshu is the main feature of stories that I tell when I guide Interpretive Night Hikes. Night Hikes are my third favorite activities that I guide throughout the year just behind teaching cross country skiing and, of course, behind kayaking. During a Night Hike, I take between 10 and 15 adults and children out into the woods without flashlights and we listen for animals, I talk about Ojibwa legends, we play games that demonstrate how nocturnal animals hunt, how our eyes work, and just before the end of the hike, I tell ghost stories. Or more specifically, I tell the story of the Lake Superior monster.

The Lake Superior monster stories capture everyone’s imagination from adults to kids. I think it does, because at a base level in our common unconsciousness, we know it’s true. It doesn’t hurt that the number one reason that people visit America’s North Coast is because of the Great Lake, and that means that almost all my participants are fascinated by Lake Superior stories.

My story goes like this:

There’s a monster that lives in Lake Superior. Have you seen him? No, well, he’s giant monster with a head of a lynx, a back like an aligator, and he has big horns. There are documented sighting of the Lake Superior monster streaching back through history. The Ojibwa, the Native Americans living in the area, painted pictures of him on rock walls all across the lake. They believed that they had to make an offering to him before they could travel on the lake, so they would offer a pinch of tobbacco to help make sure their travel was safe.

The first whites that saw the Lake Superior monster saw him from ships. In the distance, on the horizon, often someone in the crow’s nest would spot something swirling in the water, there would be bubbles and splashes, so being good sailors they would go off to investigate the strange movements in the water. Once there they saw the Lake Superior monster. This is documented in newspapers and letters. It wasn’t only the sailors that saw the monster though. Often there would be a doctor or lawyer or professor on board that wrote about what they saw.

The monster they saw is known as Mishipeshu. It’s said that Mishipeshu only appears once every thirty years, and guess what? It’s thirty years from the last sighting. So, tonight as you look out over Lake Superior, keep your eyes open, because you might see the Lake Superior monster. And if you do, watch out!

Like in all good ghost stories at the end I shout watch out as I jump towards the crowd. I usually get a few screams, jumps, and then laughs.

But, I do have a story where I may have seen something in the Lake while guiding a kayaking tour. It was Labor Day weekend a few years ago, and the lake had some light chop on it. Just enough to obscure the bottom, but every once in-a-while I got a view. As I paddled past a place I’d paddled many times, I looked down into the crystal clear Lake Superior water and noticed a long, skinny, grey rock that I’d never noticed before. It was such an unusually long round and skinny rock, that I thought to myself two notes. First, I can’t believe that I’ve never seen such an odd rock, and second, I’ll have to come back on a perfectly calm day to see the rock again. That night, I recommended a nice beach to have a fire on to a couple of women that were on the trip. They went out and had a fire on that beach that night. The beach, named Secret Beach, was just a short distance from where I’d seen the weird rock.

In the morning, they found me and related a scare they had that evening. It was dark and they were enjoying the warmth of the fire when out on the lake, they noticed a long log drift by. They thought it was an odd looking log about 30 feet long, but it really freaked them out, when it turned around and swam back past them. As the log got closer, they noticed it had ridged back. They quickly put out the fire and ran away from the beach.

Lake Superior Monster or a giant sturgeon? I don’t know. But is Mishipeshu real? I have no doubt.

If you’re a paddler it’s worth paddling out to visit the pictograph of Mishipeshu, and don’t forget to bring an offering.

Route: Put in at Agawa Bay Campground, which is also a perfect place to camp if you can reserve a beach front campsite. Paddle northwest following the shoreline 4.71 miles or cross directly from the Visitor’s Center 4 miles to the pictograph site. A west or northwest wind can produce significant waves in this area. The first time I paddled this section, there was no wind, but a few hundred miles to the west a storm was blowing some nice swell at us.