Jack of Harts

Lake Superior is the largest fresh water lake in the world, reaching all the way down below sea level. It is the highest of the Great Lakes in North America, and the water flows down from it through the other Great Lakes on its long way to the Atlantic Ocean. The Ojibwe Indians called it gichi-gami, the great sea, and they believed that the various copper deposits in the lake belonged to a spirit that inhabited the lake, a great lynx, an underwater panther, or various other names and descriptions. Many Indian tribes of the general area held similar beliefs of powerful monsters or spirits living in Lake Superior, and believed the storms that often wracked it and destroyed boats atop it were caused by these spirits. Interestingly, the lake is cold enough that bacteria does not grow on dead bodies like it does in warmer lakes, and so the bodies go all the way to the bottom of the lake and stay there. Hence the saying that Lake Superior never gives up her dead. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a song by Gordon Lightfoot that made the shipwreck of the namesake ship famous all over the world. Ice actually closes the lake to shipping in the depths of winter, and you simply must look at pictures of the Duluth Harbor lighthouse in winter, when the wind is blowing freezing water through the air to solidify around the building. It is a truly amazing sight if you’ve never seen it before. And if you have.