shipwrecks

take me in, mother wind

At first I thought they were animals bobbing peacefully in the water, ‘ah, snow beavers,’ which I immediately dismissed but had nothing logical to replace it with and couldn’t see through the blizzard’s gales to ascertain if they were indeed living creatures. I shimmied down a snowy dune to inspect the lake and to my amazement saw: ice balls.

I’d heard of them but assumed they were legend or at least exaggeration; if they existed at all, surely no larger than a tennis ball. These were huge, much larger than me, populating the lake in tidy rows, swaying in unison to the storm’s waves.

Ice boulders (colloquially, ‘ ice balls’) form when chunks break from sheets of ice and are gradually smoothed into a sphere by waves. As more cold water freezes upon their surface, the boulders grow larger and larger. They are found most commonly in cold coastal areas or lakes (the Great Lakes, Antarctica, Scandinavia).

Elated, I climbed back up the dune and found my way through the snow to the cabin.

The psychotherapist had turned on all the gas burners on the stove, as well as the oven, its door open. It was his friend’s cabin, and he wasn’t sure how to work the heat. Or the lights. He stood in the dark, windows white with blizzard, his face lit blue by the four gas burners and the LED on his vape pen.

I saw ice balls, I told him.

What?

Never mind. I turned off all the gas burners and told him to find a wine key. I chopped some wood and started a fire. I let my general fury with him resolve into an ice ball, be battened about by my annoyance, smoothed by my icy currents til it bobbed placidly, and then I watched it and enjoyed it and realized everything he had ever said to me, his love for me, his hate for me, his worship and disapproval and cajoling and insulting of me, would be forgotten by the time the ice melted. And I would be on a little sailboat in the cold blue water, headed away.

And it’s true, I was long gone by spring.

But that night I sent him to bed while I sat up with the fire and wrote this song. I have forgotten him now, but the lake, the Lake, in all her forms: summer silken turquoise, torrential and choppy brown, misty blue and chunked with ice, full of shipwrecks,¹ dark and cold and fresh and cruel, her, Her I will love forever.

winterlake

[N.B.: when I say ‘the lake made her pearls’ in the song, I am of course referring to ice balls.]

the lord made the lake
the lake made her pearls
i made a mistake
it unlocked the door
i had me a man
he had him a son
the winter will take
what the summer has won

hold me close
holy ghost

i built me a boat
i sewed me a sail
can’t keep me here
i’ll kiss you farewell
the lord made the wind
the wind had a child
mother of change
in you i abide

hold me close
holy ghost

the devil makes light
while the lord’s making hay
i’m breaking his heart
as i’m sailing away
he thinks that i’m lonely
he thinks that i’m lost
well, i make my way
and i pay the cost

take me in
mother wind

1. There are thought to be somewhere between 600-1,700 shipwrecks in Lake Michigan and between 6,000-10,000 in the Great Lakes altogether. Why so many? Aren’t lakes little and sweet and placid? First of all, let’s have some respect and call them ‘inland seas’ — they contain 20% of the world’s freshwater and 90% of the U.S. supply, enough to cover the continental states with ten feet of water.

Because the Great Lakes are in the middle of a continent and insulated by land, they have higher temperature differentials between air and water than possible on the ocean (the water is still warm from summer but the weather has gotten cold), often as much as 40 degrees Fahrenheit. This is particularly severe in November and December, when most shipwrecks have historically occurred. (As a late November birthday, this pleases me: born under the star of shipwrecks. High temperature differentials. Perilous waters. Sailors beware.)

The temperature gap between air and water causes huge waves to form, much larger than ocean waves. And it gets worse: while ocean waves can gradually peter out in the expanse of water, the Great Lakes are bounded by land on all sides, so their waves ricochet against shore and change direction. On a boat, it’s bad enough to contend with massive waves but deadly when they are battering you from multiple directions. And so the ships splinter, crack, and sink. Additionally, ice is a peril, sheets and chunks of it stabbing into vessels and slicing their underbellies.

The Eber Ward shipwreck in Lake Michigan (1909). It picked up corn in Milwaukee and was headed to Port Huron when it ran into ice. The bow was torn off and it sank within ten minutes.

Shipwrecks are better preserved in the Great Lakes than in oceans due to the cold temperatures, freshwater, low-oxygen environment, and absence of toredo worms (‘shipworms’) present in saltwater that devour wood. In the 1990s, invasive zebra and quagga mussels took over the Great Lakes, disrupting food webs, decimating phytoplankton, and clogging pipes. But as a result of their devouring dominion, the waters of these inland seas, once murky, are now crystal clean. Were you so inclined, you could dive down into the cold clear waters and see a perfectly preserved ship, bodies and all. Whatever you find, please tell me. Only 15% of the floor of Lake Michigan has been mapped; it is said that more is known about the surface of Mars than the bottom of the Great Lakes (thus the wide range of # of possible shipwrecks in their waters, per the beginning of this footnote). I adore a mystery but am personally disinclined to scuba dive; please comment if you have been to the floor of one of the Great Lakes; I want every detail.