All profits from the sale of the book go to support Friends of the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.
Sometimes I elaborate:
- After a full late breakfast Mim and I take the Union Mine trail clockwise, the recommended direction, but not our usual heading. The day is calm, clear, and crisp. Nobody else is around. After leaving the Union River rapids and passing the outpost camping area, we get back on the trail heading for the Little Union River Gorge. Just into the big old hemlocks, Mim gives me a sign (finger to lips) …and points to a deer off to the right; then a second one. They seem unconcerned about us. Except for their munching on leaves, we all are still for a long time. Light filters through deciduous trees. Dew is dripping from little hemlocks. The click of my camera seems too loud. J6.1
- The sand beach intrigued me more than ever this trip. On Wednesday it was narrow but very thick. On Thursday morning a dramatic deposit of fresh sand was working its way eastward. By 9:30 our neighbor’s beach was as wide as I have ever seen it, and moving our way. (I had to leave for the south before I could see the full effect.) J1: 34.
- The animals I have crossed paths with since 1970 in the UP are big & small, wild & domestic, friendly & elusive, plentiful & endangered. The probability of seeing them has changed over time. I see more eagles, deer, bear, cranes, and turkeys but fewer otters, swallows, loons, partridge, and yes, biting flies.
Jottings like these have accumulated over the decades and become raw material for reflecting on Lake Superior and the UP.
Table of Contents
Foreword and/or preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Pull of the UP
Chapter 2: The Big Water
Chapter 3: The Land and its Weather
Chapter 4: Shelter
Chapter 5: Animals: Hosts & Guests
Chapter 6: Moving around in this Wilderness
Chapter 7: Solitude, Time, and Those Dreams
Bibliography
Endnotes
Acknowledgements
Index
About the author
Status regarding publication.
Reader Comments About Discovering Lake Superior
So you think you know all about Lake Superior? Well, here is a new book by Dr. Tom Warren, a seasonal resident of our Ontonagon area who came to know the lake through actual hands-on-contact. Tom and Mim Warren, who have their winter residence in Beloit, Wisconsin, have been coming to the Ontonagon area for the last 40 years. [In this book] you will learn things about the BIG Lake that you have taken for granted for years and possibly never gave much thought to. You will [want to] get a first edition copy of what is sure to become a collector’s classic.
What a delight…to pick up Discovering Lake Superior, open to a page at random, and read! Whatever I happen upon triggers a smile, and I hear Tom’s voice, and he has me hooked. He has beautifully told the story of this north country, a mostly wild gem of water and woods.
[Discovering Lake Superior] has the kind of scientific dimension you might expect from a professor, full of tidbits about weather, geology, lake depths, trees and vegetation, and always shining through is an insatiable sense of curiosity — about everything…The tone of the book, however, is one of awe and inspiration and a deep longing for what today’s society with all of its modernity seems to have lost: a primal connection to nature. [Warren’s] obvious appreciation for the beauty around him is never ending in his writings.
In Discovering Lake Superior Tom Warren writes, “If the unabridged story of the Porcupine Mountains were a chronologically ordered thousand page book, with each page representing a million years, Lake Superior would first appear on the last page, at the bottom.” Here is where Tom is at his best, taking the measure of time and change. The wilderness is slowly returning as the human population of this lonely and remote area ebbs, done in by decades of a flagging economy. Wolves, cougars and moose, long absent from the scene, are moving back in as people move out. Still, this vast and remote land, once the Northern Frontier of the United States, is a jewel waiting to be discovered by newcomers and rediscovered by Yoopers who appreciate and sustain a Lake Superior treasure. So is this book.