There are lakes, and then there’s Lake Superior. After a recent road trip to the shores of this enormous freshwater lake, we feel obliged to share the magic of it with our audience.
It’s the kind of place that doesn’t ask for your respect so much as demand it with a slow, glacial stare. If you’ve never visited it before, you’d swear you’d be looking out on an endless ocean.
Photo by Sarah Shull on Unsplash
Lake Superior hums with a prehistoric energy. This is no quaint canoe-and-campfire lake. This is a freshwater leviathan that could swallow entire countries and still have room for dessert.
Here’s are some of the reasons why it’s so otherworldly.
Image of Lake Superior taken from the International Space Station. CC.
1. It’s Basically a Liquid Continent
Stretching across 31,700 square miles, Lake Superior is so vast that it straight-up bullies your sense of scale. If you drained it dry (please don’t), you could bury North and South America under a foot of water.
It’s the largest freshwater lake by surface area on the planet. It’s a true an inland ocean that doesn’t need salt to be wild. Indeed, Lake Superior holds over 10% of the fresh water on earth. The size of the country of Austria, Lake Superior is truly enormous.
Photo by Andrew Ling on Unsplash
2. It’s a Time Machine With Shoreline Access
Superior is over a billion years old, born from the ancient Midcontinent Rift. The cliffs that surround it? Carved by ice and fire. The water? Cold enough to preserve history in eerie stasis.
Beneath the surface, wooden shipwrecks sit with their rigging intact, as if waiting for a ghost crew to clock in.
With an average depth of 483 feet (147m), it reaches depths of 1,333, or 406 meters deep.
Photo by Matt Barton on Unsplash
3. It’s Got the Mood Swings of a Norse God
One minute, Superior’s a sparkling mirror, reflecting the sky. The next? It’s a wild, foam-filled storm with waves as big as pickup trucks!
This lake is so massive it creates its own weather. There are fierce clouds, unpredictable waves, and fog that makes compasses go haywire.
No surprise the Ojibwe called it Gichigami , or “great sea.”
The Edmund Fitzgerald that sunk in Superior. Image CC by Greenmars.
4. It’s Haunted (In the Most Poetic Way)
More than 350 ships have vanished beneath its surface, but none loom larger than the Edmund Fitzgerald, lost in 1975.
The lake never gave up its dead. Gordon Lightfoot turned it into a haunting folk elegy. But the truth is, Lake Superior has always held its secrets tight, both cold and silent.
Photo by Hans Isaacson on Unsplash.
5. Its Coastline Features Both Dramatic Rocky and Sandy Shores
Crimson cliffs, labyrinthine caves, and ancient forests that whisper in 40 dialects of wind. The shoreline rolls out for over 2,700 miles. That’s more than the entire U.S. west coast. Stand on a Superior beach at sunset and it feels like the edge of the world. Maybe it is.
Lake Superior is the kind of place that makes you feel beautifully insignificant. So if you ever find yourself staring across its slate-blue expanse, take a moment to shut up and listen. The lake may just whisper something back.
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