Travels With Mishipeshu: An American Hitchhikes Lake Superior
Part four: Mirror Lake to Agawa Rock
For the next several weeks I am featuring a memoir of an epic if reckless hitchhiking trip I took from Iowa to New York City, via Canada, back in 1984. The route led me over and around the Canadian side of Lake Superior.
Part seven. Part six. Part five. Part four. Part three. Part two. Part one.
The paradox of hitchhiking in Canada was this: the distance between town ensured that while there wasn’t much traffic, if you got a ride it would take you far. There were hours between rides. I found ways to pass the time. I listened to my Walkman. When I tired of my own music I play entire albums in my head, not just the parts with words, but entire albums, guitar solos and everything. I’d often sing along. No one was watching.
I’d put pennies out on the center lines of the road, and then the line on the far side of the road. I played games with myself about when I’d leave one, when I’d pick it up. I developed lines of magical thinking about when I’d get a ride, and which cars would pick me up. The first car after I left a penny on the center line. The first car after I retrieved a penny from the far side of the road. Every third car. Then every tenth car. Then blue cars. Then pickups. Then cars with US plates.
In addition to the magical thinking, I stumbled across a few pieces of concrete advice. The first one is this: make eye contact! If the driver doesn’t make eye contact with you, he or she doesn’t have to see you as a person, and can pass by without guilt. If you make eye contact, the driver is more likely to see you as an actual living person, and thus more likely to take pity on your situation and pull over to offer you a ride.
The other piece of advice I learned early was that cheaper cars were more likely to pick you up than nicer cars. I focused my eye contact and magical thinking on them. Cracked windshields, misfiring engines, dents, hail damage: these were my people!
I spent about week tracing the northern shore of Lake Superior. Whenever I got tired of hitchhiking for the day, I’d just retreat into the woods. I don’t recall there ever being a problem. If I passed an official campground I stayed there: Pukaskwa National Park, Lake Superior Provencial Park, Pancake Bay Provincial Park.
Mornings were all similar. It was cold. I’d wake up shivering in my tent, curled inside my sleeping bag. The only thought that successfully roused me out of my warm cocoon was the prospect of a hot cup of tea (I’m a dedicated coffee drinker now). I’d dig out my tiny little campstove and my metal cup, unfold the stove, and light it up. Within minutes I had a hot cup of tea to warm my hands, and as the sun rose and the day warmed I’d break down my tent, stuff everything into my pack, tromp back out to Highway 17, and stick out my thumb to continue my journey.
Lake Superior was at my side the entire time, like a great silent beast. It’s the largest freshwater lake in the world, and one of the deepest, holding a full 10% of the Earth’s fresh water supply. Wildlife populated the shores and surrounding forest: caribou, deer, fox (I am reading now that bears are plentiful and am kind of glad I didn’t know that at the time). Mostly what I saw were birds, of a hundred different varieties, none of which I can name, so I will not attempt to now. Their colors, their birdsong, the beat of their wings were a constant companion.
I’d see ships passing through, slow as dreams, carrying iron ore and coal, wheat and corn, seemingly in no hurry to get to their destinations. I’d watch them for hours; I had hours. Sometimes the lake would dip below the land for a time, and then, as I caught a ride and got some mileage behind me, it would suddenly rise up, low on the horizon, a continuing submarine presence.
I would soon learn a new name for that presence.
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A schoolteacher, off for the summer, drove me past the giant goose of Wawa, which is sort of an unofficial hitchhiker’s monument, though I did not know that at the time. It’s literally a statue of a giant Canadian goose, 28 feet tall, and a wingspan of 20 feet. It was built, I am reading now, to draw tourists to the town after the highway bypassed downtown Wawa. The word “Wawa” means “Land of the Big Goose.” I remember it vividly.
Apparently, the giant goose of Wawa is kind of a Bermuda Triangle for hitchhikers. None have disappeared, but legend has it that hitchhikers have spent entire days next to the giant goose, trying in vain to get a ride out. The teacher told me tales of crowds of stranded hitchhikers in lines next to the goose, desperate for escape.
We did not see the fabled line of hitchhikers next to the goose. Literally my only memories of this ride were the giant goose and him telling me he was a schoolteacher, which at the time eased my mind in terms of his trustworthiness. I remember being trusting enough to take a nap in his car while he drove.
I’ve just spent a half an hour trying to pin down when and where, exactly, one of the high points of the trip occurred, by searching the Eastern shore of Lake Superior on Google Maps.
Forty years ago, after a hike through thick rocky forest, I broke through the trees to see the impossible expanse of Lake Superior before me. The shoreline was beach (a surprising amount of the Lake Superior shoreline is beach). Beyond the beach, to the left, is a great wall of rock, the mighty waves of Lake Superior broke against the rocks. The trail led out to the water, splashing along the base of the wall. At one point I was required to grab hold of a large metal chain that has been drilled into the rock, in order to continue to the edge of the lookout. I can still feel the cold wet metal of the chain links in my hand.
And while the sight of the chaos of churning waves on the surface of Lake Superior is certainly arresting, it’s not the most memorable aspect of that spot, nor is it the reason to venture out to the edge of the rocks.
The pictographs are the reason for the hike. Painted on a 15 story granite cliff face, they’re known as the Agawa Rock Pictographs, and they are in remarkable condition for being hundreds of years old and in the harsh, weathering condition of constant water and wind from the lake. According to a website devoted to the pictographs, the reason for this is red ochre used to paint them.
“The ochre was mixed with fish oil and animal grease, then dabbed on the cliffs. They are remarkably durable and have withstood the vicious elements of Lake Superior. The reason that they have lasted this long is because the rock secretes a clear mineral fluid that acts as a natural varnish. There are reports from Ojibwa natives that a huge slab of some of the best paintings fell into the water several years ago.”
– Mikel B. Classan, On the Road
The Ojibwa painted pictures of horses and riders, canoes, beavers, cranes. A magical protector of the area and the tribe is shown as well: Mishipeshu, the standout image of the pictographs. The word means "the Great Lynx.” It’s a huge red dragon/cat thing several feet long, and described as having “the head and paws of a large cat, the horns of a bison, the scaly body of a snake, and a spikey back and tail.”
The pictograph, in real life, is large and red and easily visible.
Mishipeshu is alleged to live in Lake Superior, and protect many of the living things in its environs. Perhaps that was the presence I’d felt the entire trip. After all the dumb risks I took, I ended up finishing the trip happy and unharmed. Mishipeshu protected me.
My takeaway from the experience (and I remember writing this in my journal at the time, the one stolen from my Dad’s pick-up) was this: someone had stood on this exact spot hundreds of years ago, and beheld the power and majesty of Lake Superior before them, frigid water splashing in their face in the cold summer sun, and was so moved by the presence of it they were moved to create art.
Amazingly, historians know the actual human artist of many of these pictographs: Shingwaukonce, which means Little White Pine. Here’s more, from Mikel Classan’s excellent writing on his site.
“The author of these drawings has been known right along. Shingwaukonce (Little White Pine) was from the Grand Island tribe, in Munising Bay, also on Lake Superior. He became Grand Shaman of the Lake Superior Ojibwa. According to oral histories, he went to Agawa to gather fresh power on a vision quest. …Shingwaukonce completed his…rituals, which included drawing the rock art, and then led his warriors in a revolt.”
– Mikel B. Classan, On the Road
If I began the trip in hopes of it becoming a hero’s journey, like Joseph Campbell talked about on PBS, meeting Mishipeshu—and by extension, the Ojibwa artist Shingwaukonce—at Agawa Rock fit the trope perfectly. This was a moment worthy of myth.
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The site of the Agawa Rock Pictographs is also near the site of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. If you haven’t heard the song (and I find it hard to believe that you haven’t), the Edmund Fitzgerald was a ship carrying iron ore to Duluth when it was caught in a terrible storm and sank. 29 men died.
Gordon Lightfoot, the Canadian troubadour, wrote a song about it, called The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Lots of plaques commemorated various aspects of the history of the event. The song played from all the shops and gas stations and information booths in the general vicinity of the site of the wreck, seemingly on an endlessly repeating loop.
I love history, I love Canada, and I enjoyed learning about the wreck. And I’ve got nothing against Gordon Lightfoot. That said? Really not a big fan of that song.
Peace.
To be continued…
Interesting...