116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
A Superior trip
Wild Side column: Appreciating the beauty of Temperance River
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Out of a Boundary Waters wilderness, through boreal forests it flows, its pristine waters crashing downhill, dropping 1,215 feet in its 39.2-mile course, carving its own gorge as it goes, onward and downward through primeval basalt bedrock, plunging headlong over falls and into chutes, pausing in maelstroms, roaring and foaming as it falls 162 feet in its last half mile — the very definition of a waterfall — before merging with the big lake they call Gitche Gumee.
The ill-tempered Temperance River, one of nearly 60 north shore Lake Superior tributaries, discharges its water into the world’s largest fresh water lake by surface area, the repository of 10 percent of the world’s surface water — 2,900 cubic miles, enough to cover both North and South America to a depth of 1 foot.
So much water so clear you can see the bottom 27 feet below the surface.
So deep that its deepest spot (1,333 feet) would, if drained, be the lowest point on the continent, lower than Death Valley.
So big and deep and clear that it could absorb all of Iowa’s dirty water with hardly any increase in volume or discoloration.
From our lakeshore lodging near the mouth of the Temperance my family and I in early August reveled in the power, beauty and serenity of all that water.
The power of a stream plummeting 30 feet straight down in a falls called the Drillbit for its ability to bore through solid rock.
The beauty of the smoke-tinged orange sun rising over the becalmed lake, its shimmering reflection on the water illuminating the dawn as much as the sun itself.
The serenity of waves breaking every 2.5 seconds on the basalt peninsula beneath the deck at our quarters, sparkling white foam tiptoeing onto the rock and retreating from it with a rhythmic and relaxing hiss.
Water flowing over rock, as soothing a sound as nature makes, the soundtrack of the north shore.
Not to mention, of course, the sheer joy of watching my grandkids — 9-year-old Lanni Love and her 13-year-old brother Michael, urban dwellers from Ames — transfixed by a natural wonder on par with Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon, watching them play on black sand beaches, build cairns with wave-polished flat stones, cavort in sparkling, feet-numbing 50-degree water.
Meanwhile, I lapse into a reverie in which I co-star with a cartoon bear in a 1950s television commercial portraying a land of cool enchantment, a land of “limpid lakes and sunset breezes,” a “land of pines and lofty balsams.”
The copy writers at the Campbell-Mithun ad agency in Minneapolis no doubt helped to sell lots of Hamm’s beer. For many young baby boomers like me, they also oriented internal compasses due north to the “land of sky blue waters.”
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