Last Friday, as a feisty snowstorm plummeted northern Minnesota, I watch an enormous Hawaii Five-O breaker run the length of Grand Marais harbor. The wave kept a perfect curl until it crashed into the shore. Lake Superior was surly and curly.
Last Friday, as a feisty snowstorm plummeted northern Minnesota, I watch an enormous Hawaii Five-O breaker run the length of Grand Marais harbor. The wave kept a perfect curl until it crashed into the shore. Lake Superior was surly and curly.
Driving home that evening, just a few hours after the heavy snow stopped falling, I saw three heads bobbing in the waves offshore from a pebble beach. A trio of surfers was having fun.
Surfers are relatively recent arrivals to the North Shore, but I am no longer surprised to see them. They’re out there on the stormiest days braving a lake with a dangerous reputation, just to catch a ride on a wave. At this time of year, Lake Superior is shockingly cold, so being in the water, even ensconced in a protective suit, takes admirable gumption.
As someone who has encountered cold water, big waves, and bad weather in the course of other pursuits, I feel a kinship to Superior’s surfers. Most are twenty-somethings, which accounts for their apparent fearlessness regarding the big lake. Obviously they share the passion known to duck hunters and others who live by the weather, because they have to be out in the worst of it to find good surf.
Surfers also represent the new outdoor user, the young recruits entering our ranks. They burn with the fire to enjoy the outdoors, but their motivations are vastly different from the hunters and anglers who came before them. They are not content to wait for the flock to decoy or the fish to bite. They want to get down and dirty with Mother Nature right now.
I wonder if surfing kindles a deeper appreciation of the outdoors. Will today’s surfers be tomorrow’s conservationists?