That little figure in the midst of all those big red pines is meeee looking straight out to where the Edmund Fitzgerald sank 50 years ago today. Something like 40-45 miles north (more or less) of where I am standing on the bank above the beach on my family’s Lake Superior property, in front of the moomincabin.

I like this pic a lot but it doesn’t show the major landmarks you can see from our beach: Round Island is in the middle, Gros Cap is on the right (in Canananada) and Iroquois Point is on the left (America). You’ll have to imagine those landmarks. I have always highly valued this property, which my grandparents bought 100 years ago. Somehow this summer, I was hit by a lightning bolt at how truly gorgeous our land is. I can’t put it into words exactly. And why did it take so many years for that lightning bolt to hit? Because when I was a kid, I was running around with my beach urchin cousins like “wild Indians” and later on busily taking care of my contribution to generation 4’s beach urchins.

I’ll try to put all that into words some other day (or not). The night the Fitz sank, my brother was in high school. He was in his bedroom at our parents’ house in Sault Ste. Siberia. As a HUGE Boat Nerd (google it), he had a fancy radio in his room that picked up freighter communications. He listened all night to the Arthur Anderson (another freighter following the Fitz across Lake Superior that night) call the Fitz. No answer.

Lake Superior’s “seabed” is littered with shipwrecks (here’s the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point). My Boat Nerd brother loved the Fitz but later in his life when he was a full-fledged automotive engineer (and husband, father, and talented jazz trombonist), he wrote a letter to the editor of Lake Superior Magazine supporting more coverage of other, particularly older, shipwrecks.

We don’t have as many shipwrecks these days. Why? Because weather forecasting has become so much more accurate. When major storms are threatening, there are sheltered places where lake freighters hang out until a storm runs its course. One of those places is Whitefish Bay, straight out from where I am standing.

So, even though this pic is hazy and the landmarks I grew up with are not visible, I like it. I’m thinking it aligns with what the Edmund Fitzgerald might have been facing that long ago night.

P.S. I know people love to hate Gordon Lightfoot’s song. I tried that on a bit but it didn’t fit. I’ve listened to that song a bazillion times in my life and I still like it. For folks who were close to where the ship went down, we needed it.

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