rage blackout in flyover country

[dira]

I manage to go long periods of time without remembering this about myself, and then it occurs to me again. I am a Midwesterner/Rust Belter in this very specific, defensive way.

I get sincerely angry when people impugn the awesomeness of the Great Lakes.

THEY'RE REALLY BIG, OKAY. REALLY, REALLY BIG. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THEM, BUT YOU HAVE SEEN OTHER LAKES THAT ARE NOT OFFICIALLY TITLED "GREAT", AND THEREFORE YOU THINK YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE LIKE BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHAT A LAKE IS, NO. NO, YOU DO NOT.

PATRICK KANE DOES, THOUGH, I FUCKING PROMISE YOU.

Comments

[thalia]

+1,000,000

[reginagiraffe]

They generate their own weather. Enough said.

[dira]

Yes! I love when you have the logical scientific answer. :D

[siegeofangels]

So-big-you-can't-see-across-them-they-contain-actual-shipwrecks-the-Coast-Guard-patrols-them GREAT MOTHERFUCKING LAKES.

[dira]

FUCK YEAH.

[kuwdora]

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

[magibrain]

When you cannot by visual observation tell whether you are standing on the shore of a lake or an ocean...

[dira]

To be nitpicky, because that's something I might have said before I had actually stood on the shore of the ocean: you can tell by the waves. Ocean waves are indeed a lot bigger. But FUCK YEAH, BLUE WATER TO THE HORIZON.

[flamebyrd]

I remember being a little confused in that one episode of Due South where they're on the lake and it's huge like the ocean - I was actually vaguely wondering if maybe I'd forgotten where Chicago was. And then I visited Toronto and it became a lot clearer. (Though of course they are not on the same lake.)

[dira]

Ahahaha, yeah. Lake means something different in this context! And the Lake They Call Michigan is much bigger than Ontario, which is the one Toronto is on, but visually at any given point they're about the same--blue water to the horizon is blue water to the horizon. :)

[kiezh]

Whenever I hear a mention of the Great Lakes I get Stan Rogers on autoplay in my head (and Tanglefoot and other artists who've written a lot of songs about those lakes and their associated tragedies and triumphs).

I told that kid a hundred times "Don't take the Lakes for granted.
They go from calm to a hundred knots so fast they seem enchanted."
But tonight some red-eyed Wiarton girl lies staring at the wall,
And her lover's gone into a white squall.
(Stan Rogers, "White Squall")

I've never seen any of the Lakes, but as a folkie who loves music about bodies of water and the complicated relationships people have with them: yeah, the Great Lakes are a big deal.

[dira]

Oooh, you know, I don't think I have that particular Stan Rogers song. But, yeah, these are lakes that kill people--even now, and not as a freak accident but as a known and irreducible hazard.

[kiezh]

Here! It's a good song. Albeit depressing.

Stan Rogers - White Squall

I also really like Tanglefoot's The Angel of Long Point, which is based on a true story about an awesome woman who made a habit of saving people from Lake Erie:

Eight men wait for a freezing death,
Lashed to the rigging of a broken wreck.
The Conductor she was a fine old ship,
But she never will sail again.
And the men all pray but their hope is gone,
Schooner's smashed, but in the dawn,
A welcome smile and a woman's face,
With a good strong hand she'll lead them all ashore,
Abigail Becker will see them safe once more.

[dira]

Oooh, awesome! Thank you!

[fox]

PREACH.

LOVE,
CLEVELAND.

[dira]

TO, AS IT WERE, THE CHOIR. :D

[gingicat]

I think that people who have not seen the Great Lakes get hung up on the name. When I say "inland sea" people get it. I remember moving from Michigan to LA at age 8, being told "look! the Pacific Ocean is so big you can't see the other side!" and being confused as to why this was a helpful descriptor for a body of water considerably larger than Lake Michigan. :)

[dira]

Ahahaha, yeah. I mean, the waves are bigger on an ocean shore! But the whole water-to-the-horizon phenomenon, pfft, we've got that. (Then people get on about the amazingness of salt water, and I find my instinctive reaction is BUT WHAT IS THE USE OF A HUGE BODY OF WATER YOU CAN'T DRINK, WHAT IS THAT.)

[missmollyetc]

IT'S BUOYANT, OKAY? BUOYANT.

[dira]

BUT GROSS.

[missmollyetc]

...FISH ARE SPAWNING IN YOUR 'LAKES,' TOO, YOU KNOW.

[dira]

But it tastes sooo goooooood.

[missmollyetc]

YOUR KINK IS NOT OKAY.

[dira]

Dilution is the solution to pollution! There's a loooooot of lake water and, sadly, fewer and fewer fish spawning all the time. *g*

[missmollyetc]

Well, now I'm sad and environmentally conscious. ::pouts::

[dira]

Awww. I will not explain about zebra mussels and Asian carp, then.

(But the main point is: no salt!)

[mermaid]

I live right by the ocean, in a country (New Zealand) where you can't ever be more than a few hours' drive from the coast. We have some pretty big lakes, but you can always see the other side.

When we visited Canada and a family friend took us to the nearest Great Lake, it blew my mind. I had been missing the ocean, and this was enough of a substitute to be soothing, but the lack of salt air and the calm water were strange.

We were - just checked on Google Maps - on the shore of Georgian Bay, not even on the main body of Lake Huron itself. And we still couldn't see any land on the other side!

[dira]

And, conversely, I am sort of mystified why you would want to live or sunbathe near a gigantic body of water you can't drink, although I realize not everyone would fit huddled around the available freshwater lakes. *g*

I have barely ever been up to Georgian Bay, but I grew up just a little south of the southern edge of Lake Huron, so that's still sort of My Lake, and I am therefore possessively proud that you were impressed by it! *g*

[aurora_novarum]

I remember being shocked when I realized how intense the great lakes were. I mean I knew they were huge, but the weather patterns and dangerous currents on an inland body of water surprised me. They are definitely mini-oceans.

[dira]

Yeah, I guess this is one of those things I grew up totally acclimated to, so it never seemed like a big deal--of course we lived in a microclimate where big storms often turned aside from the Lake! What else would they do? :)

[krait]

Funny how one discovers that trait within themselves at sporadic times.

I have a similar issue with the place I was born: try suggesting to me that it's a featureless wasteland, and I will pull out my Polite Sneer and a very long list of Childhood Memories in Extremely Diverse Climates And Geography and make you listen to all of them. :D

[dira]

Heeee, indeed! I am guessing ... the American Southwest, by your icon and the stereotype?

[krait]

Very good. :D (The icon's sort of an accident, as it's merely a rarely-used backup that I'm placeholder-ing with till I can draw a username-appropriate one, but if it helped, huzzah.)

I figured you'd guess either the Southwest or maybe the Kansas/Oklahoma/etc. (which has a -- as I understand it, somewhat undeserved -- reputation for being a vast flat uninteresting Nowhereland).

"Isn't it just a big desert?" is a frequent response to tales of my birthplace. And then I explain to them that if I drive three hours north I could go skiing, and drag out the photos of little!me up to my shorts in the Verde River, and try to describe the endless pine-forest curvature of the Mogollon Rim as seen while hiking...

Not to mention how the desert is, in fact, lovely and often mountainous and very, very awesome and in no wise is it a featureless heap of sand. *facepalming*

[dira]

Guhhhh, that looks gorgeous. I've never set foot anywhere between, uh... wow, this is sad... Minnesota and coastal California. There's a lot I need to go see, but even just thinking of the desert there's so many different places I'd love to see! And mountains and rivers and mmmmmm. ♥

[krait]

Hee, thank you, and yeah -- THAT is as much my childhood home as the desert part! And I'm incredibly attached to the desert part, too; nothing on earth rivals the smell of creosote bushes in midsummer, or the way the evening smells during monsoon season with stormclouds sweeping in preceded by blowing dust, and the lightning is visible from miles away well before the rain hits. I stood on the back patio next to the grapefruit tree just to watch and breathe in the smell. (Just typing this makes me feel twinges of homesickness!)

I have seen the Great Lakes only once (Chicago trip!), and found them very awesome, in the older sense of that word. So grey, and so expansive, and so distant. Very much, in some senses, like the oceans I have visited, but in others clearly alien, though just as fascinating to watch.

When I finally have a place of my own, I'd like to dig up photos of the various places I've been intensely touched by and have large versions framed. I have favourite places all over, from the tidal marshes of Cape Cod to the scrub hills of Idaho to the village meadows of Germany to the cliffs of Dover, and since I can only live with any one of them at a time (at absolute best!) I would love to have a way to bring them with me...

[mmegaera]

When I was on my Long Trip years ago, one stop I made was at Split Rock Lighthouse, on the northern shore of Lake Superior (Split Rock Lighthouse is beautiful and fascinating, BTW, with an enormous gorgeous clamshell Fresnel lens, but I digress). There was a trailhead near the lighthouse labeled "to lake." I thought, ooh, nifty, there's a lake to go see, too? Then I walked down umpteen wooden stairs and lo and behold, there I was, at Lake Superior. Talk about a classic V-8 moment. Somehow I had been expecting something like a pond, off back in the woods away from the "ocean." Lake Superior looks like an ocean, sounds like an ocean, and feels like an ocean (except for a lack of salt). And that's the way my subconscious brain had interpreted it. So, yeah, lake. But incredibly big honking magnificent lake.

[dira]

I have never been up to the north shore of Lake Superior, but it is on my list of things to do sometime! Superior is definitely the Greatest of Great Lakes. ♥

[mmegaera]

Split Rock Lighthouse is about an hour northeast of Duluth, and well worth a visit if you ever happen to be anywhere near.

I lived on the shore of Lake Erie (in Port Clinton, Ohio) for about a year twenty-five years ago. For some reason I never had a problem thinking of it as a lake [g].

[dira]

Lake Erie could fit into Superior something like eight or ten times over, so that's reasonable. :)

[ladysorka]

I'll freely admit, now that I no longer live in easy driving distance of Lake Superior, sometimes I will drive to the Pacific Ocean because it reminds of the lake. I may be doing something backwards.

[dira]

:D :D :D

I see nothing backward here!

[missmollyetc]

I am told these lakes have a lot of water?

[dira]

TEN PERCENT OF THE WORLD'S SUPPLY OF FRESH SURFACE WATER JUST IN LAKE SUPERIOR.

[missmollyetc]

THESE STATISTICS ARE SEXY AND REFRESHING!

As I have said repeatedly,

[dorothy1901]

If you can stand on one shore and see the opposite shore, it's not a lake, it's a pond.
(former Rochesterian, here.)

Re: As I have said repeatedly,

[dira]

I'm willing to allow that there are lakes and then there are Lakes. But you can't disrespect the distinction. *g*

[petra]

Funny, I'd think that the part where you can *see* the Great Lakes on your average US map would be a clue that they're not fucking around HUGE.

But then I take lake effect snow for granted, because of course lakes affect weather. Naturally.

[dira]

Yeah, I think they just kind of fade into The Middle Part in the minds of people who do not know them directly.