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cmrdporcupine
slowmovintarget
For me, my favorite memories of childhood are around those lakes.
Fishing in a small row boat with my father near the break-water into Lake Superior, for example. My dad had to row furiously because we had drifted too close. It was a nervous couple of minutes as we inched away from rough water back to the inner lake. You don't take a rowboat out onto Lake Superior, Lake Superior takes your rowboat, and you.
I recall the stone beaches in Copper Harbor... No sand, just large rounded stones, smoothed by the constant beating of Lake Superior's icy water. In the summer, my sister and I would wade out on the stones and see what we could find in the water. It was freezing cold! But it was so cool to walk on stone instead of sand.
The sandy mini-peninsulas on the Northern tip of Michigan's lower peninsula also hold fond memories. Sleeping Bear Dunes, looking out across Lake Michigan. Clean air, seagulls hanging in the sky...
Lots of stories that remain like impressionist paintings and leave that taste of happy childhood memories behind.
Yes, the Great Lakes are pretty great.
godtoldmetodoit
I grew up in south west Michigan and absolutely took them for granted. After almost 5 years in Austin we decided to come back to Michigan with the birth of our first child. I missed the lakes terribly, just totally took for granted that not everywhere has fresh water surrounding them on all sides.
In this climate change age, being close to so much fresh water really helps calm my nerves knowing that I am in a spot that will be able to weather the changes better then most and possibly become a refuge for more people.
crystoloxy
OT: So many folks find themselves moving “home” when kids arrive, for a variety of reasons. As someone considering doing the same I’d be curious to hear yours.
I spent last summer in the Midwest (on a lake) and I found it first comforting (no fire season!) and then distressing as the rains failed to come and smoke eventually arrived instead. One of the driest summers I can recall. P
skeeter2020
I think every economic migrant I've ever met (myself included) talks about moving home realtively soon "I'm only here for 2/5/ < 10 years", but very few of us do because we become established, make new friends, acquire lots of possessions. Some DO move home for major life events like kids arriving (or leaving) but I don't think it's as many as you assume, it's just very notable.
I'm lucky enough to have two sets of family still back home, close enough to visit easily but far enough to make it meaningful and intentional. The desire to move back has weakened every year.
dimitrios1
My guess is the biggest reason is to be closer to friends, family, and/or community. Having help to raise kids is huge. And when you have kids, you begin to focus on the real important things in life, and the type of environment you want your children to grow up in, and speaking for myself personally, I wanted them around as much family and love as possible.
It's also easier to do this now with more remote work opportunities and with more tech hubs across the country now.
nickysielicki
Pick your poison. Last summer was great because the lack of moisture meant a lack of mosquitoes which meant more enjoyable outdoorsing. I went an entire trip in the boundary waters without using bug spray. Unbelievable!
causi
I wouldn't bet too much on that.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-16/the-great...
cmrdporcupine
It's a good article, and I think it's right that things could get much worse here. But it's missing the point, or avoiding it, that things are going to get much much worse in some other places, in particular the US and Canadian west. Record forest fires followed by record floods in BC last year were a bit of a taste of the future, unfortunately.
lettergram
> In this climate change age
The Great Lakes only exist because the massive ice sheet melted and left the lakes as a deposit some 10-15,000 years ago.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few thousand years the lakes largely dissipate.
That said I grew up near the lake, definitely something that’s awesome to live near
bregma
The depths of all the lakes except Eerie are below mean sea level. It would require a prolonged period of new orogeny for the lakes to disappear. Since that hasn't happened in a few billion years in the area, it's more likely that the sun will expand to encompass the orbit of the Earth and vapourize the entire planet first.
Hardly something that will happen in a few thousand years. But you never know.
khuey
The Great Lakes will eventually go away, but not for the reason you think. Niagara Falls is eroding its way upstream and will eventually reach Lake Erie, at which point Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan will all drain away downstream.
cmrdporcupine
A few thousand years is a long time. The lakes will be an essential treasure for the next 200 tumultuous years when water supplies become difficult.
Imagine what it was like here when the ice sheets first retreated. Niagara falls but times 100.
zamadatix
Superior was around a lot longer than that. Regardless based on the extreme water height swings since the glacial retreat water level seems to now depend more on climate and what the outlets are doing than anything to do with the melt off from the last glacial period. With humans already having much to do with both of these what will happen to them in the long run seems strictly up to our choices.
throwaway894345
If this is true ("only b/c of melting ice sheet; will dissipate in next few thousand years") then wouldn't we expect water levels to be continuously dropping? Seems more likely that they exist because rain/meltwater makes its way to the basin and keeps them filled (irrespective of whether or not they were originally filled with meltwater from the ice sheet 15kya).
totemandtoken
Man I also live in Michigan and I've spent every moment I can trying to get out. I mean, good for you for figuring out what you want in life and making that happen but you couldn't pay me enough to come back to this place if and when I leave.
Funny enough though, you sound very similar to my friend who moved back to Michigan from Portland also because of his first child, so who knows? Maybe there's something to Michigan for raising a family
topspin
I go swimming in the West short of lake Huron. It is by far the best water for plain old swimming I've experienced. It's a big body of water so nice rolling waves are constant. Yet, unlike some inland lakes there is no stagnancy, just clear salt free water. Huge sand bars, miles long a hundred meters or more from shore.
a2tech
My wife and I are looking to buy a lakehouse/property up in Oscoda because we love watching the sun come up and swimming in the lake.
suifbwish
You live in one of the states where there is no squatter law and where you can legally shoot and kill someone for trying to steal your car. There is no maximum rifle magazine size. Castle doctrine for the win. Michigan has some interesting demographics. About half of the population in Michigan is concentrated in about 4-5 cities, the other half of the population are spread across much more area and more spread apart. This explains why Michigan can be either a republican or democrat state, most of the votes for state are fairly tied.
gilbetron
I don't know why you are getting downvoted - as a lifelong michigan resident, the politics are weird and getting weirder. The Michigan Militia and their offshoots are still around and still scary.
auto
I've never spent considerable time around the lakes, but I do have a Great Lakes experience that I think back to often. Right after college, I was floating in life a bit pre-grad school, and I took a trip from home (Pennsylvania) out to Vegas, to drive with my cousin who was getting stationed in Virginia, and didn't want to make the drive alone.
I connected through O'hare, and when flying into Chicago, being on the right side of the plane I got a great view of the bottom of Lake Michigan from the air. As we cruised along the southern coast making our approach, that distance between the two sides of the lake with Chicago on the East really stuck in my head, and I realized I now have a measurable mental image of a chunk of the earth's surface, that is large enough to be on a globe, but small enough to take in, and relate to things at human scale, like boats, or the buildings of Chicago.
I use that reference pretty often when looking at maps/globes and trying to get a handle of sizes and distances, like "Oh, that's just three Lake Michigans' wide".
skeeter2020
I was born in Toronto but grew up on the west coast, then the interior of BC and now in Alberta, and I'll never leave the mountains, but I loved summers on Lake Erie. Ontario cottage life is very different from western cabin life. The recovery of Erie is a huge accomplishment and while humans should get some credit I believe most of it is due to the size and resiliency of the Great Lakes ecosystem.
And if we're keeping track: I'll take a freezing glacial mountain lake over the humid heat every time :)
cmrdporcupine
I mean, honestly, I like both. And being a skier these days I just wish I lived out west, and near my family. But we've put our roots down here, and I fear for the climate future of BC and the political future for Alberta.
I was in Jasper 3 times in the last 8 months. Almost flew out there for a fourth this weekend (closing weekend @ Marmot Basin) but I have gardening to do :-)
nemo44x
I guess. I don’t miss them and always thought they were cold and smelly and didn’t make for great beaches. The weather around them is awful as well with long, bitter cold winters and summer days that are often extremely humid. You can’t really eat the fish out them either due to high levels of mercury.
Additionally the land around the lakes is nice but not spectacular. At least not for North America.
If I were to plan a trip to the general region and wanted wilderness then I’d pick the Boundary Waters I think.
griffinkelly
Chicago local here, and Lake Michigan kitesurfer and surfer. The best swells hit when in the fall and spring, so you better have a good wetsuit. That said, since getting into the sports it makes me love the lake even more. You quickly get over the temp, and just get to enjoying the water. Its also nice to not have to worry about sharks! Some of the best surfing in the area is up in Sheboygan, WI, the Malibu of the Midwest.
perardi
I practically live in Lake Michigan in Chicago, because of my dog, and learning to embrace the cold means you get the beauty of seeing this huge, open expanse of water with nobody else around, because they are sane and are avoiding the cold.
_blaise_
I loved kitesurfing on Lake Michigan before I moved out to the gorge this year. I was out in Indiana and usually rode MC, Lake St and Wolf. I made some great friends and have some awesome memories of my time there.
zamadatix
> You quickly get over the temp, and just get to enjoying the water.
Having grown up in Michigan I'd say it's more aptly put as "if you're one that can learn to live with the temperature the water can be a lot of fun" as certainly not everyone gets over it - even of those that often enjoy the water!
Never really cared much about the lack of sharks but I will say there is something special about having that "I might as well be at the ocean" scale of water without the damn salt.
cmrdporcupine
You just went to the wrong beaches. There's plenty of sand or pebble beaches with very clear water and little organic matter, especially along Huron where the water is alkaline. It's just cold.
sbradford26
I always felt that if you want big sandy beaches you go to Lake Michigan, somewhere like Grand Haven or Ludington.
RajT88
IL local and fisherman here.
The beaches can have algal blooms which make it smelly some days, and of course there's the history of the dead alewives (but that's not really an issue anymore).
Most days the beaches are lovely, the water clear and nice smelling. The farther you get from big cities, the more true that is. I spent a week on North Manitou Island once. It was incredibly beautiful, like if Hawaii was freaking freezing all the time.
The fish near Chicago have some issues, but it's less Mercury and more PCB's and other toxins.
https://dph.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/idph/publica...
packetlost
This is more my experience too. I've lived in the midwest my whole life and honestly cannot understand it why people actually like it here. Maybe if you're really into winter sports I guess. For me, I can barely stand going outside for more than a few minutes for 5+ months out of the year.
TecoAndJix
I have been to a Great Lake one time (Lake Erie) and it made me sad. The shore had a bunch of dead fish all over it and it smelled very bad. The person i was with, an Erie, PA native, said that the water was pretty much "dead". Very antidotal but if left an impression on me.
cmrdporcupine
Erie is the worst of it because a) it's shallow b) it's warmest c) it is surrounded by intensive agriculture with underregulated fertilizer run-off. But there are actually some nice places along it.
Long Point on its north shore in southern Ontario is a fantastic beautiful beach.
crgwbr
I grew up in Erie—the invasive Zebra mussels have cleaned up Lake Erie a lot in the past couple decades. My understanding is that fish populations are doing much better now because of it.
greedo
You can eat the fish. They recommend not eating it more than once a week though.
52-6F-62
I grew up a five minute walk from Lake Erie in a small town several hours SW of Toronto near the Grand River.
Like people who live on the coasts it gets into your blood.
The summers really are something else. I don’t miss my home county so much, but I have a vivid image of the rolling countryside and summer drives listening to music. It’s a memory I tap into often.
These days I live in Dundas and if you haven’t made it down here yet I recommend it!
cmrdporcupine
Oh, hi neighbour. I'm up north of Waterdown on 6 acres. Dundas is where we do most of our "town time." The archaeology dig I was talking about was @ Cootes on the RBG lands.
52-6F-62
Go figure. Guess I'm preaching to the choir!
How long have you lived in this part? I caught in another comment that you're into poetry. Do you frequent The Printed Word here in town? We only moved into Dundas a little over a year ago, and I finally made it into that shop and could easily lose a lot of money there. A recent haul of mine included a first edition of The Old Ways by Gary Snyder—and there are many more gems!
cf100clunk
> Canada
Unlike you, the author of the AtlasObscura piece seems to have a blind spot to the other country in which almost all of the Great Lakes exist. What an appalling oversight.
GuB-42
As a French guy, I have always associated the Great Lakes with Canada.
I had to look it up to realize that most of it is within US borders.
phkahler
>> I had to look it up to realize that most of it is within US borders.
Not really. 4 of the lakes are on the US-Canadian border. Lake Michigan is completely within the US though.
cf100clunk
Only Lake Michigan is within US borders, while the others are almost evenly split between Canada and the U.S.A., thus my irritation with the AtlasObscura piece.
abcc8
I know exactly how you feel. I lived two blocks from Lake Michigan in Chicago for about 5 years. Most mornings I would ride along the lake on the way to work, even though it was the wrong way, just to see the lake, feel the air, and spend a little time next to it.
andrew_
Grew up in Michigan and I always describe them to people as "inland oceans." People in the south understand what it means to be 30 miles offshore in the Atlantic or Gulf, and it blows their mind to know that the lakes are so big you can travel far enough out in them to lose sight of land. They're "Great" bodies of water indeed, disrespect them while on their waters at your own peril.
RajT88
You'll be interested to learn people occasionally cross Lake Michigan by Kayak. There's a pretty good article about a guy who did it:
https://seakayaker.org/safety-crossing-lake-michigan/
He also filmed it:
https://www.youtube.com/c/MotoMaximus/videos
(It's not quite as exciting as it sounds, watching the videos)
bsuvc
> disrespect them while on their waters at your own peril.
For sure. There is a long list shipwrecks, the most famous being the Edmund Fitzgerald.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_the_Gr...
blakesterz
"They hold more than a fifth of Earth’s unfrozen fresh water"
I read quite a few stories about the horrible drought in the west, and here I am sitting on a good part of all the usable water in the entire world. I can't help but think at some point a bunch of people are going to come for that water, in one way or another. Either by moving here, or trying to move it there. Some ideas have been floating around about that for a while
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/04/10/g...
engineer_22
Water from the Great Lakes cannot leave the Great Lakes.
The Great Lakes Compact prevents construction of any water withdrawal that will move water outside of the watershed.
alanbernstein
...According to current US law.
Reading your comment, I wasn't sure if "compact" was a legal term or a geological one. Laws change much more quickly than geology.
selectodude
And Canadian law. The Great Lakes Compact is an international treaty.
ceejayoz
By act of Congress, not Constitutional amendment.
It could be repealed in a matter of weeks if Congress saw fit.
bell-cot
Politically brighter Congressmen might see such a repeal not as a one-off special event, but instead as a precedent for further "inter-state resource raids". Some of which raids could target their own states.
So - support for that repeal might prove scarcer than you'd think, from just looking at a map of drought-plagued areas of the U.S.
Also - burning needs for water tend to be sudden & immediate things. Vs. designing, approving, funding, and building the infrastructure to actually move large quantities of water long distances is more of a "decade-plus time scale" thing.
ham-sandwich
I know many people who would oppose removal of water from the region with weaponry. People deeply care about them, more than outsiders know
duped
Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and New York have 97 votes in the house and 12 votes in the Senate. Good luck passing any legislation that sees major diversion of water out of these states.
itslennysfault
It could certainly be changed, but it's actually an international treaty with Canada so it's a bit more complicated than that.
sidewndr46
While cute, interstate anything is the realm of the federal government. The moment water from the Great Lakes is needed elsewhere, it'll be sent there.
If you follow the case of the Parker dam, the conclusion of the Supreme Court was that it required congressional approval. It did not have that, but Arizona eventually allowed it anyways.
The full text of the decision is here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/295/174
Retric
Not really a deal breaker.
Due to the United States Supreme Court ruling in Wisconsin v. Illinois, the State of Illinois is not subject to certain provisions of the compact pertaining to new or increased withdrawals or diversions from the Great Lakes.[4]
asdff
You can get around this and export it from the great lakes if your business is called Nestle and your pipeline from the lake to the bottling facility is called the groundwater table. Its still lake water they are drawing and selling.
duped
The attempted construction of that Foxconn factory in Wisconsin would have permanently diverted water out of Lake Michigan. It wasn't stopped by the Compact, just the horrible mismanagement of the project and political corruption.
paulcole
Things are going to get desperate enough that any legislation today will be but a distant and comical memory.
Balero
Would the energy used pumping the water from the quite low lakes, over the Rocky Mountains and Sierras to the west coast be less than a desalination plant?
Another option is just moving the water usage closer to the usable water.
Scoundreller
Most likely only a little bit would actually be piped. You’d just stop water from entering one watershed and send it into another and let gravity do its work. You would lose more to evaporation; but that happens to water in pipes too if they’re above ground.
Would love to see the numbers.
It’s fun looking at rivers from the Rocky Mountains in California that don’t make it to the ocean anymore.
I recently proposed a transatlantic natural gas pipeline and people thought I was insane, but it would only be ~5x longer than the longest existing underwater natgas pipeline, which doesn’t sound impossibly viable.
Balero
Good point about the river re-direction.
> I recently proposed a transatlantic natural gas pipeline and people thought I was insane, but it would only be ~5x longer than the longest existing underwater natgas pipeline, which doesn’t sound impossibly viable.
Nordstream is 759 Miles. Newfoundland to Ireland is 1900 Miles!
83
I feel the transatlantic gas pipe wouldnt be viable just for the fact that Russian subs/ships would have a field day "accidentally" setting anchor on it and breaking it to keep their economy relevant.
shadowofneptune
The Aral Sea might act as a warning. It was used for agricultural irrigation without concern for if the water could be replaced, and now barely even exists (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dan-Shaw-3/publication/...).
I live in Arizona. Most of our Colorado River water goes to agricultural irrigation. The drought is bad, but bringing in even more water from out of state wouldn't be an actual solution.
mcphage
> Either by moving here
That's one of the reasons I'm staying where I am.
> trying to move it there
Being that they straddle the US / Canadian border, it's legally much more difficult to mass pump water out of them. Probably the main reason it hasn't happened yet.
cmrdporcupine
It's legally forbidden by treaty of all the states and provinces that border them.
For now.
There's also little reason for it. There's plenty of rich farmland here to grow on. Agriculture should move back to this region, and growing practices and crops adapt for the colder climate. Growing heavily irrigated crops in the desert or semi-arid regions has many advantages but makes little sense in a water constrained world.
Right now the rich well watered soils of the midwest and great lakes region are being wasted on cash crop soy/corn rotation. Chipping away at the rich top soils for animal feed etc. There's a lot more that could be done here. This land is good for so many things... growing almonds in California? Grow hardy hybrid hazelnuts in the east. Cold hardy, disease resistant grapes make exotic regional wines with a unique eastern terroir and a long history, mostly forgotten. Bring back the apples orchards. The peaches and apricots. Re-open the canning and juicing plants. It's a shorter, mostly single season for most annual vegetable crops, but so much fertile land and water. And greenhouses add a lot of value.
sbradford26
I grew up in West Michigan in the farming country of Michigan, more specifically apple orchard/fruit orchard country. Michigan is the third largest producer of apples after Washington and NY. Also further up near Traverse city they produce a lot of grapes and cherries, and have some very good wineries. I think a big part of why there is not as much farming as the west is simply a matter of space, Michigan is large but nothing like the plains states.
duped
> Agriculture should move back to this region
It never left, Illinois and Minnesota are the 3rd and 5th largest producers of staple crops (the other being California, Iowa, and Texas, respectively, and CA and TX are only slightly larger in production but massively larger in size). West of the Mississippi, ranching dominates agriculture due to the poor soil and dry climate.
Largely that corn and soy in the Great Lakes region is being used as animal feed for the ranches out west. They already have massive utilization of land area for the production of these crops.
quxpar
We live in an age of profit pollution. Any farm doing this would be bought out by soy/corn growers, because the latter will be more profitable than the former. The same pollution is why your mailbox is full of wasteful garbage and your telephone line is harassed by scam calls until you stop picking up.
maxerickson
There's an agreement not to:
kevin_thibedeau
The region adjacent to the lakes is not immune to drought. There were widespread crop failures a few years ago.
hanselot
Some day I will convince 16 million people to each dig a tiny bit of a canal on the northern border of South Africa. I hope that by simply plotting the perfect route for the water to travel, the natural erosion will finish my work for me.
That way the entire Northern Cape (deserty region) and the Southern Namibia (deserty region) will have a massive amount of water suddenly closeby, eventually changing the surrounding environment naturally.
VintageCool
The article states that the Great Lakes were created by glaciers scouring the land, and while that is true, I think it more accurate to say that the Great Lakes were caused by a failed continental rift. The Midcontinent Rift System formed a billion years ago and almost tore the North American craton apart, but after 15-20 million years it stopped and faded. The rift filled with sediment that was easy for the glaciers to scour away.
The article links to another Atlas Obscura article about how the Red Sea is debatably a sea or an ocean, because it fills part of the East African Rift System. If we're going to refer to that distinction, then please also mention that the glaciers could scour out a lakebed because ancient geology created it!
twelvechairs
Its all semantics of course but what the article doesnt mention is flow. I cant think of another sea that drains into a river.
Edit: in fact the word 'lake' is derived from meaning to drain ('leak' is similar)
jameshart
The Bosphorus and Dardanelles, between the Black Sea and the Aegean/Mediterranean, are quite a lot like a river. There are both shorter and wider bodies of water that are considered rivers.
twelvechairs
They don't have a one way flow though
jameshart
Many rivers have tidal flows in their lower reaches. Maybe the Turkish Straits are just an extreme example of that?
trylfthsk
Neither do the Straits of Mackinac
shotta
I have always loved this song about a shipwreck on the Great Lakes. https://youtu.be/FuzTkGyxkYI
justusthane
I have to say, I grew up on Lake Superior in Wisconsin, and it’s funny to hear the Edmund Fitzgerald referred to as just “a shipwreck.” In this area, the sinking of the Fitzgerald easily has more cultural relevance than the Titanic.
In the small towns that surround Lake Superior, it’s not uncommon to run into someone who lost a loved one, so be careful making jokes in bars — and there are jokes[1].
The mystery of it is also intriguing. To this day no one knows exactly how or why the Fitzgerald sank. The last radio message received from the captain said, “We’re holding our own,” and no distress signal was ever sent. Everyone onboard died.
It’s worth reading the Wikipedia page[2].
alehlopeh
29 people died half a century ago, and it’s not uncommon to run into one of their loved ones in a random bar? I am skeptical of that claim.
justusthane
Maybe "not uncommon" was a bit strong, but it happens. What you have to realize is that these are very small towns[1], shipping is a big industry for the area, and a guy two generations ago can have a lot of grandchildren.
[1]: Check out the list of cities on Lake Superior on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_on_the_Great_La... The three largest are Thunder Bay (108,800), Duluth (86,600), and Sault Sainte Marie, ON (72,000). After that, the mean population of the remaining "cities" is 7,495. I grew up in Ashland, which at 7,908 brings the average up :)
ceejayoz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem, and I presume "loved one" might include cousins, grandchildren, etc.
pfarrell
It sank in 1975. There could certainly be children of the sailors alive, and a spouse who was in their 30’s at the time would be around their 80’s now. That doesn’t seem far fetched.
avgcorrection
> I have to say, I grew up on Lake Superior in Wisconsin, and it’s funny to hear the Edmund Fitzgerald referred to as just “a shipwreck.”
How should one address it? The Great, Most Exalted, Venerable Shipwreck?
justusthane
I wasn't intending to say that GP should have called it differently, nor implying that they weren't paying it "proper respect" or something. I was just trying to provide context as to the cultural significance of the event to the area, because I think it's interesting.
jerf
There is a museum in Michigan dedicated specifically to the Edmund Fitzgerald. When I was there, I realized that they would play this song every other song; they'd play Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald, then some other contemporaneous song, then Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald, then some other contemporaneous song, etc. And Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald is relatively long compared to the other songs of its era, so it's probably playing in the museum about two-thirds of the time.
I could never work there. I'd go insane.
sybercecurity
Those in the Rust Belt can visit the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo, OH: https://nmgl.org/
They had an exhibit of finding and searching the Edmund Fitzgerald when I was there last.
griffinkelly
Some decent scuba-wreck diving in the Lakes. I've scuba dived a few, one right off of U Chicago is snorkel depth, and one about 20 ft off of Evanston, IL.
Regardless, the Naval Aviation Museum has pulled a lot of airplanes from Lake Michigan: https://www.history.navy.mil/research/underwater-archaeology...
padobson
Don't forget to try the beer!
bombcar
The Edmund Fitzgerald sank in water shallower than it was long.
Gordon changed the lyrics at one point when additional information came to light.
bitwize
Are the Great Lakes really inland seas? Or are inland seas really just big lakes? Am I Chuang Tzu dreaming I am a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming I am Chuang Tzu?
robbrown451
It is indeed mostly semantics.
Interestingly (to me anyway) I was just following the news about Lake Powell being at a very low level, and noticed on a map just how "non-lake like" its shape is (even when at full capacity).... it just looks like a river and tributaries that are somewhat wider than they were before a dam was built.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lake+Powell/@37.0518007,-1...
Meanwhile, why is Greenland considered an island and Australia a continent? Who knows. You have to draw a line somewhere.
travisjungroth
> You have to draw a line somewhere.
You don’t have to. We could just call them all islands. Greenland? Island. Eurasia? Island. Rhode Island? Not an island, strangely.
There are only between four and seven of these so called “continents” (we didn’t draw a line, we drew like five). They’re not popping up very quickly, either. I say we just forget the whole business came up.
robbrown451
And even if you just call them islands, you'll run into ambiguous territory somewhere. Is Manhattan really an island? If so, then is Harlem River really a river? (and there are also islands which become part of the mainland at low tide)
BTW, the state of Rhode Island was originally "the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" which made sense but was unwieldy. Now the actual island of Rhode Island is called Aquidneck Island.
travisjungroth
The trick to avoiding running into ambiguity is to notice the way that fish avoid running into drowning.
dpedu
Australia has 3x the land area as Greenland so the line is probably somewhere in between there.
robbrown451
True but it is all arbitrary. If there was an island twice as big as Greenland, what would it be called? And why is Europe considered a continent when it is more accurately just a peninsula off of Asia? And if we are talking seas, why is the Caribbean a sea when it is just a region of the Atlantic ocean? Even moreso for the Sargasso sea, which is a region right out in the middle of the Atlantic (it doesn't even have any land boundaries).
jltsiren
It's fuzzy rather than arbitrary, because the universe resists categorization. Australia is the dominant landmass on its tectonic plate, and it's relatively far away from other major landmasses. Greenland is a lesser landmass on the North American Plate, and it's much closer to the mainland.
Europe, Asia, and Africa are names people gave to the major regions surrounding the Mediterranean long ago. Later generations generalized the idea. First by using the same names for lands far behind the Europe, Asia, and Africa they were familiar with, and later by giving new names to separate landmasses. Whatever a continent is, Europe, Asia, and Africa are continents.
The main difference between a sea and a lake is that a sea is a part of the ocean. The Black Sea and the Baltic Sea are seas, while the Caspian Sea and the Great Lakes are lakes. The Caribbean Sea and the Sargasso Sea have names because people needed names for those regions. And because they consist of water connected to the ocean, calling them seas seemed appropriate.
jccooper
Australia has its own tectonic plate. Greenland doesn't. I'm sure that helps.
gunfighthacksaw
We are blessed in Ontario to have the first and second longest freshwater beaches in the world.
On Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay and Lake Huron proper respectively.
Nothing recharges your batteries like a day in the sun, by the great un-briny. A few clandestine cans of beer, a fruit salad and a little bit of the sticky green stuff: heaven.
bregma
The water is so unbelievably clear. And believably cold.
phkahler
>> The water is so unbelievably clear. And believably cold.
According to a friend, it is the best shipwreck diving in the world. The lack of salt and cold water means 100 year old ships are still preserved in great shape, often visible from the surface. IIRC there is a glass-bottomed boat ride on Superior that goes over a couple of them.
danans
I discovered while visiting Northern Germany that the word "See" (which is etymologically related to English "sea") can refer to either a lake or the sea, depending on the gender of the article that precedes it - masculine for lake: "der See", feminine for sea: "die See".
The result is a lake called the "Selenter See" that is a short distance from the Ostsee (the Baltic Sea).
Pretty confusing at first!
JoeAltmaier
As usual the discussion pretends to be about the thing, when it's actually about the semantics.
The Great Lakes are measured, mapped, sounded and recorded. We know an awful lot about them, and that hasn't changed lately.
The discussion isn't about them. It's about the definition of 'sea' and 'lake'. Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario are still there and whatever they are, they're doing it now.
sarang23592
While this article went into some of the details of the great lake s(seas?), I would love to read about the ecosystem and marine life in the great lakes and if they mimic the seas in any way. Anyone know a good resource about that?
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Seas or not, I love the lakes and the land around them, in the 20+ years since I moved myself here they've taken over my heart. I'm from the aspen parkland of central Alberta; thin trees, dry air, small muddy leach-infested kettle lakes, big skies, poplar and birch land. When I was 8 we did a trip across Canada, and I remember us camping by the shores of Superior when a massive thunderstorm came rolling in, and it left a lifelong impression on me. When I was 16 I did an exchange with a family in rural Ontario near Huron, and the moment I saw the rolling green hills, the maples and oaks, the cyan waters of Huron lapping against the limestone, the heavy humid air, the wild grapes crawling on every fence, I was sold. In my early 20s I moved to Toronto for work, and I've been near Lake Ontario since. I'm an atheist, a materialist... but there's something deeply spiritual about the Great Lakes, powerful and intimidating like the ocean but more accomodating in their fresh water and the fact that massive as they are, they're more finite than the ocean. My wife participated in an archaeological dig down on some low flat lands near the shore, on a calm inland bay near here some years ago. The ceramic cookware, the copious fish bones, the arrowheads and fish hooks, it was fascinating how the lake has been giving rich life to people here for thousands of years; in fact so diminished now from what it was then when fish were more abundant.
They're pretty awesome, these lakes. I am not sure people who grow up next to them (like my kids) appreciate what they are in the same way?