On Thursday of last week in the middle of June, as we approach the pinnacle of summer, it grew cool and damp with the wind coming straight out of the north. I walked to the Lake in a daze, wondering if I was actually in the same place that I had been on the warm, humid evening before. Looking out over Lake Michigan, I was surprised to see that it had the same "character" (color, texture, raging waves) as many of the lakes that I had paddled across in the Boundary Waters. Even after living alongside the Lake for three years, until this particular morning I assumed that Lake Michigan was tame"and industrialized, so I was surprised to see these Northerly, steely grey waves repetitively pounding against the pile of rocks that make up the break water. Based on this experience, I would argue that place is something that we take with us, layering one place over another and then another, that it is impossible to separate one place from another in the memory of an individual, and yet, the preservation of a place requires environmentalists to prove that it is like no other place in teh world. Is there a way for artists and writers to rectify the multi-layered experience of a place with its definition as a complete, unique entity?
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