Impermanence: Life and Loss on Superior's South Shore by Sue Leaf (review)

Reviewed by: Impermanence: Life and Loss on Superior's South Shore by Sue Leaf Anthony Bukoski, Professor Emeritus Sue Leaf, Impermanence: Life and Loss on Superior's South Shore. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2024. 256 pp. $19.95 (paper). Lake Superior's North Shore runs from Duluth, Minnesota to the Ontario border. As a child, Sue Leaf visited the shore with her family. The land is wild, remote, and picturesque. Cliffs of "hard, igneous rock" rise over the frigid lake. A few beaches here and there offer the hearty a place to wade or swim. "Lake Superior's watery expanse," Leaf writes about her childhood in the book's introduction, "was thrilling but cold, and held at arm's length." (xiii) Now age twenty-four when the main story of Impermanence begins, Leaf discovers a different shore when she and her boyfriend, finished with his first year of medical school, plan to bike west from Ontonagon, Michigan to Duluth. Although they never complete the trip, they fall in love with a coast which heretofore has been largely unknown to them. Though visually less impressive than the dramatic North Shore, the South Shore with its inlets and bays, sand beaches, and warmer water in summer beguiles the author and her companion. It takes a long time for them to understand fully what they have found—starting with the August night in 1977 when they step down from the Greyhound bus in Ontonagon. Two themes concern Leaf: "whether life on the South Shore had been better in the past than it is now" (5) and how one finds joy when little in life is permanent. In Ontonagon, the digital clock on the bank across the street "flash[ed] the time (11:27) and the temperature (58 degrees), and a bit of advice: 'You can't—take it—with you—but try—going—somewhere—without it—Save.'" (4) Over the ensuing years, the author and her now-physician husband leave their homes in central Minnesota whenever they can for the South Shore. They read the advice on the bank clock metaphorically and save up [End Page 248] memories of the people they meet and the places they visit. They acquaint themselves with the nearby Bayfield Peninsula and Apostle Islands, with the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan, with Calumet, Marquette, the Soo Locks. The cabin they buy outside of Port Wing, Wisconsin becomes a base for skiing, cycling, and exploring. Apprised by the previous owner that the red clay bluff in front of the cabin erodes, on average, a foot per year, the new owners nonetheless anticipate long, happy lives there, while knowing that a changing climate is harming the South Shore: trees with roots exposed tumble from cliffs; storms rearrange the composition of beaches. Still, the cabin enjoys a two-hundred-foot-plus setback from the bluff. Leaf organizes the book into five sections, each with subsections. The title of the first part, "The Top of the World," refers to Ashland's position on a map of the United States. Returning from a day trip, Leaf is "startled" to see "Chequamegon Bay spread out before us … I felt like … we had arrived and were seeing the top of the world for the very first time." (15) Part Two, "What Was Found and Then Was Lost," principally concerns the importance of Sault Ste. Marie, "the Linchpin" connecting Lake Superior to the lower lakes. Here and elsewhere, she describes the geological significance of places from pre-history on, their significance to Native people, and their economic, social, and cultural importance. She notes how copper mining, logging, and over-fishing have harmed the South Shore, irreparably in places. She comments on Hemingway's short story "Big Two-Hearted River" when she visits the river and another area similarly devastated by wildfires. Part Three deals with the Black Creek Nature Sanctuary near Calumet, Michigan, the piping plovers of Long Island in Chequamegon Bay, and "the Sacred Art of Ricing" in the sloughs of the Kakagon River, which flows through the Bad River Reservation in northern Wisconsin. Subsequent sections concern Lake Superior shipwrecks, the lifesaving stations that once dotted the shore, the historic Lake Breeze Hotel in Eagle...

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