nearer to the lake, into coarse brown sand, good only for growingrnmeadow flowers and trees blasted by the force of the northrnwinds that blew from Canada.rnAt the end of July, the winds came only from the south, andrnthe people of the North Woods were dying in the 95-degreernheat. In Iron River, they stopped at the air-conditioned JavarnTrout, the onK’ internet/espresso bar north of Minneapolisrnand east of Brainerd, according to the owners. A reporter fromrnthe Duluth News Tribune was offended that the owners thoughtrnthey could make a go of such a place in little Iron River, whenrnthere was no internet bar in the Zenith City. There in a nutshell,rnaccording to one Wisconsin boy, is what is wrong withrnDuluth—and Minnesota in general.rnAt the White Winter Winer’ housed in the same building,rnthe}- sampled half a dozen varieties of mead. “An espresso barrnand a winery—in Iron River?” he said to the young lady whornhad set up the business with her husband. “The Green Toprnrestaurant on the highway was the pinnacle of civilization herernonl- fie years ago.”rnShe admitted that their friends back in civilization (greaterrnMilwaukee) thought they were crazy. He told her they hadrndriven up to the mouth of the Brule and tried to come down tornIron Rier by wav of Oiilu, but the road was closed.rn”Oulu? Even when you’re in Oulu,” she said, “you don’trnknow you’re there.” Oulu, it seems, is not so much a place as arnstate of mind. When he was a boy, his family used to visit arnSwedish farm family in Cloverland, and their son Jimni}’ usedrnto brag of riding his Harley over to Oulu on weekends, and everrnsince he had imagined the Finns carr)’ing out exotic rituals in-rn’olving saunas and sacrificial virgins. Perhaps it was onlv a fishboil.rnAfter the lady intner and her husband had moved from therncivilization of suburban Milwaukee, she decided to run for thernschool board.rn”Someone came to warn me it was not a good idea becausernthere were serious race problems in Iron River. ‘Race problems?’rnI asked. Sure, the Finns and Norwegians can’t standrneach other.”rnJimmv’s father Donald (who hunted deer with his old man)rnwas married to a Finn. Don loved Finlander jokes and in thernlate 60’s had taken the exile to the Kro-Bar in Brule (or was it Lyon’srnDen?) to see the display of a bowsaw with a chain, insteadrnof a blade, and a 3-in-l can tacked on. The sign read: “Finnishrnchainsaw wit ta automatic oiler.”rnF’inns settled Oulu, but Russians went to Cornucopia, a fishingrnand logging village up on the lake, and although the shorelinernhas been polluted by a handful of artistes trading on thernquaintness of the place, the old Ru.ssian church is still there andrngleaming with a fresh coat of paint. If Cornucopia is sfill comparativelyrnunspoiled, Ba)field is well on the way to becomingrnanother Door Counh’ or Lake Geneva, a Mecca for day-sailingrnyachtsmen who every spring toss aside their Brooks andrnSaks catalogues and order the summer identikits from Orvisrnand Land’s End. They drove down into Ashland, wherernChequamegon Bay had been ruined, like the city of Superior’srnshoreline, by industrial and commercial development —therngenerating plant and coal docks competing with motels and gasrnstations for the ugliness prize.rnI.,ake Superior has been preyed upon in eer)- generation byrnforeigners: voyageurs who killed the v.’ildlife in search of peltsrnfor Paris fashions, loggers who clear-cut the forests to buildrnhouses in Midwestern cities that went from rawness to decay inrnthe lifetime of one old man, fishermen who nearly wiped outrnthe whitefish population to supply the restaurants of Chicago.rnLike another interloper—the lamprey eel that preyed upon thernlake trout—they sucked the juices out of the place and left behindrntheir uglv scars.rnIn the morning, they headed toward the Brule to check outrnthe water, which was er- high. It was also ven, hot, especiallyrnonce he had got into his neoprene waders. He was still hot,rnwalking waist deep against the strong current that sweeps pastrnWinneboujou landing. There was no sign of a tricho hatch thatrnmorning; nothing broke the water’s surface. He tied on arnnymph and cast out the line, watching it collapse helplessly inrnwrinkled coils. It had been two years since he had waded arnstream, and subsequent casts were hardly better than the first.rnHe checked the line and found he had missed a ferrule andrntwisted the line around the rod. He cast again and watched thernline shoot out smoothly upstream into a riffle; he mended thernballooning line with a flip of the rod and stripped it in with shortrnnervous jerks. If the trout were impressed, the- gave no sign.rnAfter an hour or so of stumbling into rocks, he gave it up andrnpeeled off the waders to examine his bruises.rnTired of not catching fish, they droe into Superior, and herntried to get his bearings. The jerr-built VA houses had aged asrngracefully as plastic furniture.rn”I used to wonder about your dark vision of life,” said the Mississippian.rn”Now I’m amazed at your cheerfulness. Whatrnwould you have been like if you had stayed here?”rnHe said he didn’t know but pointed out tiiere were two kindsrnof people in the world: those who belonged somewhere, thosernwho didn’t. He thought of them as Earthlings and Martiansonernof Bradbur)”s Martians who can be captured by an Earthling’srnimagination and appear to be one of them. He was a Martian,rnhe supposed.rn”But a Martian could live in a place like this a hundred yearsrnwithout facing much temptation to go native.”rnWhen the’ drove across the bay into Duluth, his Southernrnfriend exclaimed over the neatness of the well-preserved downtown.rn”Over in Superior,” the Mississippian remarked, “they just sitrnin the bars and watch the buildings fall down around them.”rn”Ought to make you feel right at home.”rnIn Billings Park, where he had lived, they stood looking at thernbav, stained red bv the cla’ washed in by recent rains. An oldrnman got out of a van with a road map in his hand: “Hot enoughrnfor you?” he asked in a good Midwestern dialect and told themrnhe had driven all the way from Florida to escape the heat, “Asrnbad as Florida.” Now he was thinking of going farther north.rn”Stay here,” they said. “It’s just as hot in Thunder Bay.” The exilernexplained that this kind of weather was impossible so close tornLake Superior. There had been one day of such heat when hernwas a boy, and it brought on the only tornado in a hundredrnyears. The snowbird looked doubtful and sat down to stud- hisrnmap.rnThey drove over to Central Park and looked at a gaudilvrnpainted house that had been built in the 1890’s as a Unitarianrnchurch before becoming, in hirn, an AME church and a women’srnclub. A few blocks away was a rare example of an octagonalrnhouse, a st}’le promoted by Orson Fowler, the pioneeringrnphrenologist from Fishkill, New York. Fowler’s obsession withrnmaking an efficient use of space blinded him to tlie obvious disadvantagernof his design: No one could figure out how to dividernNOVEMBER 1999/11rnrnrn