Finding strength in meeting the challenges of Superior

In the old days, when the Ojibwa were still brash newcomers to Lake Superior country, young men of this tribe would head out on vision quests. Like Jesus in the wilderness or Thoreau in Walden -- though with a different theological context and assuredly a different notion of wilderness -- they left their villages to be alone.

Along the northeast shore of the lake are puzzling structures, like snow forts built of rocks. Research has suggested they are hundreds of years old. Speculation has fancied them "oracle grots" or "vision quest pits," places where men took shelter during their pilgrimages.

I imagine these young men on the shore of the world's greatest freshwater lake. They must have whiled away days in loneliness and nights filled with fear, for they were still young men -- boys, really. As hunger and loneliness took hold, their imaginations soared. Perhaps delirium set in. They would experience the vision that would guide their remaining lives. And they could return to their homes.

Surely the vastness of Lake Superior impressed them. The evidence is in the rock paintings at Agawa Bay, where iron oxide pictographs of suns, bears, caribou and the great lynx Mishi- bizheu animate the cliffs and testify to the power of spirits to enter our world through portals of rock and water.

I'm not Ojibwa and so don't try to affect their particular reverence for the land. But as a kid, during family vacations on the North Shore, I, too, came to wonder about the vastness and power of the lake. I wished to see what lay beyond the horizon. So many years later, as circumstances converged -- the purchase of a new sea kayak, the desire to write a book, a new and stable love in my life -- I set out with the woman who would become my wife, Susan Binkley, on the first of several trips that would carry me around the lake. I looked for inspiration in the words of Ojibwa artist George Morrison: "I see the power of the rock, the magic of the water, the religion of the tree, the color of the wind and the enigma of the horizon."

Challenge of the lake

Susan and I began in Goulais Bay, at the lake's eastern end, and paddled north and west, counterclockwise around Superior. Sometimes with Susan, sometimes alone, I paddled about 80 days during two seasons to complete the circuit.

Along the way, I encountered the Ojibwa spirits of the lake -- not only the pictographs of Agawa Bay and puzzling shelters on the Pukaskwa coast, but also the stories of Nanaboozoo, most human and beloved of the Ojibwa manitous -- capable of great things, but bumbling, rash and foolish, too. So I came to view my travels as a pilgrimage to a holy place of a different culture.

Paddling was also a pilgrimage of physical hardship. In my mid-40s at the time, I anticipated aches and pains for us both. On the first leg of our journey, Susan's hand became numb and stiff; she wore a brace to continue. Shoulder pain kept me awake some nights, and I carried aspirin and ibuprofen. But as the days passed, so did the aches and pains. Weather willing, we could cover 20 or even 30 miles in a day.

Much greater than physical limitations, I discovered, were my emotional frailties. I took great comfort in Susan's company -- just how much comfort I perhaps didn't realize until my first solo trip, on the Coldwell Peninsula, when a fall storm put me ashore in a tiny cove. For four days I paced the short beach to contemplate loneliness and my fear of paddling alone in heavy seas. My enforced isolation was like a monk's retreat. When the wind changed and I at last was able to escape, I could see the world's beauty anew.

I paddled solo among the islands southwest of Thunder Bay, the few remaining crumbs of the Canadian shore, of which I had grown very fond. I crossed to Minnesota, where I first fell in love with the lake. But now I saw a shoreline that was almost suburban for all the homes and traffic. The North Shore was a profound disappointment, and I felt I was in danger of losing my own narrative. I called Susan and asked her to come get me, so I could think of ways to rediscover the wonder of the lake before setting out again.

Comfort in solitude

I traveled awhile with friends before I continued alone down the barren spit of Long Island (part of the Apostles), along the sandy Wisconsin shore, and among the ghost towns of Upper Michigan's Copper Country. Susan joined me for sections of the Keweenaw and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, but I was alone again for the final 100 miles down Michigan's Shipwreck Coast.

As days and miles flowed by, sometimes on glassy seas, sometimes as thunderous waves drove me ashore, I began to find comfort in the solitude and routine of my travels.

As I neared the eastern end of the lake, I saw the hills surrounding Goulais Bay rise infinitesimally higher with each stroke. I felt thankful, rewarded and sufficiently at ease that I decided to stop early in the day, a few miles short of my car. I set camp and spent a final night on the beach by myself to contemplate my accomplishment.

Like the young Ojibwa men, I had gone to the shore of the lake in a quest, a pilgrimage. But they found power in the rocks and meaning in a vision. I found strength and some measure of solace in the beauty of a lake and the shadows of my own soul.

Greg Breining is the author of "Wild Shore: Exploring Lake Superior by Kayak."