#2128 "Gitchi-gami Sinclair Cove"

I headed north to Sinclair Cove of Lake Superior after leaving the Awausee Trail. I wanted to return to a painting of more sky than trees. The shore of the cove looking northward was the perfect opportunity. There were also almost no biting insects in the cooler, marine environment. There were even fewer people. The cirrus was being stretched out with the upper winds. Another weather system was on the way.

Sinclair Island was the large island to the northwest of the cove. The Agawa Rock Pictographs were just to the south of Sinclair Cove.

As I painted I witnessed the strangest thing. I heard a buzzing like a hummingbird. Above my head was one hummingbird perched on a small twig with a second hummingbird buzzing back and forth in front of it in some kind of frantic and dramatic aerial display. After a few seconds they both buzzed off together flying like mini jets through a thicket that I couldn't even see through.

I used the correct spelling of the Ojibwe name for Lake Superior. The Ojibwe name for Lake Superior is actually gichi-gami which means "great sea" or "huge water". Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote this name as "Gitche Gumee" in his 1855 epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha". Apparently this spelling was learned from Henry Schoolcraft, who worked with the Ojibwe people at the time Longfellow wrote the poem.

The 1878 Ojibwe language dictionary by Father Frederic Baraga says Lake Superior is Otchipwe-kitchi-gami - the sea of the Ojibwe people. The "i" at the end of gami would be more like the "i" in "it" than a long "e" sound.

The Canadian iconic singer and song writer Gordon Lightfoot followed Longfellow's lead in his 1976 song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" which sank at 7:10 pm on November 10, 1975. The Edmund Fitzgerald was lost with her entire crew of 29 men on Lake Superior about 17 miles north-northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan. Whitefish Point is the site of the Whitefish Point Light Station and Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. The two life boats were found smashed up on the shore.