#2134 "Gitchi-gami Agawa Coast"

I returned to the Agawa Campground to paint with my Huntsville artist friends. We all set our gear up on the beach although it was certainly not beach weather. Plein air artists are hearty souls and we had a blast. Everyone had their winter coats on. Of course I would have had my winter coat on if I had been smart enough to bring it. It might have been June but I should have packed my winter gear.

I decided to paint looking northwest to the headlands that housed the Agawa Rock Pictographs. Sinclair Cove was just around the corner to the north. There were a couple of characteristic islands that dotted the landscape off Agawa Rock. They caught my eye. Streets of turbulent stratocumulus covered the sky. The sun peaked through between the cloud streets every now and again and the solar radiation felt wonderful on my back. The waves were crashing on Agawa Beach. We were all alone and the campground was virtually empty except for us artists.

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 which was used in Longfellow's poem and Lightfoot's classic "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". Gordon and his band recorded his 1976 song in the first take. The Edmund Fitzgerald sank at 7:10 pm on November 10, 1975 with the loss of 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.