Lake Superior

Abstract

“Lake Superior” is a short memoir that begins by describing a powwow at the Grand Portage, Minnesota, Ojibwe reservation, located on the North Shore of Lake Superior near the Canadian border. There the author meets famed beadwork teacher Josephine Ryan (Leech Lake Ojibwe), who she invites to teach a workshop at the University of Minnesota’s Split Rock Arts Program, a summer lifelong learning series held on the University’s Duluth campus. At Split Rock, the author purchases a charming beaded medallion made by one of Josie’s youthful students from the Leech Lake reservation. She is captivated by the medallion because it portrays a stylized Lady Slipper orchid, the state flower of Minnesota. At the memoir’s conclusion, the author jumps forward in time to describe a return trip along Lake Superior’s North Shore taken twenty-five years after the untimely death of her beloved husband and travel companion.