What do you think?
Rate this book
Impermanence: Life and Loss on Superior's South Shore
A personal journey through the ever-changing natural and cultural history of Lake Superior’s South Shore
Lake Superior’s South Shore is as malleable as it is enduring, its red sandstone cliffs, clay bluffs, and golden sand beaches reshaped by winds and water from season to season—and sometimes from one hour to the next. Generations of people have inhabited the South Shore, harvesting the forests and fish, mining copper, altering the land for pleasure and profit, for better or worse. In Impermanence, author Sue Leaf explores the natural and human histories that make the South Shore what it is, from the gritty port city of Superior, Wisconsin, to the shipping locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
For Leaf, what began as a bicycling adventure on the coast of Lake Superior in 1977 turned into a lifelong connection with the area, and her experience, not least as owner of a rustic cabin on a rapidly eroding lakeside cliff, imbues these essays with a passionate sense of place and an abiding curiosity about its past and precarious future. As waves slowly consume the shoreline where her family has spent countless summers, Leaf is forced to confront the complexity of loving a place that all too quickly is being reclaimed by the great lake.
Impermanence is a journey through the South Shore’s story, from the early days of the Anishinaabe and fur traders through the heyday of commercial fishing, lumber camps, and copper mining on the Keweenaw Peninsula to the awakening of the Northland to the perils and consequences of plundering its natural splendor. Noting the geological, ecological, and cultural features of each stop on her tour along the South Shore, Leaf writes about the restoration of the heavily touristed Apostle Islands National Lakeshore to its pristine conditions, even as Lake Superior maintains its allure for ice fishers, kayakers, and long-distance swimmers. She describes efforts to protect the endangered piping plover and to preserve the diverse sand dunes on the Michigan coast, and she observes the slough that supports rare intact wild rice beds central to Anishinaabe culture.
Part memoir, part travelogue, part natural and cultural history, Leaf’s love letter to Lake Superior’s South Shore is an invitation to see this liminal world in all its seasons and guises, to appreciate its ageless, ever-changing wonders and intimate charms.
Lake Superior’s South Shore is as malleable as it is enduring, its red sandstone cliffs, clay bluffs, and golden sand beaches reshaped by winds and water from season to season—and sometimes from one hour to the next. Generations of people have inhabited the South Shore, harvesting the forests and fish, mining copper, altering the land for pleasure and profit, for better or worse. In Impermanence, author Sue Leaf explores the natural and human histories that make the South Shore what it is, from the gritty port city of Superior, Wisconsin, to the shipping locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
For Leaf, what began as a bicycling adventure on the coast of Lake Superior in 1977 turned into a lifelong connection with the area, and her experience, not least as owner of a rustic cabin on a rapidly eroding lakeside cliff, imbues these essays with a passionate sense of place and an abiding curiosity about its past and precarious future. As waves slowly consume the shoreline where her family has spent countless summers, Leaf is forced to confront the complexity of loving a place that all too quickly is being reclaimed by the great lake.
Impermanence is a journey through the South Shore’s story, from the early days of the Anishinaabe and fur traders through the heyday of commercial fishing, lumber camps, and copper mining on the Keweenaw Peninsula to the awakening of the Northland to the perils and consequences of plundering its natural splendor. Noting the geological, ecological, and cultural features of each stop on her tour along the South Shore, Leaf writes about the restoration of the heavily touristed Apostle Islands National Lakeshore to its pristine conditions, even as Lake Superior maintains its allure for ice fishers, kayakers, and long-distance swimmers. She describes efforts to protect the endangered piping plover and to preserve the diverse sand dunes on the Michigan coast, and she observes the slough that supports rare intact wild rice beds central to Anishinaabe culture.
Part memoir, part travelogue, part natural and cultural history, Leaf’s love letter to Lake Superior’s South Shore is an invitation to see this liminal world in all its seasons and guises, to appreciate its ageless, ever-changing wonders and intimate charms.
- GenresMemoirNonfictionNature
283 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 9, 2024
35 people are currently reading
1546 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 19, 2024
Sue Leaf, whose previous works include Bullhead Queen and Portage, has a new essay collection entitled Impermanence: Life and Loss on Superior’s South Shore. Part memoir, part travelogue, and part natural and cultural history, the collection covers the early days of Anishinaabe and fur traders, through the heyday of commercial fishing, lumber camps, and copper mining on the Keweenaw Peninsula, and the consequences of plundering the forests and the land.
Leaf and her husband have a lifelong connection to the South Shore. Vacationing there in their early adulthood led them to purchase a cabin on the shore. As biologists, they watched with concern as the red clay cliff along their shoreline slowly eroded – thinking that eventually, but not in their lifetime – the cabin would succumb to the water of Superior. But as the years went by, the erosion of the shoreline escalated at an alarming rate, forcing individual homeowners and institutions out or requiring them to address the erosion in ways that were temporarily effective or damaging to the lake.
Leaf uses the example of the coastal erosion of Concordia College on Lake Michigan as a harbinger to others. The college campus, sitting on 192 acres of land along the western shore of Lake Michigan, lost twenty thousand tons of sediment each year, about five acres of land from 1982 to 2005. As the bluff edge inched closer to campus, the college consulted with the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and launched a campaign to stabilize the bluff. Engineers laid a half mile of drains and built artificial wetlands along the coast, they bulldozed the bluff, reducing its angle and planted vegetation, finally laying down one hundred thousand tons of stone along the shore. The project slowed the rate of erosion of their bluff, but it had unintended consequences. Neighbors directly south of the campus lost their sand beaches and the lake now laps directly at their bluff, accelerating their erosion.
One of my favorite essays in the collection takes readers through the Soo locks, explaining the purpose of the locks and how they work, then guiding us through them with her cousin, James Bittner, an experienced crew member on the 858-foot-long Roger Blough. Bittner locks through eighty to eighty-five times in a shipping season; all in a day’s work, he says.
Leaf’s book will appeal to lovers of the Great Lakes, and anyone concerned about climate change.
Leaf and her husband have a lifelong connection to the South Shore. Vacationing there in their early adulthood led them to purchase a cabin on the shore. As biologists, they watched with concern as the red clay cliff along their shoreline slowly eroded – thinking that eventually, but not in their lifetime – the cabin would succumb to the water of Superior. But as the years went by, the erosion of the shoreline escalated at an alarming rate, forcing individual homeowners and institutions out or requiring them to address the erosion in ways that were temporarily effective or damaging to the lake.
Leaf uses the example of the coastal erosion of Concordia College on Lake Michigan as a harbinger to others. The college campus, sitting on 192 acres of land along the western shore of Lake Michigan, lost twenty thousand tons of sediment each year, about five acres of land from 1982 to 2005. As the bluff edge inched closer to campus, the college consulted with the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and launched a campaign to stabilize the bluff. Engineers laid a half mile of drains and built artificial wetlands along the coast, they bulldozed the bluff, reducing its angle and planted vegetation, finally laying down one hundred thousand tons of stone along the shore. The project slowed the rate of erosion of their bluff, but it had unintended consequences. Neighbors directly south of the campus lost their sand beaches and the lake now laps directly at their bluff, accelerating their erosion.
One of my favorite essays in the collection takes readers through the Soo locks, explaining the purpose of the locks and how they work, then guiding us through them with her cousin, James Bittner, an experienced crew member on the 858-foot-long Roger Blough. Bittner locks through eighty to eighty-five times in a shipping season; all in a day’s work, he says.
Leaf’s book will appeal to lovers of the Great Lakes, and anyone concerned about climate change.
January 25, 2024
Thought provoking platitudes of a place I knew all too well. It is where I grew up, bicycled, canoed, sailed, beach-combed, camped and eked out meager living while becoming acquainted with and friends of the locals.
Sue Leaf took me on a beautifully described trip down memory lane. I loved it!
EXCERPTS:
There was a bank across the street with a digital clock flashing the time (11:27) and the temperature (58 degrees), and a bit of advice: “You can’t—take it—with you—but try—going—somewhere—without it—SAVE!” I wondered if there was a deeper message in this slogan.
She now talks in terms of the “embodied energy” of old buildings. This is a broad concept that incorporates the cost entailed to construct them and also the money spent to produce their materials—like quarried stone or cut timber—and, too, the incalculable value of virgin wood, so much finer-grained and sturdier than today’s plantation-grown trees.
Sue seemed to be the catalyst that galvanized the town into rethinking its relationship to its past and perhaps to standing up a little straighter.
This is a reflection of an older man, one who has the depth of experience to put such a profound loss into perspective. It comes from someone who has struggled against the dominant current of conventional society, someone who values something that most people do not. I think about this as I trudge along a ski trail in new snow, often a solitary pursuit and now a pursuit made lonely by this unnerving thought: the age of cross-country skiing is drawing to a close.
“there are weeks in the summer when these great bodies of water sleep like placid woodland ponds.” But this can change within minutes. Squalls with high winds launch themselves with fury. Waves pile high, with shorter troughs than in the ocean, so recovery is difficult. At the end of the season, ice accumulates on boats, on decks and rigging. Rescuing any crew in trouble requires stamina, skill, and courage. And that was why the keeper drew from a pool of local sailors well versed in Superior’s capricious moods.
Sue Leaf took me on a beautifully described trip down memory lane. I loved it!
EXCERPTS:
There was a bank across the street with a digital clock flashing the time (11:27) and the temperature (58 degrees), and a bit of advice: “You can’t—take it—with you—but try—going—somewhere—without it—SAVE!” I wondered if there was a deeper message in this slogan.
She now talks in terms of the “embodied energy” of old buildings. This is a broad concept that incorporates the cost entailed to construct them and also the money spent to produce their materials—like quarried stone or cut timber—and, too, the incalculable value of virgin wood, so much finer-grained and sturdier than today’s plantation-grown trees.
Sue seemed to be the catalyst that galvanized the town into rethinking its relationship to its past and perhaps to standing up a little straighter.
This is a reflection of an older man, one who has the depth of experience to put such a profound loss into perspective. It comes from someone who has struggled against the dominant current of conventional society, someone who values something that most people do not. I think about this as I trudge along a ski trail in new snow, often a solitary pursuit and now a pursuit made lonely by this unnerving thought: the age of cross-country skiing is drawing to a close.
“there are weeks in the summer when these great bodies of water sleep like placid woodland ponds.” But this can change within minutes. Squalls with high winds launch themselves with fury. Waves pile high, with shorter troughs than in the ocean, so recovery is difficult. At the end of the season, ice accumulates on boats, on decks and rigging. Rescuing any crew in trouble requires stamina, skill, and courage. And that was why the keeper drew from a pool of local sailors well versed in Superior’s capricious moods.
December 3, 2023
I enjoyed this book of essays a great deal. I’m certainly part of the main target audience, since I live at one end of the area the book covers, and have spent time along Lake Superior’s southern shore all the way to the other end. I’m also around the same age as the author, and so have experienced the same personal and ecological changes, and share many values. There are many histories of ways of living in area, and memories of specific places we each have visited. My favorite chapters were the author’s personal stories and those on shipping and shipwrecks.
Anyone familiar with the area will certainly enjoy the book, and it would make a good general introduction to the history of the area. Impermanence applies everywhere for all readers.
Thanks to University of Minnesota Press and NetGalley for the advance copy to review.
Anyone familiar with the area will certainly enjoy the book, and it would make a good general introduction to the history of the area. Impermanence applies everywhere for all readers.
Thanks to University of Minnesota Press and NetGalley for the advance copy to review.
August 24, 2024
The chapters in Impermanence are loosely related to each other in chronology and atmosphere, but do not form a tightly structured book. It’s best considered a collection of connected essays, and as such it’s a bit uneven, with many essays being illuminating and revealing, others simply slow going. It’s at its best when Sue Leaf’s presence is most discernible, such as when she and her husband re-visit the Eagle Harbor Resort in Eagle River on the Keweenaw Peninsula, or when she recounts their difficult decision to demolish their cabin and build one farther from the eroding shoreline.
The book’s through line is her love for Lake Superior. It begins with a bicycle trip she and her husband take in their 20’s, starting in Ontonagon MI. It proceeds through their young family phase as he is a family physician in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, where they raise their kids, and she employs her training as a scientist and becomes a writer. The touchstone for their life’s journey is their decision to buy a cabin within view of Superior on Wisconsin’s south shore, north of Duluth. As they return each spring, Leaf has a vantage point for reflecting on the changing nature of the lake, its shoreline, the communities that ring it, the industries that depend on it, and the people who work and play on it.
My one criticism of the book is that she underplays the ruthlessness of the mining companies in the way they abused their employees. She writes at length about the negative ecological impact of extractive industries and the mess they’ve left for society to clean up. She’s remarkably benign, though, about the companies’ extractive attitudes towards their laborers.
Despite that one reservation, I recommend the book. It provides much insight into mankind’s relationship with a powerful natural resource, filtered through the lens of one perceptive person who loves the lake.
The book’s through line is her love for Lake Superior. It begins with a bicycle trip she and her husband take in their 20’s, starting in Ontonagon MI. It proceeds through their young family phase as he is a family physician in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, where they raise their kids, and she employs her training as a scientist and becomes a writer. The touchstone for their life’s journey is their decision to buy a cabin within view of Superior on Wisconsin’s south shore, north of Duluth. As they return each spring, Leaf has a vantage point for reflecting on the changing nature of the lake, its shoreline, the communities that ring it, the industries that depend on it, and the people who work and play on it.
My one criticism of the book is that she underplays the ruthlessness of the mining companies in the way they abused their employees. She writes at length about the negative ecological impact of extractive industries and the mess they’ve left for society to clean up. She’s remarkably benign, though, about the companies’ extractive attitudes towards their laborers.
Despite that one reservation, I recommend the book. It provides much insight into mankind’s relationship with a powerful natural resource, filtered through the lens of one perceptive person who loves the lake.
October 31, 2024
This was recommended to me by the lovely bookseller at Grandpa's Barn in Copper Harbor MI. It is a natural and personal history of the south shore of Lake Superior, focusing mostly on the area near Ashland where the author's family has had a cabin for many years.
I didn't realize that the south shore is made up of sandstone, and is quite different than the rocky north shore that is made of hard igneous rock. The south shore is much more susceptible to erosion, as the author and her family witnessed by watching their own beach shore erode over time.
Sue Leaf covers a lot of territory in her book, including geology, wild rice, the locks at Sault Ste Marie, and mining on the Keewenaw penisula. It was a lot to take in , and I wished that it had more narrative flow.
I didn't realize that the south shore is made up of sandstone, and is quite different than the rocky north shore that is made of hard igneous rock. The south shore is much more susceptible to erosion, as the author and her family witnessed by watching their own beach shore erode over time.
Sue Leaf covers a lot of territory in her book, including geology, wild rice, the locks at Sault Ste Marie, and mining on the Keewenaw penisula. It was a lot to take in , and I wished that it had more narrative flow.
October 6, 2024
As a lifelong Michigander, I enjoyed this book and its deep dive (pun intended) into the beauty of Lake Superior. It was a quick and interesting read that inspired me to plan for my own return visit to the Big Lake. I did find the author a little "preachy" at times. I can imagine some readers being put off by some of her academic, pedantic text. And some content was a bit repetitive. Still, her love of the lake, its people, and its wildlife permeates the pages. I'll keep it handy on my shelf -- right next to Jerry Dennis's The Windward Shore -- and pack both when I go on my next trip up north.
November 24, 2024
Having lived on the South Shore of the Big Lake I get quietly excited to be reminded of familiar places and histories. I can attest to the "pull"/draw/ allure of the widest of cold water expanses in the Northern hemisphere and it's ever changing nature.
July 29, 2024
Local Book club read. Stories of local lore of areas along the south shore of Lake Superior.
November 13, 2023
This past summer we stayed in Paradise, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [UP]. The Airbnb had a window view of Lake Superior. We revisited Whitefish Point and Tahquamenon Falls.
It had been 26 years since I was last there. My husband and son used to go camping in the UP every summer, but their last visit was nineteen years ago.
Much was the same, but a lot had changed.
We drove through areas that had been decimated in a wildfire. The beach at Whitefish Point was much smaller and littered with logs. When I was last there, we walked a deep beach and avoided nesting areas of the endangered Pipping Plovers. Tahquamenon Falls had pathways and overlooks that even I, with bad knees, could navigate.
During our first days, we had to stay indoors with the windows closed. Looking out the window to Lake Superior, we couldn’t tell where the sky started and the water ended. Ontario, Canada, wildfire smoke covered most of Michigan.
Lake Superior has been an integral part of author Sue Leaf’s life. As a girl, her family had a cabin on the lakeshore. She and her future husband biked across the lake’s south shore, and later purchased a cabin. They visited the UP to ski in winter. And they noted the changes, how impermanent was the lake they loved.
Leaf’s memoir shares her love story with the lake, interspersed with insight into its geological history and how humankind has interacted with the area. Lumbering that decimated virgin forests. Copper mining that tore up the land and polluted the ecosystem. Shipping and storms and the inevitable shipwrecks. The shifting of populations from Native Americans to voyagers and fur trappers to industry and immigrants. Human greed that used up the resources and destroyed the ecosystem.
I learned about the wild rice that sustained Native Americans, the bobbers who ice fish on the frozen lake, how the south shore of the lake is washing away from the high lake level.
Along the Pictured Rocks shore in Michigan is a famous rock formation, Miner’s Castle. One year, my husband and son returned to find one of the towers of the castle had collapsed. “All that we love about Lake Superior is momentary pleasure,” Leaf writes.
Anyone who has visited and loved Lake Superior will especially enjoy this memoir, but it’s message us universal.
Thanks to the publisher for a free book.
It had been 26 years since I was last there. My husband and son used to go camping in the UP every summer, but their last visit was nineteen years ago.
Much was the same, but a lot had changed.
We drove through areas that had been decimated in a wildfire. The beach at Whitefish Point was much smaller and littered with logs. When I was last there, we walked a deep beach and avoided nesting areas of the endangered Pipping Plovers. Tahquamenon Falls had pathways and overlooks that even I, with bad knees, could navigate.
During our first days, we had to stay indoors with the windows closed. Looking out the window to Lake Superior, we couldn’t tell where the sky started and the water ended. Ontario, Canada, wildfire smoke covered most of Michigan.
Lake Superior has been an integral part of author Sue Leaf’s life. As a girl, her family had a cabin on the lakeshore. She and her future husband biked across the lake’s south shore, and later purchased a cabin. They visited the UP to ski in winter. And they noted the changes, how impermanent was the lake they loved.
Leaf’s memoir shares her love story with the lake, interspersed with insight into its geological history and how humankind has interacted with the area. Lumbering that decimated virgin forests. Copper mining that tore up the land and polluted the ecosystem. Shipping and storms and the inevitable shipwrecks. The shifting of populations from Native Americans to voyagers and fur trappers to industry and immigrants. Human greed that used up the resources and destroyed the ecosystem.
I learned about the wild rice that sustained Native Americans, the bobbers who ice fish on the frozen lake, how the south shore of the lake is washing away from the high lake level.
Along the Pictured Rocks shore in Michigan is a famous rock formation, Miner’s Castle. One year, my husband and son returned to find one of the towers of the castle had collapsed. “All that we love about Lake Superior is momentary pleasure,” Leaf writes.
Anyone who has visited and loved Lake Superior will especially enjoy this memoir, but it’s message us universal.
Thanks to the publisher for a free book.
January 8, 2024
There are books that I would term ‘me-books’ and this type of book is one of them. A memoir that is rooted in a place and explores the nature and the history of that place. To me it does not matter that I don’t know the place – I simply really enjoy somebody’s passion and love for a place that matters to them.
And it is so clear from the start that Lake Superior matters to the author. The connection that she feels to the South Shore through her own history of spending time there, raising kids there, seeing her life grow there together with her husband, is palpable.
And therefore when she explores its history it is through the eyes of someone who cares for it deeply. It is a way of laying bare a place with love.
There were parts that were a bit less interesting to me, but overall I thought this was a thoroughly enjoyable read that really gave me a sense of place. I found a few things I would like to explore further myself. The native history for example is very interesting to me. I have another book on my shelf about the Ojibwe people and I will make sure I will read it soon.
I am glad I have read this book and if you like books about people and places and nature and history all rolled into one, I am sure you will enjoy this as well.
And it is so clear from the start that Lake Superior matters to the author. The connection that she feels to the South Shore through her own history of spending time there, raising kids there, seeing her life grow there together with her husband, is palpable.
And therefore when she explores its history it is through the eyes of someone who cares for it deeply. It is a way of laying bare a place with love.
There were parts that were a bit less interesting to me, but overall I thought this was a thoroughly enjoyable read that really gave me a sense of place. I found a few things I would like to explore further myself. The native history for example is very interesting to me. I have another book on my shelf about the Ojibwe people and I will make sure I will read it soon.
I am glad I have read this book and if you like books about people and places and nature and history all rolled into one, I am sure you will enjoy this as well.
July 31, 2025
This is a rare book that I dare to say should take a place as a classic—at least for those spiritually tied to the yawning mass of water that is Lake Superior.
Sue Leaf brings to life in both visceral personal detail as well as historic an analytic detail the life that flows along Superiors south shore. The book is moving and emotional, and represents one of the best nature examinations of this region. Lake Superior is such a unique and magical influence and it permeates every page with its influence.
Easily a 5/5 and comparable to some of the greatest nature examinations ever written like Desert Solitaire or The Outermost House.
Sue Leaf brings to life in both visceral personal detail as well as historic an analytic detail the life that flows along Superiors south shore. The book is moving and emotional, and represents one of the best nature examinations of this region. Lake Superior is such a unique and magical influence and it permeates every page with its influence.
Easily a 5/5 and comparable to some of the greatest nature examinations ever written like Desert Solitaire or The Outermost House.
August 23, 2024
Storied Science and History
It’s a long read.
I enjoyed the story, and especially the history and science depth of Leaf’s research; although the details often seemed weedy and exhaustive.
It’s a long read.
I enjoyed the story, and especially the history and science depth of Leaf’s research; although the details often seemed weedy and exhaustive.
July 29, 2024
Really enjoyed this book-trip to a favorite place on earth.
December 27, 2025
Rally enjoy the author’s writing style and appreciation of the south shore of Lake Superior (and, by extension, her love of the UP).
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews