Tunnel to the Beach

by

A Marvelous Daily Journey to the Lake

I have lived alongside Lake Superior all my life. For seven decades, I have greeted her, walked along her shores, crossed the water in boats and over bridges. I have even lived on an island.

The Lake and I have always been connected.

I was born and raised in Duluth, the daughter of Polish immigrants and a descendant of ancestors all from river towns. Water, or in Polish, Woda, is in my blood.

As I child, I saw Lake Superior every day during my childhood when we rode down Mesaba Avenue to go to school. And I would walk backward up Mesaba to my grandparents’ home, keeping my gaze on her shining big sea waters all the way. I didn’t want to lose connection to her.

As a teenager, I walked along creeks and rivers that flowed into Lake Superior. After graduating from the College of St. Scholastica, I moved east 70 miles to Ashland, Wisconsin, another lakeside city.

For the past 45 years, I lived in the Wisconsin lakeside communities of Ashland, Bayfield, Washburn, Port Wing and La Pointe. In each, I’ve sought access to trails and beaches, where I could walk by her side.

When I retired recently  to Ashland, I needed to find a new access point.

Where could I safely walk to the water with a four-lane highway separating me from the Lake? What I discovered was a tunnel to the beach under U.S. Highway 2, descending near City Hall and opening up to 4 miles of lakeshore trail.

The entrance to the tunnel greeted with two words: Welcome! Biindigen!

The English I understood. The Ojibwe word, I have learned, means “Come in!”

So I did. Even with the vision of Lake Superior ahead, beckoning me to her shoreline, I couldn’t help but stop within the concrete tube transformed to magic by mosaics.

The roaring buzz of traffic faded as the not-too-distant Lake’s waves hailed, “Biindigen! Biindigen!”

Yet the tunnel enveloped me with wonder. Painted tracks of animals and birds created a path along the floor, while stained-glass mosaics of trees, birds, mammals, fish and bugs sprouted the walls. An eagle and a whooping crane flew above me on the ceiling.

The figures charmingly kept no proportions, one to the others, with gigantic butterflies fluttering near tiny fish negotiating a painted water current and an aloof blue heron nearby. Each figure bore beside it two names, one in English, one in Ojibwemowin:

    Bear    Makwa

    Wolf    Ma’iingan

    Eagle    Migizi

    Deer    Waawaashkeshi

    Fox    Waagosh

I was smitten by the diamond-jagged edges of the evolutionary elder of Lake Superior’s fishery: Sturgeon or Name.

A curiosity arose in me: Who created this artistic invitation to the Lake? Delaying my daily visit to the Lake herself, I walked back through the tunnel to City Hall. My inquiries at the info desk and then in the Parks and Recreation Department netted me a name: Rose Spieler-Sandberg.

When I returned home (after finally visiting with the Lake), I called her. A week later, a young woman met me at the entrance to the tunnel and graciously toured me through the inspiration of her creation.

It was Lake Sturgeon, or Name, who inspired her in 2015. Turns out an artistic gene runs in her family; she is daughter of an artist.

Rose graduated from Northland College with a degree in sustainable community development and had one community art project on her resumé when she became an assistant city planner in Ashland. In 2014, she had worked with volunteers to create a stained-glass mosaic around the Maslowski Beach artesian well along U.S. Highway 2 on the west side of the city.

When that project was completed, the thought occurred to her that this should be done in more places. Now in the planning office, she began to search for another venue. The most needy location lay not too far from City Hall.

The gray tunnel was built mid-city under U.S. Highway 2 during highway reconstruction in  2010, while Rose was in college. The tunnel did provide safe access to the Lake for bikers, walkers, and wheelchairs, but it remained dark and unappealing. Locals referred to it as “the tunnel to nowhere.”

Believing the tunnel could hold much more appeal, Rose wrote grants, collaborated with Chequamegon Bay area middle and high schools, worked with community and arts organizations and with the city Parks and Recreation staff. She also worked with Ojibwe language instructors.

Financial support secured, over 200 people became involved in this community art project through a series of workshops. In the tunnel, they whitewashed, painted the landscape and created the mosaics, bringing alive Rose’s wish to tell the region’s natural history through visual storytelling on the walk to the water.

Starting the process, Rose designed the Lake Sturgeon guiding people to the water, and then she invited others to dream and to see their animals, plants, trees, birds or fish take shape and transform the “tunnel to nowhere” into a journey to the most precious of places, to the Ojibwe Nibi, Water.

Now I walk through that tunnel most days, come rain or shine, snow or sleet (really!).

Sometimes I chat with other habitual walkers to the Lake, sometimes with strangers who have just discovered this blending of art, natural culture and practical conveyance.

But at the end of any conversation or any lingering to enjoy the whimsical passage, I continue my walk to greet the water and begin my day.

Sometimes as I stroll, though, I read Rose’s sweet poem to guide along the passage:

Water gathers, water gives,

along its shores we all do live.

Above! Below! Within! Around!

It’s up in the air and underground …

I try to spot a different stained-glass mosaic each time I’m in the tunnel. I may travel in silence, or I have been known to sing water songs, continuing until I reach the water’s edge. There I pause. I breathe. I witness the gentle calm of still waters, or the pounding waves and winds of a change. I pray for the Lake’s well being. I offer thoughts of gratitude that she has been, and will always be, a part of my life.

Thank you, Water.

Miigwech, Nibi.

Dziekuje, Woda.

This issue’s Journal writer, Marina Lachecki, recently retired from serving the residents of Madeline Island as their pastor for two decades. She is a published author in the fields of environmental education and creation spirituality. She now resides in another port city, Ashland, Wisconsin, where she walks to the Lake on a daily basis. The photos were provided by Megan McBride of the Ashland Planning and Development Department.