If someone asked me what kayaking the Pictured Rocks is like, this is the photo I’d show them.
It was July 30, 2024, and we’d been on the water a good while when the fog came in off Lake Superior. It was the kind that takes the far end of a cliff first and then keeps going. We were paddling toward Lovers Leap, a sea arch cut through a sandstone point, and the kayaks beneath it are the only reason you can tell how big it is. The water was still that clear green, with the sky gone gray behind it.
All of this shoreline is sandstone, and the color is minerals. Groundwater seeps through the rock and carries iron, manganese and copper down the face with it, and each one leaves its own stain as it dries: reds and oranges from the iron, black and brown from the manganese, blues and greens from the copper. From a kayak you’re close enough to read the streaks like brushwork.
Most of this was shot on my phone from the cockpit, with a paddle in one hand and a lake that never holds still. I took more than 400 photos that day and kept a handful. A couple of the cliff shots from that paddle are in the Mineral Cliffs bundle.