Appearing on the Horizon, It's the World

I have seen only one of the five Great Lakes in person. Lake Michigan. But almost every morning I watch the sun rise over Lake Superior from Duluth Minnesota.

Within YouTube’s fortuitous randomness, I discovered Duluth Harbor and its several live cameras not long after the shipping season opened this spring. If I tune in to the feed at the right time, I can see a massive Great Lakes freighter either arrive or depart.

Some of these vessels are one thousand feet long and over one hundred feet wide. They can almost fill the canal entrance to the harbor, but in the lingo of Great Lakes shipping, they’re called “boats” and not “ships.”

I like best to see a boat appear as a black dot on Lake Superior’s horizon and grow bigger as it approaches Duluth. I have no problem staring, mesmerized, for the fifteen or so minutes it needs to grow into the actual form of a boat. I can stay with it for the half hour until it reaches the canal and enters the harbor.

The harbor has enough cameras that I can follow the boat through the canal, under the Aerial Lift Bridge, and into Duluth Harbor Basin until it puts into a dock or disappears around Rice’s Point, and not lose sight of it.

I tend to stay with the boats because I’m awed by how nimble they are in maneuvering. They make precise, sweeping turns. I’ve watched them sidle up to a pier in a gentle glide; back out of one dock, pivot and head into another, all without the aid of tugboats.

I’m still working at home, but the few times I’ve ventured into the world make me think of that dot on the horizon, not quite taking shape, but reminding me that life is on its way back. I need to prepare to make that wide turn in a new direction.