Glacial Gifts

Glacial Gifts. Coastal Landscape Formed by Ice, Water and Wind. Ice-Age glaciers covered the Whitefish Bay Area for thousands of years and left behind a complex mosaic of sand, gravel and clay. Following the last glacier's retreat about 10,000 years ago, water and wind shaped these deposits into the landscape of the present. Based on the resulting variations in soils and other conditions, different plant and animal communities developed. Later, Native Americans and then European immigrants traveled along this coast to find what they needed to make a living., Point Iroquois and Gros Cap (opposite shore in Canada) , "These two promontories stand like the pillars of Hercules which guard the entrance into the Mediterranean, and their office is to mark the foot of the mighty Superior, a lake which may not, inaptly, be deemed another Mediterranean Sea." , , Henry Schoolcraft, 1851, In the Ojibwe language... , "Nouns are mainly designated as alive or dead, animate or inanimate. The word for stone, asin, is animate. Stones are called grandfathers and grandmothers and are extremely important in Ojibwe philosophy. Once I began to think of stones as animate, I started to wonder whether I was picking up a stone or it was putting itself into my hand." , From Two Languages in Mind, but Just One in the Heart, , by Louise Erdrich, 2009, Background Photo: Glaciers carried many of these stones here from bedrock formations located to the North in Canada. . This historical marker was erected by Whitefish Bay Scenic Byway and Hiawatha National Forest. It is Near Brimley in Chippewa County Michigan