When Lisa Labuz pauses from all the bad news on WBEZ, she’ll give us variances of temperature around Cook County, then adds, “Cooler by the lake”. She only says it in the summertime, a sort of invitation to escape the heat by hitting the beach. And I get all smug, thinking, I am already cooler by the lake. She doesn’t have to remind me that it’s cooler by the lake when the temperature hits -9F.
But it’s strange how Lake Michigan acts like an air conditioner in the summertime but functions almost like a heater in the winter. Steam swirled over the surface all week, and banked into clouds that hung just above the surface. Because of constant motion of the world’s largest bathtub, the water mostly can get no colder than 32F, even when the air is 40 degrees below that. What drama!
I mostly don’t mind the cold of winter—mostly. It’s the salt that gets to me. Eats through boot soles, stings the dog’s feeet, abrades the bottoms of cars into a lace of rust. Steam over the freezing lake makes me feel Siberian; salt makes me feel Soviet.
There’s a great quote from Ken Kalfus in his story “PU-239”, about the horrid movement of a canister of heavy plutonium being passed from dying dummy to dying dummy. His description of the plutonium makes me think of all the chemical salts on the streets of Chicago this week, salt being The Opposite of Lake Michigan:
“And it was not only plutonium. Timofey was now exquisitely aware of the ethereal solution that washed over him every day like a warm bath: the insidiously subatomic, the swarmingly microscopic, and the multi-syllabically chemical. His body was soaked in pesticides, the liquified remains of electrical batteries, leaded gasoline exhaust, dioxin, nitrates, toxic waste metals, dyes, and deadly viral organisms generated in untreated sewage—the entire carcinogenic and otherwise malevolent slough of the great Soviet industrial empire. Like Homo Sovieticus himself, Timofey was ending his life as a mélange of damaged chromosomes, metal-laden tissue, crumbling bone, fragmented membranes, and oxygen-deprived blood. Perhaps his nations casual regard for the biological consequences of environmental degradation was the result of some quasi-Hegelian conviction that man lived in history, not nature. It was no wonder everyone smoked.”
An interesting factoid about Lake Washington, a big fresh water lake fed by streams from glaciers and snow packs v. Salish Sea/Puget Sound, a huge salt water sea that flushes completely twice a day is that in winter, the salt water is warmer than the fresh water. Also, lately both the bodies of water (sigh, "bodies" of water) have been warmer than the air. I'd say Lake Michigan is in pretty good company as bodies of water go.
An interesting factoid about Lake Washington, a big fresh water lake fed by streams from glaciers and snow packs v. Salish Sea/Puget Sound, a huge salt water sea that flushes completely twice a day is that in winter, the salt water is warmer than the fresh water. Also, lately both the bodies of water (sigh, "bodies" of water) have been warmer than the air. I'd say Lake Michigan is in pretty good company as bodies of water go.
Gorgeous photos. I’ll still enjoy winter from inside, even if the PNW version is not as harsh as Chicago’s!