Local View: A lot of us are seeking a haven from climate change - Duluth News Tribune

Local View: A lot of us are seeking a haven from climate change - Duluth News Tribune | News, weather, and sports from Duluth, Minnesota

Local View: A lot of us are seeking a haven from climate change

From the column: "No matter how hot and humid it gets in the rest of the country, you almost always need a hoodie on the banks of Gitche Gumee."

“The frequency of heat waves has been steadily increasing in the United States, from an average of two per year in the 1960s to six today.”

— U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

When the wolf is outside your door day and night, it wears on you physically and mentally. Our son Mike lives in Phoenix, and that’s more or less how he characterized the city’s record-breaking heat wave of 31 straight days of 110 degrees or higher this summer.

A physician and a mountain hiker in his mid-40s, Mike is used to Arizona’s triple-digit temperatures and doesn’t worry about falling down and suffering burns on the 180-degree sidewalks or running out of Gatorade.

But the last week of June he traveled 1,800 miles with his girlfriend Gen to join me and my wife Marianne and the rest of our family in Bayfield, among the few places in the country where the AC hasn’t been running 24/7. Less than two hours east of Duluth, Bayfield is a historic commercial fishing town on the steep shores of Lake Superior. No matter how hot and humid it gets in the rest of the country, you almost always need a hoodie on the banks of Gitche Gumee.

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Air temperatures ranged in the 70s during the days we were there, and in the low 60s at night, and we were fortunate to find accommodations for ourselves, our children, grandchild Summer, and my sister Nancy and her husband Jay Anderson from Wausau, Wisconsin, at the Pier Plaza hotel during one of the hottest months on record.

While dining on fresh sauteed whitefish at the Manypenny Bistro after arrival, we caught up on family news, from 6-year-old Summer’s promotion to the highest level in swim class to the jubilant announcement by Nancy and Jay that they are officially in remission after battling cancer for the past three years. My elder daughter Jackie and her husband Gene commiserated with Mike and Gen’s need to escape, comparing it to their own condition as Midwesterners afflicted with a maddening form of cabin fever during a prolonged January cold snap, when they check the thermometer daily, watch weather catastrophes as lead stories in national-news broadcasts, and wake up every morning with a sense of dread about the next electricity bill and the very future of our planet.

Nonetheless, we made the most of our vacation with a kayak tour the next day, paddling in and out of Superior’s rocky nooks and crannies, stopping midway for a breathtaking swim in the sparkling water of a sandstone cave.

Summer got her first paddling experience with her father Kevin, a writer and actor who captained from the stern, so that Summer's mother, an English teacher, had to pair up with Grampy in an 18-foot, yellow sea kayak and abide the same nautical commands she heard from him decades earlier in a 17-foot Grumman canoe: “Less gawking, Janet, and more paddling!”

The next day, Lost Creek Falls proved to be worth the mile-and-a-half hike through the woods, since the 10-foot waterfall had been supercharged by an early-morning squall, allowing everyone to climb behind it for a nippy shower. Mike, along with Gen, a student nurse, and Gene, a Marine, assisted the less-sure-footed among us through rivulets and over logs that we might stick our heads under the icy cascade.

A two-mile ferry ride to Madeline Island on Thursday for a dip at Big Bay State Park’s beach concluded our scheduled activities, where I was surprised how simply knowing about the rest of the country’s sweltering state provided sufficient motivation to plunge into 67-degree waters without hesitation. Young Summer, teeth chattering, braved the chill, even laughing as she called out Grampy’s real reason for moving off into deeper water: “to meditate,” in his words.

The felicitous effects of the cold-water therapy lasted several days, including until we arrived back home, where we read a text from Jackie and Gene saying they spoke with a Realtor about possible and permanent relocation to Bayfield’s haven from climate change.

Haven for the time being, I thought, as millions of other Americans contemplate contingencies, alternative locations, and emergency evacuations in the face of wildfires, tornadoes, unprecedented floods, mudslides, hurricanes, and heat waves this year, next year, and for many years to come.

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When my neighbor Dick indicated on a recent morning that I needn’t worry, claiming (baselessly) that the latest weather events were part of the natural cycle that will likely return to normal next year, all I could think of was Summer: her freckles, her smile, her future world.

David McGrath is formerly of Hayward, is an emeritus professor of Native American literature at the College of DuPage in Illinois, is the author of “South Siders,” and is a frequent contributor to the News Tribune Opinion page. He can be reached at profmcgrath2004@yahoo. com.

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