Transcripts

LEIF ENGER: Decades ago, before Highway 61 was built along Superior's North Shore, the lake itself was the highway. Mail boats moved up and down the shore delivering letters and parcels to lakeside communities, and tugs pushed enormous rafts of timber down from lumber camps near Grand Marais. Now, Highway 61, especially in summer and fall, is a blur of tourist traffic. And down on the lake itself, that other older highway is being rediscovered too.

CRAIG BLACKLOCK: Currently, we're sitting about 100 feet offshore, just north of Gooseberry Falls State Park and about a one foot swell and pretty nice conditions with a tailwind.

LEIF ENGER: Craig Blacklock looks much happier ensconced in his bobbing sea-kayak than he does on land. It's a long, pointy toothpick of a boat built of fiberglass and deceptively stable, not like those constantly flipping river kayaks you see on TV specials about wilderness daredevils. He says if he could, he'd spend all his time out here paddling, camping, and taking pictures for the popular coffee table books he publishes with his wife, Nadine.

CRAIG BLACKLOCK: The kayak allows you to pull up just about any place you can get out and explore the shoreline on foot. And that's really, to me, the ideal way to see the shoreline. There are so many little coves and cliffs to explore as opposed to being in a larger cruiser where you simply have to stay out on the lake.

LEIF ENGER: Sea-kayaking has become a huge recreational draw on the lake's southern shore in recent years in Wisconsin's Apostle Islands. And in 1990, Blacklock came up with a plan to spread the sport around the rest of Superior, a so-called water trail, which would offer kayakers a place to stop and camp every three to five miles along the shore.

With some 1,800 miles of shoreline, the trail could eventually include up to 600 campsites. The first 20-mile segment opened this summer between Gooseberry Falls and Tettegouche State Park. Paddling now past a craggy ridge topped by an expansive new house, Blacklock says his real motive in pushing for the water trail is to slow development on the shore.

CRAIG BLACKLOCK: Headlands that we've all enjoyed looking at are going to have more and more condominium development put on top of them. Coves where we've picked agates are going to be closed off because of housing development. I think one of the important things is getting people out to see the lake from the lake side, where you can witness both the beauty and also what we've done in the past that's perhaps been a mistake in the development of the shoreline.

And maybe inspire some new ways of looking at zoning or development policies, working with private landowners, private developers. Not saying, no, you can't develop, but doing it in both an environmentally and visually more friendly manner to the lake.

LEIF ENGER: So far, the water trail concept has enjoyed almost unanimous support from environmental and governmental groups. The Inland Sea society has helped organize the effort on the Wisconsin shore. And the Minnesota legislature voted unanimously to establish the trail between Duluth and the Canadian border, though it didn't designate any money for the project. The DNR's Trails and Waterways division is helping to plan and build the first of the campsites and is working with private resorts and campgrounds that want to be part of the trail. But questions have been raised by people who say the trail itself might hurt the shore.

JOHN PEGORS: Human contact with Lake Superior shore or any shore is generally detrimental.

LEIF ENGER: John Pegors is the retired director for the pollution control agency's regional office in Duluth.

JOHN PEGORS: Somebody's got to clean out the toilet at the end of the year. Somebody's got to prepare it in the spring of the year. And how are you going to get down to the shore of Lake Superior to do that?

You're either going to have a pickup truck, and there'll be a roadway or a small pathway down on a pickup truck. Or maybe you'll use a four-wheeled tracked vehicle that they run around in the woods with. But there'll be some kind of disruption that'll be knocking down the vegetation, opening up the forest canopy, allowing rainwater and snowmelt to run down and carry soil and waste material into the lake, and just create a series of very low level sores on the shoreline. Well, what kind of an environmental review is this project having?

LEIF ENGER: The answer, says the Department of Natural Resources, is that no environmental review was even proposed for the water trail. Steve Mueller of DNR Trails and Waterways says kayakers like Blacklock proposed the trail to promote an environmental appreciation of the shoreline, not to ruin it. He says no one ever suggested that a review might be needed. Moreover, Mueller says, the majority of campsites, at least along the Minnesota shore, will be located in already existing camp locations in state parks or campgrounds or at private resorts.

STEVE MUELLER: I think the amount of new sites we'll add will be relatively small. Most of these sites that, at least the ones I can anticipate now, will be a hike in situation for the people taking care of the sites. And I think we'll also follow the policy as a carry in/carry out policy, Leave No Trace ethic we're promoting.

LEIF ENGER: But the review question is likely to keep surfacing. There are in fact state regulations requiring environmental assessments for large campgrounds, yet there are no such guidelines for the development of recreational trails, be they on water or land. The state has 16,000 miles of snowmobile trails, for example, for which no environmental studies have ever been done. Leif Enger, Mainstreet Radio.