PRESQUE RIVER

The Presque Isle River makes its final descent through the western edge of Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, tumbling through a series of falls, cascades, narrow channels, and ancient bedrock before finally emptying into Lake Superior. In this long exposure, the river’s movement is softened, revealing the shape and direction of the water as it works its way toward the lake. The Presque Isle corridor is surrounded by old-growth sugar maple, hemlock, and white pine, and contains some of the park’s most dramatic waterfalls, including Nawadaha, Manido, and Manabezho Falls. (Michigan⁠)

The Porcupine Mountains have become one of my favorite places in the Northwoods—a wilderness that still feels strangely overlooked considering what survives here. Within the park is roughly 35,000 acres of old-growth forest, part of what the Michigan DNR describes as the largest relatively undisturbed northern hemlock-hardwood forest west of the Adirondacks. (Michigan⁠) There is a wildness here that feels different from much of the Great Lakes region: old forest, dark rivers, exposed rock, waterfalls, and the immense presence of Lake Superior. Following the Presque Isle downstream, it feels as though all of those pieces of the landscape eventually converge, carried by the river toward the lake.