Includes essay by Minnesota author Sam Cook. For those fortunate enough to live within an easy distance of Lake Superior, this lake of many superlatives is a source of renewal and reassurance. Renewal, because to stand before a living body of water stretching to the horizon is to drink in its energy. To be in or on Lake Superior is to revel in the abundance of substance we ourselves are made of. Reassurance because of her water is fresh and clear; because all around this greatest of the great lakes, wildness prevails. In a time when travel across the country reveals a disheartening, repetitious series of chain stores, fast food stops and parking lots, returning to Superior country is a homecoming for the soul. Jeff Richter lives within the Lake Superior snow belt, and in every season for the past fifteen years, has ventured out with a camera and a sleeping bag, circling the lake, place by place, many times over. Jeff's collection of Superior photos exceeds the range of other such albums. He has a habit of meandering, and he is not only a superb landscape photographer, but moreso an accomplished pusuer of wildlife. Jeff brings back from the shores surrounding the lake candid images of the wild things that few of us ever glimpse. This book is more, then, than a gorgeous volume of spectacular scenery - it's a shot of diverse life that thrives in the purity of Lake Superior and her watershed. It is more, too, than a collection of pictures to be admired and enjoyed in comfort - it is a call to action, a reminder that all is not lost. To see these places and know these wild things, as writers Sam Cook, Howard Paap, John Bates and Justin Isherwood know them - and as Jeff Richter knows them - is to find something that you cannot live without. This book is, above all, a love letter. - Dust jacket.