The Great Lakes--Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario--are one of the natural wonders of the world. Shaped by glaciers, the lakes and the lands around them have been home to native American nations, explorers, loggers, and farmers as well as visitors who enjoy fishing, boating, and hunting in a region known for cool summers, colorful autumns, and snowy winters.

This beautifully-illustrated book conveys the region's natural heritage through stories, poems, essays, and historical accounts. The book invites readers to meet an Ojibwe girl born in 1777 on the shores of Wisconsin's Chequamegon Bay; spend a summer hunting for rare plants in rural Indiana or working on an organic farm; watch the Aurora Borealis from atop four hundred high dunes in Michigan.

The book is filled with adventures, including crossing an ice bridge above Niagara Falls in the winter of 1899 and sailing on the schooner, "Rouse Simmons," bringing Christmas trees from Michigan's Upper Peninsula to Chicago in 1912. Describing canoe trips, fishing expeditions, and encounters with moose, loons, and bears, the book features such well-known writers as Minnesota's Sigurd Olson, Illinois' Sandra Cisneros, Indiana's Edwin Way Teale and Gene Stratton-Porter, and Ontario's Margaret Atwood.