Kitch-iti-kipi, the Big Spring

Tucked in the woods a few miles northwest of Manistique is one of the most magical spots in Michigan. The Ojibwe named it Kitch-iti-kipi — a name said to carry many meanings, from “the great water” to “mirror of heaven” — and people have been coming to stare into it for centuries.

Kitch-iti-kipi, the Big Spring, is Michigan’s largest freshwater spring: an emerald pool two hundred feet across and forty feet deep, where more than ten thousand gallons a minute well up through cracks in the limestone below. You cross it on a wooden observation raft that you pull along a cable yourself, peering through an opening in the deck at giant trout drifting over ancient sunken tree trunks while the sandy bottom boils and shifts in the upwelling water. The spring stays a constant forty-five degrees, so it never freezes — even in the depths of a UP winter, the pool stays open and green.

The spring sits in Palms Book State Park, which exists thanks to a Seney man named John Bellaire, who loved the spot so much that in 1926 he arranged for the land to be sold to the state for ten dollars — on the promise it would become a park for everyone. A Michigan Recreation Passport gets you in; details at michigan.gov/dnr.