Lake Michigan is the great lake beside Gary, Indiana, “very flat and very big, so it is like the sea”; depending on the day and the hour it is an open route or a forbidden barrier.
| Type | Place (lake) |
| Location | Near Chicago, northern United States |
| Spanish entry | Lago Michigan |
Description
It has no visible relief or opposite shore; it is “one of the biggest lakes of all near Chicago”, on the Canadian border. Everything in the region is located relative to it; from the search area it lies west. It is reached by car from the forest clearing, or from below through the caverns beside Gary.
The shore has three bands:
- Open water: a route, and a battlefield.
- Reeds and swamp, where the water makes “a kind of harmony of foam”; this band makes the shore an obstacle.
- Caverns linked to the underground system beside Gary: an exit from below and a prison where captives are mutilated (“by the lake they cut off our fingers”).
Beyond lies an esplanade of rocks and monoliths.
Access
In spring, “the season of the ice”, it is calmer than in winter, and “an hour of calm waters” opens a window for crossing. When closed, travel is forbidden: one “cannot go along the shore, not even on foot”, and the western flank must be skirted by land.
Conflicting accounts
- One passage puts the lake 8 km away (next to the Canadian border; it may measure something else).
- Another says “the lake is 20, 30 miles away”.
Open questions
- Whether “the hour of calm waters” is daily or seasonal.
- Who or what imposes the ban.
- Who runs the caverns, and why they cut off fingers.
- The lake’s size, which shore the company stood on, and what the swamp is.