Posting into the Void
I was back in Crosby, Minnesota today—land of iron, old mine pits, and surprisingly reasonable visibility. Which was a bit of a shock, to be honest. Back home, the water in Lake Superior has been so stirred up it looks like split pea soup wearing sunglasses. And Gilbert? The less said about that silt festival the better. But Cuyuna? It had clarity. Not Great Barrier Reef clarity, but respectable-for-a-hole-in-the-ground clarity. And sometimes, that’s all you need.
On the drive over, I rang the Brainerd dive shop looking for a bit of reconnaissance. The gentleman on the line was helpful in the way a brick is helpful when you need a doorstop. He suggested a few dive sites—Shangri-La, Stairway to Hell, and a third I immediately forgot—and offered some vague answers about access and depth. I hung up and stared at the Cuyuna map like it owed me money. Upon discovering that two of the recommended sites were in the same mine pit, I called back to ask about connecting them on a single, long dive. This time he sounded like I’d asked him to walk me through his taxes. Said he couldn’t hear me, suggested I call back later, and then hung up before I could say “thanks.” I didn’t call back.
We attempted a dive at Alstead Mine, where Shangri-La and Stairway to Hell reside, but after 20 minutes of bouncing down a glorified deer trail and attempting to ford a series of increasingly bold mud puddles, her Subaru Impreza reached its personal limit and politely declined to go further. We backed out and redirected toward the Rally Center, a site we’ve dove before but hadn’t fully explored.
The water was a thick, jade green—not what you’d call “clear,” but good enough to locate a rather dramatic wall, which we followed down to 100 feet. Visibility was passable, and I managed a halfway decent shot of Heather mid-hover against the stone. We spent a comfortable thirty minutes below 70 feet before making our way up, tracing the shoreline past a handful of pike, a battalion of bluegills, and a curious phenomenon I’ve come to think of as underwater ground fog—likely something to do with the thermocline, but I’ll leave that to the physicists. I got a photo of Heather floating above it. It’s oddly ethereal, and I quite like the mood of it.
Somewhere around 100 feet down, the world goes quiet, green, and strangely beautiful—just a diver, a light, and the deep.
Which brings me to a more complicated topic: what to do with these photos. I started this blog partly as a refuge from Instagram, which I had come to treat less like a creative outlet and more like a vending machine that dispenses validation. I’d scroll, post, scroll, repeat—until I realized I wasn’t so much enjoying photography as managing it like a product line.
This blog, on the other hand, is mine. Quiet. Personal. A digital cabin in the woods. My family knows about it. Sparky does. But that’s about it. I haven’t exactly advertised it because, honestly, it’s nice not needing to defend my gear choices or my dive profiles to the peanut gallery of fellow divers with magnifying glasses for moral compasses.
A largemouth bass doing its best impression of an aquatic plant, which, to be fair, is surprisingly effective in these parts.
Still, I do like sharing photos. Or I think I do. My oldest daughter loves them—or at least says all the right things when I send them, which makes me feel good. Heather, my ever-patient dive buddy, tends to offer a minimalist response: “Cool” or “Thanks.” It’s not unkind, just… efficient. But it makes me second-guess whether the images land for her at all.
Freshwater dive photography doesn’t get a lot of love unless you’re shooting Great Lakes wrecks. Folks like Jeff Lindsay do that beautifully. I’d like to think my photos—creative angles, freshwater fish, murky beauty and all—might nudge someone else into a diving, a drysuit, or at least into a daydream.
A northern pike, unimpressed by the rebreather intruder, glides on—confident, camouflaged, and clearly in charge of the neighborhood.
And this is where Instagram tries to lure me back in. It’s a tidy solution—instant audience, instant feedback—but it comes bundled with that gravitational pull toward likes, hearts, and algorithmic dopamine hits.
So, I’m torn. Maybe the answer isn’t to choose between hiding and hyping. Maybe it’s just to keep doing what I enjoy—diving, photographing, editing—and let alongthebifrost.com be what it is: a place for anyone who stumbles in, and especially for me.
I’ll stop here. Tomorrow’s dive is coming, and these days—like clear water and good light—don’t linger long.
