The St. Clair Flats is the name of a delta of marshes, channels, and low, silty islands. At about 80 to 100 square miles, I'm told it is the largest fresh-water delta in the world. It sits at the north-eastern corner of Lake St. Clair, north-east of Detroit, Michigan.
It's fed by all the waters of a quarter of a million square miles of the Great Lakes drainage basin. All the rain and snow that falls on that vast area each year has to come through the Flats. Down the St Clair River from Lake Huron; through the Flats; spreading out into the shallow lake; funnelling into the Detroit River to shoot past the city and down to Lake Erie.
From half-mile wide channels with 1000 foot lake freighters to the 'cuts' that will barely let two rowboats pass each other; from an island with miles of roads and hundreds of homes and cottages to islands of one, two or ten cottages to reedy hummocks that scarcely rise above the water; the variety is amost endless.
The layout of the Flats