(This is a post I originally wrote in August of 2009 while up at our family cabin in northern Minnesota. Along the theme of my post I'm working on for Sunday, it represents a moment of convergence, hope and some self-enlightenment. AB)
“The creator is the lake and we are waves on the lake.”
This is a line plucked from a book I read today. It was Louise Erdrich’s Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country.
It’s her personal reflection about – well, about so many things, but
it’s moving to me in an amplified way because much of it is set here on
Rainy Lake at Ober’s island, which is just a few miles uplake from our
cabin.
Though I have needed to “work remotely” on a few projects
while here these first few days, I am slowly slipping into lake life.
Reading always helps me do this, as do the first few steps on northern
soil. This time, the first steps were taken near Eveleth at the
Wellstone memorial – which also turns out to be a perfect spot to walk a
dog, run around with kids, and “listen to the quiet,” as S. Marie
Therese from Vis always said. The memorial is one of my most treasured
places to visit.
But to the book, and the fact that I am in
“Ojibwe Country.” I never think of it as such, but of course that is
what it is. The Ojibwe were here long before the Schmidts. But I
forget that this land that is so important to my own heritage really
encompasses a heritage of the earth much bigger than me.
As I get
into lake life, vacation mode, and “away mode,” my mind slowly opens
up. The connecting aspect of my brain that is so helpful in
accomplishing things in my work life takes on new dimensions up here,
and everything seems as one. As I read the Erdrich book and learn about
Ojibwe tradition, I immediately draw a mental line of connection to the
Radio Lab show we listened to on the way up – the show on aspects of
death. Erdrich describes how the islands here constantly change as the
water levels rise and fall; and as chunks of bog detach from one area
and attach themselves to others. No island really ever remains the
same, they change as time passes. On Radio Lab, the neuro physicist
talked about the atoms in our brains and the cells in our bodies…they
are always reforming themselves, shuffling around as we learn more and
become more. We are literally not the same person we were before.
All
of this is reassuring to me somehow. I go on about how important the
past is up here, what a gift it is to share the same house, lake, land
and rocks with my great grandparents. But really, even the land itself
and the lake are not the same. In obvious and even very subtle ways the
composition of this place has changed over time.
It must be
then, that the most real thing I share with everyone who’s been here is
the experience of being here. The experience of looking out on the
water; the experience of walking on the rocks, hiking through the woods,
cooking feasts, being with family, playing with the pups.
It is
probably true that I am most connected to my loved ones by living as
fully as possible in this moment that I am in; both here and in wherever
that moment occurs.
