#WorldOceansDay in the North Country

If you're from the MidWest or the North Country, you may well ask "what's World Oceans Day got to do with us?" The answer is at least three fold:

1. This year the focus is on preventing plastic pollution. Do you use plastic? Probably so.


2. There's a 97% or so consensus among scientists that humans are responsible for global warming that's negatively affecting the oceans and our weather/water cycle. What's your carbon footprint?


3. What do you know about the hydrologic cycle? The rain and snow that falls on us largely originates with evaporation from the oceans. Streamflow down the Mississippi River transports sediment and farm fertilizers to the Gulf of Mexico, helping to create a dead zone off shore from New Orleans.

Are you getting a clearer picture of what John Muir meant when he wrote "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." (- My First Summer in the Sierra , 1911, page 110.) or was that already obvious to you?

Minnesota's Inland Ocean

Photo by J. Harrington

We grew up next to the Atlantic Ocean. We swam in it, boated on it, fished in it and watched the tides rise and fall. In fact, one of the most significant (to us) observations about Lake Superior is that it doesn't smell right. For those of us who've spent much of our lives near an ocean, that much water is supposed to have a "salt smell" that's missing from Superior and the other Great Lakes, although, as "inland oceans" they have lots of appeal. For confirmation, take a look at Lorine Niedecker's Lake Superior after you've read:

"Out of the rolling ocean the crowd"

By Walt Whitman

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me, 

Whispering, I love you, before long I die,

I have travell’d a long way merely to look on you to touch you,

For I could not die till I once look’d on you,

For I fear’d I might afterward lose you. 

Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe, 

Return in peace to the ocean my love, 

I too am part of that ocean, my love, we are not so much separated, 

Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect! 

But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us, 

As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever; 

Be not impatient – a little space – know you I salute the air, the ocean and the land, 

Every day at sundown for your dear sake, my love. 

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