Process and product

I recently had a birthday. My son gave me a book, Wild River, Poetry and Prose by Warren Winders. I had asked for it based on a review in this past Spring's issue of TROUT magazine. Much of the prose occurs around places that once were my home waters, Indian Head and North Rivers and Cape Cod Bay.

northern Minnesota trout stream

Photo by J. Harrington

Something I read yesterday in the prose section reminded me of wisdom I once knew but had subsequently let slip into my pile of unknown knowns. One can catch fish using nets, weirs, hook and line or by dropping sticks of dynamite, fuse lit, into the water. If the purpose is to feed a mess of mouths, nets or dynamite might be the quickest or most effective process. Why, then, would anyone use a hook and line, or, more exotically, a bamboo rod and a tuft of hair and feathers wound on a hook. Winders gives a nice insight and answer in the following paragraph in his piece about restoring the  Quashnet River:

For years I wondered why most of the work on the Quashnet was done by hand. Environmental journalist, and author of the book "Alewife," Doug Watts, recently recalled working on the Quashnet restoration this way: "Joe [Bergin] and Fran Smith's vision for fixing  the Quashnet, foot by miserable foot, made me drive an hour from Easton for several weekends to do pure, rotten drudge work (cutting button brush) when I was in high school." It has taken me awhile, but now I think I understand Fran's reasoning - if engineers and bulldozers do the work, our relationship with the stream becomes less physical and more abstract, and a cycle is broken. Doug Watts' "rotten drudge work" is the palliative by immersion that the river can give us in return."

As I've been thinking and ranting about what's gone wrong and how did the country end up with the events of January 6, 2021, it occurs to me that our politics, and our culture, have become too focused on winning rather than governing. When "the Founders" drafted the Constitution, they included some faulty concepts, but "the ends justify the means" wasn't one of them, at least as I read the document. Exceptionalism isn't an entitlement program. We have come to take too much for granted and the adjustments needed, the "rotten drudge work" we are faced with must necessarily be done by US if we want the palliative immersion that democracy can give US in return.

Joy in the Woods

By Claude McKay

There is joy in the woods just now,

       The leaves are whispers of song,

And the birds make mirth on the bough

       And music the whole day long,

And God! to dwell in the town

       In these springlike summer days,

On my brow an unfading frown

       And hate in my heart always—

A machine out of gear, aye, tired,

Yet forced to go on—for I’m hired.

Just forced to go on through fear,

       For every day I must eat

And find ugly clothes to wear,

       And bad shoes to hurt my feet

And a shelter for work-drugged sleep!

       A mere drudge! but what can one do?

A man that’s a man cannot weep!

       Suicide? A quitter? Oh, no!

But a slave should never grow tired,

Whom the masters have kindly hired.

But oh! for the woods, the flowers

       Of natural, sweet perfume,

The heartening, summer showers

       And the smiling shrubs in bloom,

Dust-free, dew-tinted at morn,

       The fresh and life-giving air,

The billowing waves of corn

       And the birds’ notes rich and clear:—

For a man-machine toil-tired

May crave beauty too—though he’s hired.

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