The Welsh have a word for it

On my way to vote this morning, I noticed lots more purple loosestrife flowers than I have in prior years. At the rate it’s spreading, I suspect and fear that loosestrife will dominate much of the Sunrise river marshes in a few years.

Back at the house, I noticed several purple finches at the feeder. Migration beginning already?

Today’s weather was/is about as good as it gets in the North Country during summer time.

Much of the afternoon was spent online in a workshop titled “Writing with Water,” offered by the Dakota County library as part of the We Are Water MN exhibit. It’s been too long since I wrote anything except what gets posted here so the change of pace was enjoyable and motivating. It also fit very nicely with a book review I read in The Guardian the morning: Rivers brought me heart-shattering loss - then gave me a home. That review, in turn, led me to another Welsh word that, I believe, helps explain why I still consider New England “home” despite living most of my life in Minnesota.

CYNEFIN

(Pr. ‘kuh-neh-vin’)

The word ‘cynefin’ itself is swaddled in layers of meaning – a Welsh noun with no direct equivalent in English, its origins lie in a farming term used to describe the habitual tracks and trails worn by animals in hillsides. The word has since morphed and deepened to conjure a very personal sense of place, belonging and familiarity. The artist Kyffin Williams describes it as:

‘that relationship: the place of your birth and of your upbringing, the environment in which you live and to which you are naturally acclimatised.’

All in all, today has been one of the more pleasant and satisfying I’ve enjoyed in awhile. I hope yours was at least as good.

Mississippi River at Stone Arch Bridge

Photo by J. Harrington

De Wakpa Taŋka Odowaŋ / Song for the Mississippi River

By Gwen Nell Westerman

20 September 2018

 

Long before Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man.
            Before Ol’ Man River.
            Before Wade in the Water.
Long before Schoolcraft and verItascaput.
            Before Father Hennepin and St. Anthony,
            Before Misi Ziibi.
Long before Hernando de Soto.
Otakaheya
In the beginning,
De Dakota Makoce
This was a Dakota place.
The water was pure.
The water was wakaŋ.
Sacred.
mni
pejuta tokaheya heca.
Water was
Water is
our first medicine.
The water was part of the land.
And therefore part of the people.
And in this place,
We flourished.
From Bdote,
where the Mni Sota Wakpa joins
the Wakpa Taŋka,
We followed the rivers,
interconnected waterways,
interconnected lifeways,
Itokaġa
southward to ḢeMniCaŋ and
Bde Iṡtamni, the “Lake of Tears.”
Waziyata
Northward the Big River
took us to Owamniyomni
the whirlpool created by ḢaḢa Wakpa
the curling waters of the falls.
We knew the river’s rise and fall,
channels and gorges,
every meander, every floodplain,
from Bde Wakaŋ to Mniti
Mille Lacs to the Lake of the Woods,
Rainy Lake to Thunder Bay,
where our burial mounds remain.
Wiyoḣpeyata
Westward to Saskatchewan
the head of the Churchill River,
along the Ballantyne River,
named Puatsipi by the Cree—
            Dakota River.
To Bdote, the beginning
of the Mississippi of the North
and the Little Minnesota.
These were our waterways
and our lifeways.
Our medicine.
And we, too, want to sing
a song for the water,
a song for wakpa taŋka
so we listen
we listen
listen
and then
on the edge of a dream
the songs come.
Condensed from the fog
Like dewdrops on cattails,
They form perfectly clear.
Whispering through leaves,
heavy voices rise up,
drift beyond night
toward the silent dawn,
and sing.
            Hekta ehaŋna ded uŋtipi.
            Heuŋ he ohiŋni uŋkiksuyapi kte.
            Aŋpetu dena ded uŋtipi.
            Heca ohiŋni uŋdowaŋpi kte.
            Mni
            Mni pejuta
            Mni wiconi
            Mni wakaŋ
Always on still morning air,
they come,
connected by
memories
connected by
water.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.