November's heritage: memories and memorials

It was fifty years ago tomorrow that the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior. Gordon Lightfoot memorialized the tragedy with his song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Please pause for a moment of silence after following the link and listening to him perform. Then check some interesting background to the song.

Minnesota's Split Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior

Photo by J. Harrington

Locally, on November 10 the Split Rock Lighthouse and the Minnesota Historical Society will host a memorial to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Fitzgerald's sinking, as has been done for the past four decades or so.

Our area's firearm’s deer season opened yesterday with colder temperatures than we’ve seen so far this season. Warmer days are forecast for later in the week. One of the reasons I was more of a grouse and waterfowl hunter than a whitetail seeker is that I can't manage to sit still enough to blend into the landscape when experiencing the frequently cold temperatures we get during deer season in the North Country. Plus, when I tried deer hunting back in New England, before moving to Minnesota, I did it with a mixed group of bow hunters and bird hunters. It rarely failed that the bird hunters spooked deer and the bow hunters watched grouse strutting around their stands.

UPDATE: Local ponds are forming ice cover. First snow of the season is falling as graupel and forming snow snakes along the roads.

Since November is Native American Heritage month, as well as the season for early gales on Superior, and since Lightfoot referred to Superior by her Ojibwe/Anishinaabe name, Gitche Gumee, it seems fitting to close today with a Kimberly Blaeser poem. Water, in Great Lakes and elsewhere, has long been a source of both life and death.

Wellspring: Words from Water

A White Earth childhood water rich and money poor.
Vaporous being transformed in cycles—
the alluvial stories pulled from Minnesota lakes
harvested like white fish, like manoomin,
like old prophecies of seed growing on water.
Legends of Anishinaabeg spirit beings:
cloud bearer Thunderbird who brings us rain,
winter windigo like Ice Woman, or Mishibizhii
who roars with spit and hiss of rapids—
great underwater panther, you copper us
to these tributaries of balance. Rills. A cosmology
of nibi.  We believe our bodies thirst. Our earth.
One element. Aniibiishaaboo. Tea brown
wealth. Like maple sap. Amber. The liquid eye of moon.
Now she turns tide, and each wedded being gyrates
to the sound, its river body curving.
We, women of ageless waters, endure;
like each flower drinks from night,
holds dew. Our bodies a libretto,
saturated, an aquifer—we speak words
from ancient water.

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