Mni Wiconi, Water is Life #CleanWaterWednesday

I think, I hope, I'm seeing a pattern develop here.

a lake near the Gunflint Trail

Photo by J. Harrington

• More than 100 Native American tribes are now supporting #NoDAPL and "Water Is Life" at Standing Rock.


• The Smithsonian and partners have commenced a national tour of Water/Ways.


• Minnesota is one of the leading states for the Water/Ways exhibit.


• Governor Dayton has declared a Year of Water Action.


• The Academy of American Poets has created an anthology of Poems on Water for Teachers in conjunction with Water/Ways


• The City of St. Paul has a manager for its "Great River Passage" initiative


• Minneapolis is working on redevelopment of the upper riverfront


• NibiWalk performed (Sept 9 - 12) a ceremonial Water Walk along the Kettle River tributary to the St. Croix


• The University of Minnesota is focusing increasing attention on the Mississippi River flowing through its campus

Kandunce River, northern Minnesota

Photo by J. Harrington

I have no doubt there are other major initiatives, such as the continuing efforts to protect the St. Louis River and the Boundary Waters from the environmental devastation that frequently (always?) accompanies mining. Are we beginning to see a new awakening to the fact that water is a renewable but irreplaceable resource? Could we begin to hope, finally, for the attainment of the goals set by Congress back in 1972, that our waters finally be "fishable-swimmable?" I'm encouraged by the above list and look forward to seeing additions to it. Please list in the comments any I may have missed.

I suppose that the concurrent occurrence of all of these initiatives is largely coincidental. I much prefer to believe that they're signs of an awakening on our part. That, looked at broadly, they're indications that we're developing a Water Ethic or water ethics. That we are starting to realize that there is indeed no Planet B. That we live on a finite planet. That indeed, Water Is Life and we can't drink oil or eat ore. Might it be time for a "Green Party" to consider becoming the Blue-Green Party, the party of Life on earth?

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Langston Hughes, 1902 - 1967

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
     flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln 
     went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy 
     bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

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

Happy July!

As of today, we've officially made it through the first half of 2015. The local day lilies decided to celebrate that and the upcoming holiday (a little early) by bursting in air today.

day lilies bursting in air

Photo by J. Harrington

day lilies bursting in air

Photo by J. Harrington

Yesterday, on the way to do some errands, the Better Half and I saw a bald eagle feeding on road kill a little east of Stacy. We each though it was a nice sight. I then started to remember my reaction to seeing my first bald eagle shortly after I had moved to Minnesota. In those days the degree of excitement was proportional to the rarity of sightings in the metro area. Later, when I worked for the City for Minneapolis, I occasionally saw an eagle soaring over the Mississippi near the Stone Arch Bridge. The vision of an eagle in the city was truly fantastic. More recently still, the State of the River Report summarizes eagle history from shortly before I arrived in Minnesota until now. In 1963, there were less than 500 nesting pairs of bald eagles in the entire lower 48 states. Now, Minnesota alone has 1,300 of the 10,000 pairs nesting in that same area, 36 of them along the Mississippi River's Twin Cities reaches. Frequently, trips along the St. Croix also produce eagle sightings.

bald eagle in the St. Croix watershed

Photo by J. Harrington

Although they aren't ubiquitous, eagles have clearly become much more common in our neck of the woods than they used to be. I'm delighted the eagle is no longer on the endangered species list. On the other hand, I wonder if the increased frequency with which they can now be seen diminishes the magic of seeing them. If your daily life were filled with magic and/or beauty, how long do you think it would it take until you began to take magic and beauty for granted? Perhaps my ability to take whatever I have for granted puts me in a minority, but I doubt it. Too often I want more, better and different. I'm working harder than ever these days to appreciate what I have, despite my exposure to decades of advertising and marketing intended to create a sense of chronic dissatisfaction that I can "fix" by buying something "new and improved." That's like feeding an addiction. For a change, I'm learning to take a hike in the woods or along the river instead of at the mall. Try something like that as another way to celebrate our freedom and the recovery of our national symbol this Fourth of July.

The Weight

By Linda Gregg 

Two horses were put together in the same paddock.

Night and day. In the night and in the day

wet from heat and the chill of the wind

on it. Muzzle to water, snorting, head swinging

and the taste of bay in the shadowed air.

The dignity of being. They slept that way,

knowing each other always.

Withers quivering for a moment,

fetlock and the proud rise at the base of the tail,

width of back. The volume of them, and each other’s weight.

Fences were nothing compared to that.

People were nothing. They slept standing,

their throats curved against the other’s rump.

They breathed against each other,

whinnied and stomped.

There are things they did that I do not know.

The privacy of them had a river in it.

Had our universe in it. And the way

its border looks back at us with its light.

This was finally their freedom.

The freedom an oak tree knows.

That is built at night by stars.

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

Raptors rule

 

Driving north on 35E yesterday afternoon on my way home from work,  near the Hugo-Forest Lake border,  I noticed two bald eagles perched near the top of a bare tree on the east side of the road. One or both are probably the same eagles I've seen soaring over the roadway and fields in the same general area from time to time this year. The sight reminded me of something I learned at a recent State of the River event I attended. Along the Mississippi River as it passes through the Twin Cities metro area there are about 36 active bald eagle nests, compared to about 1,300 in Minnesota and only 400 or so in the early 1960's. That's 36 active bald eagle nests in the middle of a metropolitan area. Christopher Alexander, in his book Pattern Language, proposes the pattern "fingers of country in the city." Although we have more than enough low density development displacing farmland in much of the metro area, we must also be doing somethings right to support that many eagles. It gets better when we include the nesting ospreys and peregrine falcons in Ramsey County, home to St. Paul, the state capitol. In My Minnesota, raptors rule.