Why This Place

Why This Place?

The Chequamegon Bay & Beyond— Through the Eyes and Hearts of People Who Live Here

PHOTOGRAPHS & PHOTO ESSAYS BY CATHERINE LANGE

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Why This Place?

PHOTOGRAPHS & PHOTO ESSAYS

Greg Weiss

survival class in New Jersey with Tom Brown, Jr., who wrote books not about the skills necessarily but the attitude and the connection with nature. At the end of the course, he said, ‘I know you all came here to live off the land and leave society and go do your own thing.’ I was 16, and I thought, ‘How did he know?’ He also said, ‘But you can’t do that. If you really love the world, you have to fight for it. We need warriors.’ And that connected with me, too. Coming from doing martial arts since I was really young. The whole thing went ‘Bing!’ Big thread was strung.

“ I just sold my yurt to somebody who is living in a

When Greg Weiss was building his straw bale house in Cornucopia, Wisc., he’d put posters up around the area and at Northland College, and every Sunday people would come out to help.

Greg Weiss, owner of Lost Creek Adventures in Cornucopia, Wisc., and martial arts teacher, grew up in a New Jersey suburb, about 20 miles from New York City. His mother took him camping as a boy, and he says he knew he wanted to do something with the environment. At the age of 16, he took a survival class with renowned tracker Tom Brown, Jr. Greg decided to pursue an outdoor education degree and found Northland College, graduating in 1993. He’s worked for the National Wildlife Federation in North Carolina and with John Denver’s Institute near Aspen, Colo.; Trek and Trail; Outward Bound; and the Boulder outdoor survival school in Utah.

Greg bought land in Cornucopia in 2001 and built a straw bale house. With his friend Hazen Audel, host of National Geographic’s “Survive the Tribe” series, Greg has worked to organize trips to Ecuador to visit the Huaorani people.

“ When I was young, I felt an increasing disconnec-

tion from all of modern culture. I had this fantasy of going off to Canada and living off the land. I took a

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teepee now. I miss the yurt because I could hear all the sounds through it, whereas in the house it’s very quiet. Lately, though, I’ve been hearing the woodcocks land in the driveway right outside the window here at night. They stand up, spin around, and peent in different directions, looking for a mate. When they hear another woodcock, they take off straight up, then circle back down. So if you hear one, you can wait until you hear it fly off, and then you run to the spot where it was, lay down or sit down really quietly and then usually it lands pretty close to you.

“ Until I was about 30, I traveled around. But I always

felt the draw back here. I think it was the community. Like while my friend Hazen came to help put the stucco on this house….I brought him to my friends, to the farm, to the Tetzners. I brought him to a potluck where they were playing music. A lot of community stuff. By the end of the trip, he said, ‘I love it here.’ Years later in conversation with others, he’d bring up things that I didn’t realize he had seen. He’d say, ‘When I went to Wisconsin, we did this….’ He would say, ‘Wow, it’s such a cool community there. There are these neat people, and they do all these really cool things.’ I’m proud of the area.

It’s neat to see that reflection from him.

“ I met Maligiaq Padilla, the champion Greenland

kayaker, on the West Coast at a symposium. He was

15 years old. Everybody was taking his picture and asking questions. He and I just started playing with the rocks on the beach, running around. We talked a little bit, but basically we just had this connection.

A different way. Something I can’t really explain.

You’re just with people. I always felt that way with Native people.

“ I’ve always had a deep respect for Native people,

not just for the person, but where they come from.

There’s a tie that goes beyond actions. This root.

Native people seem to have that. I’ve spent time with the Huaorino in Ecuador. Usually, you hear it like a cliché, that they’re like kids. In a sense, they are. But they were not naïve. It’s really amazing what they can do where they live, far back near the Peruvian border, to subsist. And they’re always smiling.

There are different physical boundaries there. The men will hold hands while they walk into the forest to hunt. Just put their arm around you. Just hanging out, not saying anything. They were showing us dances. We’d show them dances. There’s a connection, a respect that we have for them that they felt.

“ I can’t separate martial arts from what I’m doing. There’s an intuitiveness to it. A big part of martial arts is you can’t think. If you think, there’s not enough time to react. The connection doesn’t happen fast enough. So you have to go by feeling. Going outside and not thinking. Being in nature is a very feeling thing, too.”

“ The martial arts helped me develop a structure to

motivate myself without fear to do things. It’s the courage. Feeling I had to do something to fight for nature through teaching. The martial arts apply to my teaching strategy, because teaching is a conversation which can have conflicts. You’re conflicting with other people’s views. Sometimes you’re conflicting with how other people learn. How do you work around them and maneuver without forcing things. You’re going with things when you can and manipulating other things so that they go better.

“ It’s like mycelium of a mushroom going through

a log. The fungus is actually in the substrate and then the mushroom is the fruit. And so it’s all these networks, like a galaxy of webs that go through the log or leaves. It still looks like a log or leaves, and you don’t even know the mushroom is there, yet it’s completely intertwined. Eventually it’s going to break down that structure and be the new thing.

Martial arts is not a hobby. I can’t separate martial arts from what I’m doing. There’s an intuitiveness to it. A big part of martial arts is you can’t think. If you Greg Weiss, instructing students about to go sea kayaking for the first time. think, there’s not enough time to react. The connecHis company, Lost Creek Adventures, is a full service p­ addling outfitter and tion doesn’t happen fast enough. So you have to guide service operating within the Apostle Islands N ­ ational Lakeshore. Lost go by feeling. Going outside and not thinking.

Creek also offers “folk” or traditional arts education focusing on wilderness ­Being in nature is a very feeling thing, too.”

11 and traditional skills.

Greg Weiss at Roman’s Point— in the kayak he built over three winters from a kit inspired by a West Greenland design using wood composite. He says, “I don’t usually guide out of it because it’s too fast. I end up not paddling that much!”

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Roman’s Point, named for an early non-Native settler in the area, can be reached by boating or paddling about one mile west of Cornucopia beach.

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Linda Rise and Andy Noyes after that and recently was hired by Northlakes Community Clinic as a project manager as part of a program that encourages doctors to prescribe wellness. Andy is a guitarist, composer, and educator and plays in the bands Room2Groove and Floydian Slip.

“ [Andy] I’m a first-generation

Andy Noyes and Linda Rise on the path that leads from their home, in the background, down to their own piece of Lake Superior shore.

Linda Rise was born in Nebraska. Andy Noyes was “raised by New Englanders on the South Side of Chicago.” Linda and Andy met while they were students in the 1980s at Northland College in Ashland, Wisc., where they eventually bought and lived in an old Victorian house. They’ve since moved to a waterfront home in Washburn. After college, Linda worked for New Horizons and then at the Chequamegon Food Coop for 15 years, where she became manager. She worked in real estate 22

­ idwesterner from Chicago, M transplanted from New England. I had done an immersion, month-long Outward Bound course in Quetico Boundary Waters in Minnesota. I fell headover-heels for the North Country.

So trying to connect the dots as to where’s Andy going to go to college, my mom found Northland. At any rate, this little town on a great big lake with a lot of history felt a lot like New ­England. So in my little 17-yearold brain, it was, well, I’ll try this.

“ [Linda] We were both at North-

land. So I wasn’t going anywhere because I was going to stay with him. We love the community. We love the lake. We both were able to find careers that we like.

“ [Linda] Before graduating and

right out of college, I was working with New Horizons with people with developmental disabilities and mental health challenges, integrating them into the community. Figuring out what were the supports they needed.

“ I think some people look for work here because they love it here. They’ve been here before, or they have family here. Other people come for work and then figure out it’s where they want to be.

People are drawn by the lake and the North Woods. But I think they stay because of the community. That’s the main thing.”

So, it was probably less about finding the housing than just making sure, like, okay, so you don’t know how to do recipes, how are you going to cook dinner? And helping people shop. It was a great job for exploring the area. Let’s go strawberry picking and things like that.

“ [Linda] Then I took a job at the

food coop as a cashier. I was the only employee. Less than a month into that, they fired the manager, and I became the manager. I was there for 15 years.

That’s how I know everybody.

“ [Andy] Wherever you are, you

plant seeds. I’m going to do this kind of work. I’m going to hang out with these people.

Oh, I’m doing this. Oh, this is great. I never thought I’d meet these people. Playing music here. This is working out. We’re having a good time. But I always kept thinking I’d go back to New ­England. Meanwhile, this became my New England. So it just kept getting better, and it continues to. And that’s 34 years on now.

“ [Linda] I tell people that this community has the nicest people in the world. And sometimes it’s not about describing. I will take

them to Tetzners’ so that we can pay by the honor system for a little ice cream sandwich….[Andy] And just stand back and let them do it. As they stare at the whole thing in disbelief, and say what are you talking about? No, just take the envelope out and write on it and put whatever money in there that you really have. It’s going to be alright, you know. More important to get what you need, and they do, too. It all works out.

“ [Linda] I think some people look

for work here because they love it here. They’ve been here before, or they have family here. Other people come for work and then figure out it’s where they want to

be. People are drawn by the lake and the North Woods. But I think they stay because of the community. That’s the main thing.

“ [Andy] There’s a great big stone

ridge that runs north-south, Hwy. 122. You hike back up in there, climb up that ridge, and you’re looking west across the spine of the Penokees and you’ve got Bad River up to your right and the whole estuary moving out there. We’ve been once, but mentally I go there all the time.

That’s what place is, where you can go at all times, not just when you turn the car key off, close the door and walk there. It’s where you go in your mind.”

Andy Noyes is a musician, composer, and Linda worked for several years as a realtor and recently became a project educator. Pictured here at The Snug in manager for Northlakes Community Clinic.

Washburn, Wisc., Andy also plays with 23 Room2Groove and Floydian Slip.

Linda Rise and Andy Noyes at Corrigan’s Lookout. Looking west, Upson Lake is at the left, and the Penokee Mountains form the horizon.

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The view to the south from Corrigan’s Lookout.

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David Bratley David Bratley’s grandfather Edwin moved with his parents to Washburn, Wisc., in 1902. In 1918, Edwin began a funeral home business in Washburn, which today is run by David’s brother Jon and two nephews. David attended Northland for two years and graduated from the University of Minnesota– Duluth with a degree in biology. He worked for the Smithsonian focusing on sea birds in the South Pacific. He did additional studies on aquatic biology at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and then worked for the DNR. He is retired and currently coordinates the Chequamegon Bay Birders, leads bird and butterfly tours for the annual Chequamegon Bay Birding & Nature Festival, is involved with Audubon and the Washburn Historical Society, and does bird counts for the Park Service and various projects for the University of Wisconsin.

“ When I started to bird, I was

probably six, seven, eight, in there. In my young life, I was a very bad stutterer. I stutter still, but it’s not real bad. When I was in grade school, I could hardly talk, get words out in s­ entences.

So I think that birding was a way to get away, wander off by myself. I was interested in b ­ iology from the very get-go. I’d get up at sunrise and walk the lake shore. I did that every day before I went to school.

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David Bratley will go out on the front walk of his house, the house where he was born, because “it’s a wide-open panorama there.” He says, “I’ll stand there, just take it in and count birds, seeing what is in the area.” In Washburn, the Bratley name appears on his brother’s local funeral home business, on Bratley Drive where David’s grandparents’ original homestead was, as well as inscribed in the curb of the front walk the last time concrete was poured.

“ My grandparents, Ed and Esther, gave me my first Peterson field guides to the birds. And I wore those out real quickly. I still have the books. They’re all taped up.

“ I started keeping daily notes

when I was 11, after I talked to a neighbor, Mrs. Axley, who was a birder. Dr. Axley was her husband. They owned Rocky Run, but back then it was called Axley’s Cottages. She was a member of the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology and said I should be taking notes and sending them into the WSO, so she got me started. Every time I went out in the morning, I’d write everything down so I’d have some history.

“ When I was growing up, we had

a very close-knit neighborhood here. In the mornings when I used to walk the lakeshore, I’d walk past the cabins, and people knew who I was, and they were glad to have me there. Every block had at least one or two vacant lots, and there were fields. I used to bird through everybody’s yards. I had my regular routes. I could do that because there were birds. Now, there are no birds. That’s very sad.

That’s the biggest change that I have seen, that our town sites are not producing wildlife. We’ve got the deer, and I had a bear in my back yard the other night. But we don’t have the birds and the

“ They’re saying that we could put away 50% of our environment and still have plenty of area for what we need for human population....

You’ve got to have large corridors to maintain populations of species.” insects that we used to have. The butterflies.

“ There are a lot of reasons why.

Global warming is one. It’s messing up our timing. And pesticides. Fragmentation of our habitat. Invasive species. In your urban areas, instead of planting local plants, they’re planting exotics, which have no food value for native birds and insects. I’ve seen dramatic changes that started around 1978. That’s when I started to see species disappear.

“ First, it was the tree swallow. We

migrants, like the flycatchers are gone. There’s really a dramatic change. It is heartbreaking. So that is what I really miss.

“ They’re saying that we could put

away 50% of our environment and still have plenty of area for what we need for human population.

This school of thought is just beginning to emerge. [E.O. Wilson’s concept of ‘Half Earth—half for us, half for them’] It’s something that I as a biologist have believed in for a long time. You’ve got to have large corridors to maintain populations of species.

“ Every May, I lead two bird trips

and two butterfly trips during the Chequamegon Bay Birding & Nature Festival. It was started

by Northern Great Lakes Visitors Center nine years ago.

“ I’ve always been fascinated with

the sand barrens habitat. It’s such a rare type of habitat, because it’s been almost eliminated. My grandparents had a cabin out on the Cranberry River. And it’s part of the sand barrens. It’s on the headwaters of the Cranberry River near Herbster. It was a fox and beaver farm when they purchased it back in the ’30s. It’s a deer farm now. I enjoy being out there. I go out and brush trails.

Looking at wood ducks on Rib Lake, where in the spring he brings Birding Festival g­ oers to see dragonflies, David notes that his Eagle Optics binoculars will focus down to three feet—“good for seeing butterflies and dragonflies up close.”

The Forest Service is trying to open it up. It used to be habitat for sharp-tailed grouse and upland sandpiper. To reeestablish the sharp-tailed grouse here, they have to have a minimum of 10,000 acres and they’re up to about 6,000. Next year they’re planning to burn another 3,000.

So they’re getting close. And they expect to bring in reintroduction probably in 2016. Right now there’s just a limited population here. And, of course, it’s getting less and less because they can’t propagate because they don’t have enough area.

don’t have tree swallows in town any more. Then it was purple martins. Then it was the cliff “ I’m getting interested in new things. There’s just so much swallows. I used to sit here by my here that I don’t know that I kitchen window while I was eating, and there were just swallows want to know, I don’t have to flying. Now you don’t see them. travel any more. There’s more And the chimney swifts, I give here than I can learn in ten life“ The Moquah Barrens is times. It’s what I want to learn them another two, three years, ­essentially a jack pine savanin my later years.” and they’ll be gone. Night hawks nah. It’s a lot of grassland interare gone. Most of the tropical 27 spersed with jack pine and oak.

David Bratley says he has “always been fascinated with the sand barrens habitat.�

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“The Moquah Barrens is essentially a jack pine savannah,” says David Bratley. “It’s a lot of grassland interspersed with jack pine and oak.” He says the Forest Service currently manages about 6,000 acres in the area and aims to acquire 4,000 additional adjacent acres to create a large enough habitat to support reintroduction of the sharp-tailed grouse.

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Mike Wiggins, Jr. Mike Wiggins Jr. served as Chairman of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Raised on the Bad River Reservation, Mike studied criminal justice at University of WisconsinSuperior. The Penokee Hills are located just six miles from the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The Penokees are the headwaters of the Bad River and the Tyler Forks, both of which flow north into the Bad River reservation.

The Bad River and Kakagon Sloughs make up the largest and most significant wetland complex still remaining on Lake Superior. Protecting the Penokee Hills and the Tribe’s ceded territory rights is essential in all that Mike Wiggins does, for this generation and the next.

“ Lake Superior is so incredible.

I look around and guess what?

Nobody else has wild rice growing in Lake Superior water. We do. I see a St. Louis River waterMike Wiggins, Jr., as chairman of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, leads a tour on the Kakagon Sloughs for members of the Wisconsin Wetlands Association.

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shed that has no wild rice. They call it a manoomin dead zone.

“ Wild rice starts from seed each

year. In its initial stages, it doesn’t spend a whole lot of energy in producing a lot of roots. Instead it tries to shoot up really quick so it can outcompete its native competitors and get to that water surface first. So in this floating leaf stage, wild rice is really sensitive to rapid changes in water levels in a short time period. So the tribe has a slow/no wake ordinance so we limit boat speed in the system when it’s in its floating leaf stage to minimize that uprooting.

“ Wild rice is also sensitive to wa-

ter chemistry, including sulfates.

When sulfates in the water reach above 10 mg per liter, that inhibits the productivity of wild rice.

The way that Dr. Jim M ­ eeker explains it is, the ‘Goldilocks

Effect.’ Too much is not good, too little isn’t good. So it needs that perfect balance of sediment load and nutrients and phosphorus. Right now, we’re monitoring sulfate levels at 5 mg per liter or less in our water system. We do know there are sulfates in both the Tyler and Ironwood Formations. So that is a concern here.

“ They’ve been mining in

Minnesota for 75 years. And human beings are walking around saying, “It’s safe, we’re here.” What’s going on right there? Elevated levels of mercury in the bloodstream of babies affects their ability to think, affects their ability to vision, affects their ability to be selfdeterminant, to nation build, to have sovereignty, to be able to figure out how to grow food, to be able to figure out how to turn around and look back and remember.

“ If not now, then when?

If not us, then who? We don’t have a thousand years the way we’re going. Now is the time.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for....we have a lot of people to wake up.”

that upper watershed all around you.’ And he says, ‘We’re in the bottom of a nest.’

“ The heart and soul of Anishinaabe

Talking to people on the Wisconsin Wetlands Association tour, Mike Wiggins, Jr. draws Lake Superior as an eagle, and the wetlands system as a nest. He said, “We’re in the bottom of a nest.”

“ As I stand and look out toward

Lake Superior, and there’s no rice, I go, where’s that Goldilocks Effect coming from? I look back across the reservation and then I look up and I see the Penokee Hills out there. On a planetary scale, how close are the Penokee Hills to the Kakagon Sloughs?

One and the same. No different.

All one big system.

“ When we asked our elders, they

go way back. Who is Anishinaabe?

You’re Anishinaabe. Because in the beginning we were all gathered around one fire. You’ve got to stop treating this land like a temporary stop on the way to your real home. Let us admit here and now that this is your home, you’re going to stay, and let’s start treating it like it’s your home, too.

“ If not now, then when? If not us,

then who? We look around at what’s going on. It’s not like a thousand years from now, they’ll get it. We don’t have a thousand years the way we’re going. Now is the time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. I know how much you love land and the water, but we have a lot of people to wake up.

ancient ones. One of the two naturally occurring spawning areas for sturgeon on Lake Superior is in the Bad River Falls, halfway between here and the Penokees.

“ It’s 4,000 miles to the center of

the earth from where we are right here. 4,000 miles, and there’s fire in there, molten metal. Our elders tell us, mashomis, the sun. Watching his baby, his daughter, Aki, struggle. Couldn’t start life, wasn’t starting life on the right foot. Needed to help her. So he took a piece of his heart, and he gave it to her. And she got stronger, and, boom, life started. A billion years ago, that heart started beating, started creating pathways, and this fire manifested itself on the surface of the earth. So anywhere you see past or current volcanic activity, you see unbelievable cradles of life. And here we are.”

“ Love, life, growing. Drinking

free, clean water. Taking care of everything. Pass it on to the next generations that are coming.

said, ‘Everything you need to stop the mine is around you.’ “ And Joe Rose says, ‘To go forJoe Rose was saying, ‘There’s a ward, we need to go back.’ place in the Sloughs where you can look to the East and you “ The sturgeon is a prehistoric fish.

Where you find sturgeon, you find can see Birch Hill in Michigan. ancient knowledge. Where you And look way to the South, and find sturgeon, you’re getting a you can see the Penokees, and hint of when life was still a baby. then you look and you can see A view from the Kakagon River.

35 Bayfield County. You can see Those name, sturgeon. Those

Mike Wiggins, Jr. leads a tour of the Kakagon Sloughs for members of the Wisconsin Wetlands Association. The area is on the Bad River Reservation and is not open to public access.

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Kakagon Sloughs—where the mouths of the Kakagon and Bad Rivers along Lake Superior form some of the most extensive and highest quality wetlands in the Great Lakes.

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Aven Frank Aven Frank is eight years old, is home-schooled, and lives in Bayfield, Wisc., with his mother BeckySue Nielson, whose business there is Stillpoint Bodywork. Aven explains his name means “river” in Welsh and that his middle and last names are like his father’s, Eric Jolen Frank, whose interest and livelihood is permaculture.

When his mother, BeckySue Nielson, asked Aven Frank where his favorite place was, she thought it would be the ravine under the Iron Bridge in Bayfield, where he’s explored so many times that—when he takes people there—he says, “I know this place like the back of my hand.” Instead, he said his favorite place was the place on Madeline Island they went to one time when he was three. BeckySue wasn’t even sure where it was, but Aven led the way on the Bay View Trail in Big Bay State Park and, after a couple misses, found his Cairn Beach.

“ The reason that I chose this place, the Cairn Beach, is because there’s so many rocks. I can make lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of cairns.

Some I made to stay, some I made to break down, some I made to throw into the lake.”

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“ When I found the Cairn Beach,

I was like, ‘It’s still here!’ Five years, and water could have eroded it completely. This time, it had water in the crack where I built my rock cairn before. But the beach was exactly the same.

“ When I come into Bayfield,

the first thing I see that tells me I’m in Bayfield, it’s Eckels. Not Ethel’s. Eckels.

“ I like Bayfield because it has my

house in it. My house is heated.

My house has a variety of foods to eat. My legos. And the Tablet.

It has a beach. We go to Broad St. beach. And the beach has the lake. And the lake has water. And the water’s good for swimming.

Especially on hot days.

Aven’s favorite activities are “mindcrafting” his “pretty impressive Lego sets,” being on the Tablet, and, if he could, shopping for people online.

“ I like Madeline Island. I’d

probably take friends to the rock cairn place first. And then some place else on Madeline Island.

A coffee shop/ice cream store. I also like Tommy’s because I don’t have to wear a shirt or shoes. We could bring Teva, our dog, onto Tommy’s.

“ I want to learn about every-

thing. I want to learn where the edge of the universe is. But I’ve seen the edge of the universe.

Where I saw it was on a Star Trek ­episode. It looked blue.”

“My mom gives me chores to do, like feeding and watering the birds,” says Aven Frank. “We have quail. Twenty, 26. I have to empty the waters if the water’s all gross so the birds don’t want to drink it. If it’s just dry, I just unscrew the lid, fill it up with water, screw the lid back on, and bring it back. And the food, we have a little scoop in the bag. So I take a scoop and fill up all their feeders. The feeders hold a lot of food. I also do their grit. There’s a trough of grit 43 for them to put in their gullets and a big bowl of grit for them to dust bath in.”

When he was three, Aven Frank was small enough to climb down into this crevice on Madeline Island in Big Bay State Park.

Now too big to do that, he could still reach in and build a cairn. His mother, BeckySue Nielson, is in the background.

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Big Bay State Park on Madeline Island.

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Beth Paap Beth Paap is Academic Dean and teaches at Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College in Hayward, where she says, “Ojibwe knowledge is the overarching, foundational, allencompassing starting point from which we build our courses.” She lives in Bayfield. Her four children range in age from middle school to college. She was born in Eau Claire and moved as a child to Milwaukee, Superior, and then White Bear Lake, Minn., as her father pursued higher learning and teaching positions.

She received a B.A. from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and a master’s degree from The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth. She’s working on her doctoral dissertation focusing on Rabbett Strickland and how his art is playing a vital role in the revitalization of Ojibwe contemporary culture.

“ My brothers and I grew up living

in suburbia in White Bear Lake, Minn., but also having real connections with our family and with Red Cliff, with the Lake, with the land, with the people there. We always came to Red Cliff because my mother grew up in Red Cliff.

And so Red Cliff, from forever, was really what home was. We would go two or three weekends sometimes in a month. All holidays.

Summers we would spend significant time in Red Cliff with family.

“ I went to Dartmouth, and then

traveled to Kenya right after college for a time. I came back and worked at Dartmouth for five 46

a sense of comfort, even in very different places like a small village in the outback in Kenya, or up in Alaska, or in a pueblo. I’ve always felt at home in those places, even though maybe I didn’t speak the language. Where does that come from? Maybe it’s that my growing up had elements of connecting with multiple generations, of being a child that did a lot of watching, and I spent a lot of time with my great-grandmother, who was born in 1892.

She was very influential in my growing up. She passed on when I was sophomore in college, so I got to know her very well.

“ I would say that Native commuBeth Paap says, “The Red Cliff Cemetery is a place that is profoundly special to me. That’s where my people are. Those people are a part of our community and made incredible sacrifices, survived, and had beautiful lives. They were great teachers. So I go there to get strength. And I go there to have a good cry if I need to, or just to visit. My great-grandparents are buried there… my grandmother and my grandpa and cousins who died too young and uncles and aunties and on and on and on.”

years in the Admissions Office— my first “real” job. I recruited prospective students, so I traveled all over the country and focused on recruiting Native students.

“ Being a Native person and hav-

ing the good luck of traveling to other tribal communities—and even when I was in Kenya meeting tribal people—I always felt

nities share a balance that I’ve always sensed. It’s the people and how the people live in whatever place they are. There’s not a separation from the natural world and the people in it.

“ Red Cliff is the center of my

world. I have a certain feeling when I go there, and maybe when I go to the Island, Madeline Island. There’s something even beyond my soul that I feel at Red Cliff and on the Island.

It’s like I am ever-present, and I have been ever-present in these places for much longer than this physical Beth has been around.

I really don’t feel that anywhere else. And I miss it when I’m away.

Maybe even more as I get older.

“ I lost my partner three years

ago in a car accident. That was another time in life where every-

“ Red Cliff is the center of my world. There’s something even beyond my soul that I feel at Red Cliff and on Madeline Island. It’s like I am ever-present, and I have been ever-present in these places for much longer than this physical Beth has been around.

I really don’t feel that anywhere else.” thing gets really simple. Right?

You lose somebody that you really love, that you thought, I’m going to be with this person forever. And your forever ends.

It’s amazingly beautiful how life works and brings you to these peaks and valleys. It’s so humbling. And I think that’s what the [Red Cliff] cemetery brings me to. You just remember your place. You’re connected here.

You’re no higher or lower than anyone else. And you have a purpose. Like my parents are saying now, as they’re getting older, what’s important is loving one another and being kind. We all carry great sadness. What are you going to do with it?

“ The cemetery carries with it great

context of the reality of history, of the treaties, of establishing reservations, of becoming Red Cliff in 1854 when it had been Red Cliff for hundreds of years previous, of the Catholic Church, of what Catholicism brought to the community—the good, the bad, and the ugly. So it’s this whole experience. It’s difficult when it’s difficult. It’s painful when it’s painful. ‘Anishinaabe’ means ‘the people.’ And with that comes, I think and I was taught, a real obligation and a sense of purpose to make those connections with people, to have them understand. So many people look at indigenous people or tribes and immediately go back in history.

And while that’s valuable for sure, one of the things I try to do at work and as I raise my children is to have them think about who we are as contemporary Anishinaabe people. What does that mean?

And what does that mean then

in connection with people who aren’t? Because that’s our reality.

And how do we then have good lives together? There’s an Ojibwemowin word, bimaadiziwin, that means to live a good life. So I think it’s humanness. To look up and around you, to engage with people, to be present, and to try.

“ Raspberry Bay is a place that

defines memory…that blood memory. This is our place. It’s beautiful. I like that only tribal members can go there. And it’s one of those spiritual places, I think, for a lot of us who are from Red Cliff. I would go there with my great-grandmother, with my grandmother, with my mom, with my family. We would cook on the beach, and people would fish.

It was always a place where ­people would come together and share food and laugh and kids would run around. And it’s been that go-to place for many generations.”

Beth Paap, in the Rotunda at Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College where she is Academic Dean.

beauty for me and obviously 47 sadness. But also sadness in the

Beth Paap shares a view of the Raspberry River, a place she says “is one those spiritual places for a lot of us who are from Red Cliff.� Only tribal members have access to this area.

48

The Raspberry River flows to Lake Superior’s Raspberry Bay, “a place that defines memory...that blood memory,” says Beth Paap. “This is our place.

It’s beautiful.”

49

Phil Tetzner In the house he’s lived all his life, Phil Tetzner raised six children with his beloved wife, Beverly, who passed away early in 2014. Phil owns Tetzner’s Dairy, in Washburn, Wisc., which offers a self-service store on the farm. You might catch Phil on a Friday getting a fish fry dinner at Time Out.

“ I never knew my grandfather, Frank Tetzner, because he died in 1930, and I was born in ’31. He probably got this land about 1890. He didn’t live here. He just owned it. He lived in town and had Tetzner’s Meat Market in Washburn. He was an immigrant from Germany. He’s the one that I think maybe my parents got life insurance from to build this house.

“ The house was built in ’31, and I was born in ’31. And that’s the only house I’ve ever lived in. Our family had eight kids. I’m the only one left. They were all older, a lot. So I don’t hardly remember them being here.

My brother and I were kind of alone then. We were almost the same age as my brother Willis’ two boys. “ The object of this farm was my parents, Ernest and

Lillian, were going to raise pigs and chickens and beef for that meat market in Washburn. They moved out here in 1915. But, see, that all got disrupted because grandpa died. If I had been older, I would know more. See, when you’re only a teen-ager, you don’t think to ask any questions. And you got to be 40 or 50 years old before you start looking back.

“ There were no trees back then. There were stumps.

Big stumps. They were so thick that up here at one spot, you could go from this road to the next road just jumping from stump to stump. I can remember this being so bare. We used to be able to stand right here and see Madeline Island. Now you got to go up in the Harvester to see it.

“ There were always ore boats out here in the bay.

There were always, always ore boats. Either one coming in, or one going out. Or two or three at a time.

50

Phil Tetzner, owner of Tetzner’s Dairy in Washburn, Wisc., stands on the farm in front of the only house he’s ever lived in. It was built by his parents the year he was born, 1931.

“ They had a small school right up here on Nevers

Road. Progress School. I went the first five grades.

One room. The teacher was Ida Kenssler. She lived on this road, too. She always had to walk. Everybody walked. Some of these kids had three miles to go to get to this school. I walked half a mile.

“ When I was seven years old, I got seven pennies for

my birthday. And I wanted a bike. In the catalog, they were between $20 and $30. So I figured out, that at that rate, I was never going to get a bike. This was the ’30s, the Depression years. A lot of people don’t remember that at all. But there just was no money. We always had enough to eat because we lived on this farm. It was a lot of work for my mother.

There was no electricity. And then she had all those kids. So you can imagine how much work she had.

“ I’ve got six goats and about 20 geese. You’ve heard about those ranches out west, like the Rocking S or the Bar X? This is the Triple G. Grandpas, Geese and Goats.”

“ It doesn’t matter where he is. Phil’s happy wherever he is,” says Jackie Tetzner, Phil’s daughter-in-law. Phil adds, “Except in the manure pit.”

“ My wife, Beverly. She went to another small school, Long Lake School. That was just about four miles from here. They used to have schools about every three or four miles.

“ My father died when I was 18. I graduated in 1948

from Ondossagan High School. 1949, Beverly and I got married that year. I bought the house from my mother, and she lived with us until she passed when she was 90. We had six kids. The first five were between ’51 and ’58. So by then, we had five kids under seven. And then we had a tagalong. After these first five, my daughter was born in 1964.

“ I used to do a lot of the farm work with the tractors, but my wife was not good for the last ten years of her life, and I had to take care of her. But I do a lot with the milk and the ice cream and that sort of work. I make the ice cream. “ So this farm went from four cows, 40 acres, and no

buildings to speak of, to what it is now. We have at least 200 animals, and we farm about 600 acres. Before, we milked them by hand. Now we’ve got a robot.

“All we burn is wood,” says Phil Tetzner. “Don’t even have a backup. When it gets cold, it just takes more wood. So think of how many hunks of wood I’ve made to throw into that. At least three or four.” He’s standing, with his dog Blackie, “his helper,” in front of the new wood shed he built himself recently.

“ The cows are always lined up in the barn, waiting, by choice, to be milked. Those cows milk themselves actually. And they milk 24 hours a day. They take turns. But nobody has to go get them. The 65 cows in this barn on average give about 80 pounds a day.

That’s a ten-gallon can.

“ We sell some milk to a bulk truck that picks it up

and they probably use it to make cheese. We use whatever we need in the store. Sixth Street Market, IGA, the Coop make pick-ups.

“ It’s got to be special people that would do that, trust

everybody to serve themselves [in the dairy’s store].

A lot of people couldn’t do what we do. You’ve got ing on her neck, so the robot knows who she is. It to trust people. And those people sense that. That’s knows how much milk she gives, how much grain she what I think. Being owner of this, I can go in that should get. It washes each teat twice and then milks room out there, and there can be a dozen people her. You can see the milk going through the tubes in there, and they’re all milling around, all fooling into a little jar in a cabinet, and the milk from each around with their money, and I can walk right through cow is weighed, and then it’s pushed over to the bulk them and not pay any attention to what they’re tank. So it’ll be empty for the next cow. It’s going to doing, just figure they’re going to do the right thing. rinse them off, and the gate’s going to open and she’s And they do. But if I was distrustful, they’d sense that, going to go. And the gate’s going to close, and the I think. I’m no psychologist, but I think that’s right.”

51 other gate’s going to open and let another cow in.

“ Every cow is different. She’s got a transponder hang-

Phil Tetzner enjoys spending time at the top of the hill overlooking Tetzner’s Dairy. He splits logs there and tends an adjacent small but bountiful tomato garden.

52

A view to the southwest from atop the 80-foot-high Harvester at Tetzner’s Dairy.

53

Ashley Georgeson Ashley Newbrough took a new name on September 20, 2014, the day before her 31st birthday, when she married Peter Georgeson in a ceremony on the beach in Cornucopia, Wisc.

They met about five years ago when Ashley was visiting a friend in the area. The Georgesons own and operate PMG Charters, which offers a water taxi service and tours of the Apostle Islands. Peter captains, and Ashley handles accounting and marketing. They recently bought a home in Bayfield, where they live with their two dogs, Pepe and Walter, the Wanderer. Ashley studied geology in college in Iowa, where she was born. Peter is from Drummond, Wisc., and studied sociology at Northland College. In Bayfield, Ashley also manages Wild by Nature Deli and works for Dwayne Szot whose business, ZotArtz, provides machines to enable people with disabilities to create art.

Ashley Georgeson, with her husband Peter, and Pepe, one of their two dogs, in the house they bought and are remodeling in Bayfield. Recently married on the beach at Cornucopia, the Georgesons own and operate PMG Charters in Bayfield.

“ I think it’s great being up here. The first moment I

came up here, I was in love. Even before I met Pete.

My first experience of the lake was in Ashland, and I was, like, oh my gosh, this is incredible.

“ Five years ago in August, I went to Mellon to v­ isit a

friend, and he brought me up to Buffalo Bay Marina to introduce me to the first cool person he met when he moved here, which is Peter, now my husband. Pete took us sailing. My friend left with my Jeep and left me with Pete. He took me all over.

We went to Madeline Island. And he took me to ­Morgan Falls. We had our first kiss on top of the falls.

“ I had to go back to Iowa. Pete came to visit me a

couple times. And that November, when I told Pete I was going to move to California, he asked if he could come with. I said, of course. We went on this epic adventure for an entire winter. We stayed with friends and family along the way. We eventually found our way back here.

“ Corny doesn’t have the hustle and bustle of Bay-

field. It’s a little more laid back. Just like, ‘Welcome to Cornucopia. We have everything that you need.’

58

And everyone’s really friendly. One hundred people live there. And the water is so good. They had the water tested in Berkeley, Calif., and the results came back with a note saying, “We’ve never tested water this pure.” So that’s special to us. We have a lot of friends here. And it’s kind of a magical place for us.

“ The wedding was on the beach in Corny on

­ eptember 20, the day before my 31st birthday.

S So I came to the beach in the morning and took a swim. Got my hair all natural. The wedding started on the beach at 2 o’clock. I had eight bridesmaids, each wearing a different color of the rainbow. Peter’s mom married us, and my pastor, Pastor David, from the Presbyterian Church in Bayfield blessed the wedding. Scooter Charette played flute. And a friend, who’s in a band in Duluth called I Like You, sang a song she wrote, called ‘Love is Love.’

And I cried the whole time. Just one side of my face. Constant tears. It was a perfect day.

“ After the wedding, we got on our boat and cruised

over by the caves and Raspberry Island and then to

where the continent was spreading apart. Huge canyons created the volcanism that you find up in Duluth, all those flood basalts. And then down in the Penokees. And on the north shore in Canada, that’s all part of the Canadian Shield, which are some of the oldest rocks in the world. And then you have the glaciation with the water coming. And the ancient glacial Lake Duluth, we would have been underwater here. This rift is below, it’s under water.

It’s under sand, under water.

“ When I lived in Iowa, I didn’t do a lot of winter activIn addition to handling accounting and marketing for the Georgesons’ PMG Charters, Ashley manages Wild by Nature Deli (above) and works for ZotArtz in Bayfield.

“ What fascinates me about the geology here is just the fact that everything is so old—the original formation of this lake. About 1.1 billion years ago, the rift was where the continent was spreading apart....

And the ancient glacial Lake Duluth, we would have been underwater here.”

Bayfield. In my wedding gown. And Peter had two braids coming down, and he wore this really beautiful blue vest. Somebody dropped our Tahoe off in Bayfield, and then we drove up to the ski hill and met everybody for the party and dinner.

ities. And now I would say I’m more active in winter than I am in the summer. A lot of cross country skiing. Last winter, I walked out to Sand Island. I didn’t snowshoe. I walked with one of my friends from college who wanted to come up and see the Ice Caves.

That was right during the peak of it, and I said, no way, I’m not taking you out there with all those people. So we just walked to Sand. It’s 2.8 miles each way. The caves there were beautiful. They were super pristine. And we were the only ones out there.

“ I think Bayfield is a really tight-knit community.

I think everybody looks out for one another. I’ve lived here now five summers and all of the last year. I know quite a few people. I wouldn’t say I know ­everybody. I see people in the Post Office all the time, and I know they live in Bayfield because they’re getting their mail. And I’m like, who’s that?

Only 400 people live here. How do I not know them?

“ The reason we bought this house is because we

have our business here in the summer, and we can’t afford to rent in Bayfield. We could afford rent in Cornucopia, which we did one summer, driving back and forth. And that was our largest expense, not gas for the boat, not anything else. It was driving “ What fascinates me about the geology here is back and forth every day. So we decided that this just the fact that everything is so old—the original is a good investment. We got the house at a good formation of this lake. This is where my field of study price. Our mortgage is cheap. Right now we have comes in, because this is rift-related volcanism. I another loan to repair it. But I love it. It’s a nice little studied geoscience, igneous petrology, and geohome to start a family.”

59 chemistry. About 1.1 billion years ago, the rift was

Just a few weeks before this picture was taken, Ashley Newbrough married Peter Georgeson on this beach in the town of Cornucopia, Wisc.

60

Cornucopia Beach faces north, toward the North Shore of Minnesota. When the town of Cornucopia sent a sample of its drinking water to be tested in Berkeley, Calif., the results came back with a note saying, “We’ve never tested water this pure.”

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“ Let yourself enjoy this book. Revel in the professional and artistic creativity of Lange’s work, and in the warm and sincere words of the people she chose to be in this portfolio. Fishers, fruit and dairy farmers, tourist guides, national park workers, college faculty and administrators, musicians, realtors, artists, and more are found within. Join these voices as they celebrate this precious place they call home.”

— Howard Paap, Author of Red Cliff, Wisconsin: A History of an Ojibwe Community—Vol. 1, The Earliest Years: The Origin to 1854

“ I have watched people come and people go from this place because they couldn’t find the right job, the right house, or the right love. I’ve been lucky on all counts and so here I am, still....I am home.”

— Julie Buckles, Author of Paddling to Winter

“ What I believe you will discover through the images and words that Catherine has collected is that people find their souls in this place, and they do so because this special bay in this special lake inspires people to make superior connections— with themselves, with each other, and with the cold, clear water that sustains us all.”

— Alan Brew, Professor of English at Northland College