Gift of Water Aimee Cree Dunn

Timeless shores

By Aimée Cree Dunn

Borderlands exist where water meets the worlds of earth and sky. In these interstitial spaces, time itself feels permeable between what was, is and could be.

Over two hundred years ago on a sandy Lake Superior beach not far from AuTrain, this merging of eras occurred in a literal sense. That evening, the remains of a late summer storm still stirred the surface of the lake. The weather had waylaid the Cass Expedition, a group of American explorers assessing the mineral and forest “resources” of Anishinaabe territory. To pass the time, an Anishinaabe man from nearby Gichi-minising (Grand Island) was invited to their campfire to tell the powerful history of his pacifist people and the broader Anishinaabe nation.

The stormy lake had stalled the expedition, time enough to hear the deeper story of the land. Undaunted by this history lesson, however, the next morning they set forth again to lay the groundwork for the coming centuries’ land theft and environmental exploitation. They were colonizers—for them, industrial “progress” was inevitable. Anishinaabeg Akiing, the land of the Anishinaabeg, was destined to give way.

The same waters that lapped the shores that turbulent summer evening today still susurrate the sands there, tumbling similar pebbles to shore, enveloping the same sandstone boulders and rocky outcrops. Those waters continue to tell a long and ancient story. Despite our era’s appropriation of waters for industry and recreational tourism, the older story remains, biding its time.

Perhaps more than anywhere else, proximity to a body of water enables us to sense the past. Waters unhindered by colonization and development offer a gateway through time. Their wildness untethers us from this industrial moment.

Such freeing can come, say, while walking a trail along a bog lake in the Ottawa. My toes squishing in the cool softness of sphagnum moss, spruce darkly edging the scarlet horizon, I embrace the age-old knowledge the waters hold. For millennia, wolves traversed this trail under similar sunset skies. Geese flew overhead, the glint of moonlight on bog waters a navigational guide. Cranberries ripened in mats of moss, red berries dipped in boggy dew, prized by gatherers who sweetened the berry sauce with maple sugar cubes back home.

Or it comes at the site where people lived in a summer village on the northern shores of Lake Michigan 3,000 years ago. Old growth maple sheltered them. An ancient cedar forest, topping a towering limestone bluff rimmed by crystal blue waters of the great lake below, offered them life-giving medicine.

This release into the past can be found as well at a wilderness waterfall near Rock River Canyon. Deep in a forest glen, its woodland pool dotted with the golden leaves of sugar maple, older memories are held in the mossy nooks for those willing to listen. Recent physics posits that all of time happens in a single moment. As I crunch chips and sip soda on the edges of that wildwood pool, does another trout roast over a fire built with bow-and-drill as wild rice boils in a birchbark makuk? The magic of water can make me believe so.

Water offers a spiritual gateway to the Time Before All This: waters were healthy, fish were abundant, forests crept down to shade the winding stream. The wildness of water stretches beyond our human grasp. This very wildness allows us to escape the present moment, to sense that which makes the land, indeed our very souls, whole once more.

On the shores of Lake Superior, pines on dunes behind me, the past is almost palpable. Grandfather rocks hold secrets of ancient times. Waves lap at the sand of millennia past when others too dipped their toes in the icy waters, family and community just beyond the pine-laden rise. I can almost smell woodsmoke and venison. Someone is singing a song. A seagull soars freely overhead. Laughter trickles down the dune. Water carries the sound, rippling echoes into the present day. A new yet ancient tide stretches toward the shore, ready to be reborn.

Water Saving tipS

•Waters poisoned by industry, wild fisheries have collapsed. It is time to decolonize our land with a gradual return to a de-industrialized, bio-regional economy. It is also time to decolonize our hearts and minds by prioritizing the well-being of all relations.

Contributor’s note: Born on the northern shores of Odaawaa-gichigami (Lake Michigan), Aimée Cree Dunn has lived all her life in the rural wilds of the northern Great Lakes. She teaches at NMU’s Center for Native American Studies and blogs at wildwoodnotes.com.

“The Gift of Water” columns are offered by the Northern Great Lakes Water Stewards and the Cedar Tree Institute, joined in an interfaith effort to help preserve, protect, and sanctify the waters of the Upper Peninsula.