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| Poetry of Place
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APOSTLE ISLANDS HISTORY
I spend the morning reading scholars' accounts of people early to these shores: Ojibwa who moved to Chequamegon Bay the decade Columbus "discovered" America; the trappers, traders, voyageurs who paddled the unsettled lake; 19th century masons who quarried brownstone in eight-by-four blocks and shipped it off to Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, as far east as Buffalo. By noon I am weary of driving stakes for pound nets, cleaning lake trout, felling white pine, stripping hemlock bark. I need a nap. I am drowsy from sawdust history and growth-of-industry fact. I go down to the lake to haul water for washing dishes. Wind drives three-foot breakers onto the shallow beach. Rollers slosh in and out of my brown Rubbermaid pail. A wave breaks on the rocks and soaks my boots, my socks, my jeans, the sleeve of my polypro fleece. Fog drips from the balsam branches. Nothing will dry today. I have a change of clothes, a roof, a fireplace. But what of the voyageurs, rushing to rendezvous? And the loggers, swarming the smoky cookhouse in sweat- drenched trousers and shirts? How wet does a fisherman get in November, racing the making ice to pull his herring nets? This is the story. The sun disappears, Ojibwa children shiver, a gale howls from the northeast. |
