North Shore

Erik at work on his canoe


Grand Marais

Sitting on the dock at 6:00 AM,
two days before the solstice.
The sun is already bright
and rising steadily in the sky.

Sailboats anchored in the cove,
or at the docks. There is only
the sound of water lapping,
and the occasional cry of a gull.
A flock perches on the rooftop spine
of a nearby waterfront shack.
Their droppings stain the shingles
signifying this is a usual roost.

Dingies are overturned on sawhorses
and the half sanded hull of a sloop
sits in drydock. This is timeless.
Another dock, 1977, Lahaina, Maui;
I am there for a moment.
Or this could be a village
on the shore of Newfoundland or Maine.
But it sits here on the big lake,
Gitchee Gami.

The summer crowd is already arriving,
doubling the population, dumping dollars.
The other nine months,
this is a hardscrabble place,
unless you are rich, retired....
Just like any other seaside resort town anywhere.

But on this morning,
it is timeless and serene,
as the present calm sea before me.


Erik

You have lived upon this shore all your life.
As a small boy you sat in the sauna
with your father and his brothers.
Good Finns, you beat yourself with branches,
then jumped through the hole in the ice
to freezing water. It made you strong.

With your mother's brother you harvested
the wild rice, as your ancestors
have done here for centuries.
And you learned from him the language
of the Anishinabe, the "first people."

More than twenty years ago now,
you took all that they taught you,
and you walked away from
radiowave, pavement, piston engine,
concrete, steel, neon...
walked in to the woods,
built your home there,
hunted, fished, made everything you need,
including your clothes, the
snowshoes and skis for the winter....
You need nothing from my world.
Nothing.

And I met you one day as you built a canoe:
birch bark, spruce root cord, pine tar...
just as your ancestors did for centuries.
And you taught two others.
These things live on in a few.

And I feel like I have just
walked onto very holy ground.