Intangible (Fall 2021)

IN TANG I B LE A VOI C E FOR WILD NESS AND WOND E R

FA LL 2021

Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute NORTHLAND COLLEGE

THE COVER Photograph of Saxon Falls on the Montreal River bordering Wisconsin and Michigan by Joseph Kirsch.

OUR MISSION The Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute prepares people to meet the challenges of the future with intellectual and artistic creativity by promoting and protecting experiences of wildness and wonder.

To realize its mission, the Institute hosts LoonWatch, the Timber Wolf Alliance, the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Awards, and numerous events for young people and adults.

LOONWATCH LoonWatch protects common loons and their aquatic habitats through education, monitoring, and research.

TIMBER WOLF ALLIANCE With a particular focus on Wisconsin and Michigan, the Timber Wolf Alliance uses science-based information to promote human coexistence with wolves and an ecologically-functional wolf population in areas of suitable habitat.

Sigurd Olson duck hunting with his son, Sig Jr. in the 1930s.

SIGURD OLSON NATURE WRITING AWARDS Established in 1991, the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Awards honor the literary legacy of Sigurd Olson by recognizing and encouraging contemporary writers who capture the spirit of the human relationship with the natural world and who promote awareness, preservation, appreciation, or restoration of the natural world for future generations.

YOUTH AND ADULT PROGRAMS To promote experiences of wildness and wonder for young people and adults, the Institute offers annual internships, camps, clinics, lectures, conferences, retreats, and outings.

AU T U M N Being in control is seductive. And many of us, perhaps unconsciously, accept ways of being that allow individuals to be the locus of control. Light at the flick of a switch. Movies at the click of a button. A home in the desert. Immunity from disease. It’s all within our control. Or, is it?

For me, the annual turn from summer to fall, especially here in northern Wisconsin, is a vivid reminder that all is not within my control. No matter how many switches I flick, or buttons I click, the days get shorter and leaves begin to turn, imbedding me in cycles and processes that eclipse my individual desires.

In this issue of Intangible, we invited our authors and artists to reflect on autumn, the season between summer and winter, between niibin and biboon.

Through their reflections, they ask us to consider, “how much of the world does an oak leaf contain?” They immerse us in the seasonal round of the Anishinaabe, illustrating the abundance that flows from being aligned with rhythms larger than our own. They remind us that all of this “is goddamned serious” and that in the midst of death and mourning we might also find fertility

©2021 S igu rd O l so n Env i ro nme nt al Ins t it ute 7 1 5-6 82-1 223 soei@northland.edu • northland.edu/soei

and “a sign of gentleness leading the way.”

Most importantly, though, the artistry of our contributors shows us that being the locus of control pales in comparison to being attuned to the riotous brilliance of the world.

A LA N B REW | E X ECU T IVE D IRECTOR

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A RI OT OF CO LORS, W IT H VIOL IN S Gail and I were paddling our canoe across a north woods lake in October, when my vocabulary failed me. To employ a weary cliché, the woods surrounding the lake were ablaze in a “riot” of autumn colors. I lifted a brown leaf from the water, held it up, and asked Gail what color she saw. “Burnt sienna,” she said. For a moment I was perplexed. Then I remembered the crayons of childhood. And something I read once that mentioned the red earth mined from Siena, Italy. How much of the world does an oak leaf contain? Plenty, it seems.

I’m lucky that so many of my family and friends are artists, for now and then they allow me to see the world through their eyes. My own view might be as drab as burlap, but they see Day-Glo swirls of texture and shadow. When they talk about light and color I try not to miss a word.

Over dinner not long ago the conversation turned to the color palette of a place. It was a new idea for me: That every place on earth has a visual fingerprint derived from the colors of its unique combination of plants, soil, buildings, lakes,

BY JE RRY D E N N IS | A RT BY G LE N N WOLF F

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rivers, sky—even the “gray and buff” of its underlying, unseen bedrock, according to one of the more cryptically-minded friends at the table. That same friend described how she once color-chipped the trees in her yard to determine the colors she wanted to paint her outdoor furniture. Another insisted that in summer the reflections off Lake Michigan filter through the pines in Glen Arbor and saturate the village with a shade of blue found no place else. That led somehow to a discussion of the rhythms of the seasons and how we’re hardwired to adjust our circadian cadences to match them. That in turn led to someone recalling a recent discovery by physicists that a kind of tuning fork vibrates in the nucleus of every atom in the universe—and that it vibrates at the same frequency as the bass string of a violin. A musician among us said it was scientific validation of the ancient claim that composers and performers tap into nothing less than the music of the spheres.

I was thinking of those conversations the day Gail and I crossed the lake. When we reached shore we pulled our canoe up on the sand and took a walk around the shore. When we reached the far side we looked back and admired the colors of the woods and their reflections on the water. It was a riot of yellows, oranges, reds, and greens. An uproar of autumn colors. A tumult, a melee, a brawl. I’m still looking for a better phrase. Once, on Isle Royale, a young man chastised me for bringing a red canoe into a wilderness area. It was summer, and everything around us was mostly blue or green. “I could see your canoe all the way across the bay,” the young man said, his voice trembling with outrage. “It’s an eyesore. It’s color pollution.”

But in October our boat could offend no one. I see it now: a splash of scarlet in a brilliant world, with violins playing in the background. That day our beautiful canoe fit right in. And, for once, so did we.

JER RY D ENNIS IS TH E AUTH OR OF MANY B OOKS, IN C LU D IN G T HE 2 0 03 S IG U RD OLSON N ATURE WRITING AWARD WINNER THE LIVIN G G RE AT LA KES: SE A RC HING FO R T HE HE A RT O F T HE IN LAND SEAS. H E AND H IS WIFE, G A IL D E N N IS, LIVE IN M IC HIG A N ’S N ORT HE RN LOWER PENINSU LA, WH ERE TH EY SPEND TH E IR M ORN IN G S W RIT IN G B OOKS A N D M A KIN G A RT AND TH EIR AFTERNOONS BEING GLORIOUS LY U N PROD UCT IVE . T HIS ESSAY IS EXCERPTED FROM J ERRY’S MOST REC E N T B OOK, U P NO RT H IN MIC HIG A N.

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“ M ayb e i t wa s th e s i ze o f o u r s k y th at m a de the w h o l e o f o u r fa m i l y su c h a c r i ti ca l po i n t o f re fe re n ce, a key o n a m a p.”

— K E ND RA AT L E EWORK M I RAC L E COUNT RY 2 02 0 SO NWA W INNER

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DAGWAAGI N

Fro m M an o o mi n i kewi n to Zo ogi po n For more generations than we can count, the seasons

We often think of late winter and early spring as the

of an Anishinaabe year have been intertwined with a

beginning of the circle of seasons. Days grow longer,

spiritual worldview that is as old and time-honored as

the air and ground gradually warm, and sap begins to

the traditional creation stories. Like our ancestors, we

run in the sugar maple trees. We rejoice, in the way of

who live on Mother Earth today are part of a rhythm of

our ancestors, at the newness of an awakened earth. In

seasonal change that is reassuring, our contemporary

the old days, and in many communities it is still done

lives a continuation of years and seasons anticipated

this way, small extended family groups joined with

and honored, each change of season a gift of renewal

other families at maple sugar camp. There the sap

from the Creator.

was collected, boiled down to sugar, and stored dry for

There is a timelessness to the unfolding of seasons in

consumption during the rest of the year.

an Anishinaabe year. Traditionally, the four seasons

During Niibin, the warm summer months, family

of Ziigwan, Niibin, Dagwaagin, and Biboon (spring,

groups joined larger communities for fishing, gardening,

summer, autumn, and winter) have been recognized

seasonal hunting, and the enjoyment of the most

and acknowledged by changes in weather, daylight

social time of year; it was during Niibin that visiting

hours, and terrain, the succession from one season to

friends and families caught up with all the news, and

the next expected and prepared for. Each of the seasons

young people from different clans and families were

gives to us its own gifts from the Creator as well as

introduced, with the idea that perhaps they might marry

corresponding responsibilities and tasks. Dagwaagin

and start new families. Everyone worked, from small

begins with manoominikewin, the wild rice harvest,

children to venerable Elders; the Anishinaabeg know

and with zoogipon, snow, brings us into Biboon. It is

that every person has gifts and the ability to contribute

Dagwaagin that connects the reawakening of Mother

to the well-being of the group, and that the traditional

Earth in the spring and the bounties of summer to

values of humility, gratitude and generosity, learned

the cold, quiet season of Biboon. In the days of the

and reinforced throughout a lifetime, are inseparable

ancestors, during Biboon, food was carefully and

from the spiritual teachings about the Creator, and the

prudently consumed, clothing and moccasins made,

place and importance of all that inhabit Mother Earth:

traps repaired, and younger generations instructed by

animals, birds, insects, rocks, trees, plants, water, air—

Elders in the sacred creation stories and the path of

and the Anishinaabe people.

Mino Bimaadiziwin, the living of a good life. Our tasks have changed somewhat over the years, but those teachings continue to be integral to Biboon.

It is in late summer that the Earth begins to show signs of preparation for the coming season, Dagwaagin.

Daylight has been arriving a little later since the solstice,

BY LIN DA LEG A RD E G ROVE R

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and dusk a little earlier each evening. Near the end of

In Anishinaabe tradition, Dagwaagin is the season

the month of August we feel an occasional coolness in

which shows the tangible results of the physical and

the air. We notice a single yellow leaf against the green

prayerful work since the Earth woke to springtime—

of its thousands of siblings on an aspen. The next day

maple sugar has been preserved and stored, garden

several more, and we watch for the first red-orange leaf

patches harvested, berries picked, meats and fish

that glows in the ever more oblique sun as it falls from

dried and cached, and medicines kept safe with those

a maple tree. In the ways that have been passed down

Anishinaabeg who hold knowledge of their healing

from generations of Elders, Anishinaabe people watch

purposes. Before we settle into the approach of Biboon,

the lake for the wild rice stalks to lighten to a pale green

we acknowledge and give thanks, as we do regularly

shot through with gold, and wait for word from the

during the year, with shared food and company, a feast.

Elders that the manoomin is ready for harvest, that it is time for ricing to begin.

A shared feast I remember from my childhood was at a relative’s house, around the time for the first snowfall.

Manoomin has been a part of the Anishinaabe diet

The kitchen table, a card table, a bookshelf, and all the

since the time of the Great Migration, when dreams

chairs in the house were moved to create an irregularly-

and visions from the Creator guided the people from

shaped place for everybody to eat. The uncles treated

the Atlantic seaboard in a route that roughly followed

the manoomin like the gift it was. One commented, “In

the Great Lakes to where we live today. The journey was

California, wild rice is selling for $5 a pound.” The other

at times difficult, but the spirits of the Anishinaabeg

adults marveled at that, and we all thought how lucky we

were sustained by the promise from the Creator of a

were to be living here where the Creator had guided the

miraculous food growing out of the water: manoomin,

Anishinaabe people so long ago, where we could enjoy

the good seed that is a sacred food. In manoominikewin,

the sacred goodness of wild rice, the good seed, with

the wild rice harvest, our history is remembered and

some hard work, prayers of thanks, and remembering

our spirituality strengthened. In the work of parching,

to leave enough in the lake to replenish for next year’s

preservation and cooking, and then in the eating of

late-Niibin, early-Dagwaagin manoominikwewin.

manoomin, we are nourished in body and spirit.

L I NDA LEGARD E GROVER IS A MEMBER OF T HE B OIS FORT E BA N D OF OJIBW E A N D PROF ESSOR E M E RIT US OF A M E R I CA N I ND IAN STUD IES AT TH E UNIVERSITY OF M IN N ESOTA D U LU T H. S HE IS AU T HOR OF AWA RD -W IN N IN G N OVE LS, S HORT STO R IES, POETRY, MEMOIR, AND C REATIVE N ON F ICT ION . HE R M E M OIR/ ESSAY COLLECT ION G IC HIG A MI HE A RTS: STO RIES A N D HISTORIES OF MISAABEKONG WAS RE LE AS E D IN OCTOB E R, T HE S E ASON OF DAGWA AG IN .

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April Stone uses a knife to shape a black ash splint for a traditional Ojibwe basket.

Opposite: Stone weaves the finished splint into her design.

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CARRYING THE HARVEST

For April Stone, autumn is a time for dreaming. “I stay home more, do more work, and think about what kind of baskets I should make next,” she says.

She retreats to the studio behind her home, filled with coils of black ash splints and weaves baskets that will carry the fall harvest.

“Working in my studio, I see the change from summer to fall,” she said. “I think about how everything is going into hibernation to rest for the season.”

For more about April Stone visit northland.edu/weave

PHOTO ESSAY BY B OB G ROSS

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This page, top: ash must be soaked to make the material more pliable and prevent breakage during the weaving process; bottom: a roll of ash splints being soaked.

Opposite page, top left: Stone in her study; bottom left: a finished pack basket with leather straps and a bent ash handle; right: detail of a two-level harvest basket.

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BO RN H U NT I NG The yellowed clipping pinned to the gun cabinet reads, “Fisher, 185-pound buck.”

It’s a matter-of-fact description of the accompanying photo featuring my dad, an outsized deer, and a three-year old me. For a small-town Midwestern newspaper, it was plenty newsworthy. My parents must have given up trying to get me to look at the camera and the photo shows a little towheaded boy who can’t take his eyes off the eight-point rack in his dad’s hands. Four decades later I still look at those antlers, which now adorn the wall in my office—they mark the beginning of a hunter’s life.

It’s just a walk, a need to get away into the wooded unknown.

Despite the compass in my vest I find that I’m lost, but the creek has someplace to go.

Snaking through southern Michigan is the St. Joseph River. Fields of corn and soybeans carpet the uplands while a wooded river bottom provides an oasis for wildlife and the wild at heart. I grew up on this river—fishing, swimming and

BY COREY F IS HE R

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exploring—and it’s where my dad would take me along

Standing on a granite outcrop known as St. Peter’s

hunting. But first we’d build “blinds” in late summer,

Dome, looking out over miles of National Forest, I

stacking sticks and branches against shagbark hickory

came to realize that I had a share in all of it. This was

and sugar maple trees to form a sort of fort where we

a freedom I had never felt and grouse were a reason

would hide come November fifteenth, opening day of

to explore.

hunting season.

Gazetteers, plat books, and topos led me to places

Our favorite blind overlooked a swamp on the inside of

with names like Moquah, Brunsweiler, and Bufo, and

a horseshoe bend in the river where the contours of an

later to the Itkilik River in Alaska, where a bush plane

old river channel funneled deer along the edge of a hill.

dropped my friend, Tom, and me off to experience

It is where my dad killed the newspaper-worthy buck

an Arctic float hunt. The first thing we did when the

and where, eleven years later, another buck followed

plane left was get lost. A fog bank rolled in, obscuring

two does, splashing through the icy river in front of

the Brooks Range while Tom and I shuttled our gear a

a fourteen-year-old boy shaking with adrenalin and

quarter mile from the airstrip to the river. Without the

dread. The buck turned to go into the swamp and I don’t

mountains as a landmark the flat tundra was a willow

remember pulling the trigger. Later, we skinned the

maze filled with caribou tracks, bear scat and fear. Later

deer in our garage and butchered the meat, carefully

that week, struggling to hike while carrying the meat

wrapping steaks, chops, roasts, and stew meat in freezer

of half a caribou, a covey of ptarmigan flushing would

paper, each package a piece of the story to be retold

bring a rush of fright before realizing it wasn’t a grizzly

throughout the year.

charging through the willows.

I follow water

Legs keep my body

convincing me I’m safe.

wandering while my thoughts

Losing myself as I plod

PHPHTTtttDdd! Ddd! Dd d d…

through pine thickets and aspen groves,

disappears over the far ridge.

soothing greens and golds

The flush startles me

are painted across Pan’s canvas.

back from where my mind had wandered.

Growing up we didn’t hunt birds, only deer on small

A few times a year my wife, Cheryl, will join me hunting,

parcels of private land where we had permission. While

wanting to partake in the process of making meat the

deer hunting you can sit all day in one spot, waiting

honest way. To know where one’s food comes from.

and watching while becoming part of the woods. It

To hold your quarry as the life force leaves and to

makes you notice things, like how a stream gets louder

feel deep down what the writer Tom McGuane meant

as the sun sets and the difference between a squirrel

when he said about hunting, about killing one’s food:

scampering and the careful cadence of hooves on fallen

“This is goddamned serious and you had better always

leaves. But for bird hunting you need land. The more the

remember that.”

better while trapsing over hill and dale, always onward to the next flush.

Usually it is for wild turkeys; Cheryl says that it’s a good starter death for her to handle. It helps that North

It wasn’t until college that I discovered public lands and

America’s largest gamebird is delicious. Our favorite

ruffed grouse along the south shore of Lake Superior.

dish is carnitas: turkey legs slowly simmered in stock,

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orange juice, cinnamon, garlic, coriander, and brown

I also know about a meadow on the verge of darkness

sugar. The meat is shredded and then flash-fried before

with horse hobbles jingling, elk bugles drifting through

becoming tacos that make it all the easier to get out of

the fading light, and an owl announcing the end of one

bed at 4am, slipping into the woods as turkeys gobble

predator’s hunt and the start of another’s.

off the roost and the eastern horizon starts to blush.

Last November a glassy glint in the trail caught my eye

It’s an easy shot,

while I hunted elk along a ridge near the Continental

a dead bird.

Divide. It was an obsidian arrowhead. This is the

But unmoved in my chilled hands

ancestral homeland of the Shoshone and one hundred

is a finely-checkered field grade.

miles to the east is Obsidian Cliff in Yellowstone Park,

Unbroken is the spell

the likely source rock for the ancient hunting weapon I

of October along Spring Brook.

now held in my hand. I thought about the last hunter to

Turkeys gobbling, grouse drumming, deer snorting, mallards quacking, squirrels chattering, geese honking, elk mewing. These are the sounds all hunters know. But

hold it and tucked the point back in situ. A short while later a bobcat crossed the trail in front of me, slipping silently through the forest—hunting.

A G RAD UATE OF NORTH LAND COLLEGE, COREY F IS HE R LIVES IN M ISSOU LA , M ON TA N A , W IT H HIS W IF E , C HE RY L, A N D T H E I R COCKER SPANIEL, BLUE. WH EN NOT ROAMI N G T HE M OU N TA IN S OR WA D IN G ST RE A M S, HE S PE N DS HIS T IM E A DVOCAT I N G FO R W ILD T ROU T A N D W ILD LA N DS.

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DIVINATIONS Yo u co me a n d go. Th e d oors s win g closed ever mo re gen tly, almos t with ou t a s h u d d er.

Yo u run like a h erd of lu min ou s d eer and I am d ark, I am fores t.

— RA IN E R M A RIA RILKE , “ YOU COM E A N D G O,” TRA N S L. A N ITA BA RROWS A N D JOA N N A M ACY

Fall is when my sister stops by. Lights flicker in the

The fall spell of the north woods is always that one—to

kitchen, the hall lamp flares at 3:00 a.m. Maybe it’s

summon winter. Birch shivers, horned owl bleats, shade

glitches in the wiring, faltering bulbs, but also it feels

gathers, and look: ice. The freeze is cast and reveals

like her. October was her time, crepuscular gloominess

itself as hoar skin, glitter grass. It reminds me of a glow-

shuttering into view, she loved the idea of a thin veil.

in-the-dark calendar that hung next to my childhood

Tarot, astrology, palmistry, she sought alternative

bed; one of the best months was June because of the

knowledges. And facing the end of this life, she planned

fireflies, but all the other good ones were in fall and

to make a difference in the next, to exert subtle

winter, bright pumpkin mouths, cold cross stars, puffed

influence from that privileged plane, which sounded

snow crusts on branches, silvery hills, tinsel strings.

like the cancerous brain talking, but her hauntings do

The dimmed world was enchanted, the shining time.

matter. As does all the magic of this season, smoke in the trees, drying seeds, chaperoned child ghouls.

And now, time to shut the garden down. The birds disappear when we go out, as if this really isn’t Eden,

In American culture, we don’t have authentic means

so it’s lonely work, pulling crumpled tomato vines and

to deal with the uncanny, so how about I dress up as

dragging the hose into the garage. But I catch a flash

a pirate wench or Viking wench or tavern wench and

of cottontail, a streak of chipmunk at the stump where

appropriate some louche historical badness for one

we leave sunflower seeds. And the bucks are in rut,

night? But it’s really in there, too, rattling the windows.

they don’t care, they rub all over. They run right by the

What is a bit of badness in you, driving home from the

house, goggling. Antlers swing in the field.

office under the hunter’s moon?

It’s supposed to be death season, the mourning hour.

You can do Halloween even if you have no spells. But

But the air is ripe with leaf musk and the does who

most of us do have them—rituals, charms, philters—

visit the yard in the evenings are fertile poppets full of

gestures of intention. My sister said, don’t do the hexes,

acorns and grain. Deer is a sorceress, summer-brown fur

they’ll always turn on you. But the right-hand magic, no

enchanted gray to match flocked pine, agate eye gazing

harm there. Teen girls everywhere know this, staging

straight back. Deer is The Empress manifest, waiting in

their love tricks. Write a name on the white candle.

her circle of fallen apples—a sign of gentleness lighting

Now the pink. Draw three hearts on a slip of paper.

the way.

Repeat for six days, then return the paper to nature when your beloved returns to you.

CYN T H IA BELMONT IS PROFESSOR OF ENG LIS H A N D G E N D E R A N D WOM E N ’S ST U D IES AT N ORT HLA N D COLLEG E , W HE R E SH E TEACH ES CREATIVE WRITING, LITERATURE , A N D IN T E RS ECT ION S IN G E N D E R ST U D IES A N D E N VIRON M E N TA LIS M . HE R PO E MS A ND ESSAYS H AVE APPEARED IN D IVERSE JOU RN A LS, IN C LU D IN G P O E T RY, C RE A M C ITY REV IEW, OY E Z REV IEW, RIV E R T E E T H , FLO C K , A N D T E RRA IN.O RG .

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