IN TANG I B LE A VOI C E FOR WILD NESS AND WOND E R
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SIGURD OLSON ENVIRONMENTAL INSTITUTE NORTHLAND COLLEGE
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.
T I M B ER WO LF A LLI A N CE 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 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.
FLOWING WATER We appreciate its therapeutic affects every time we linger in the shower, warm water streaming over our bodies. In its wilder, less domesticated forms, we are drawn to it. Gurgling brooks. Cascading streams. Thundering waterfalls. How many well-worn trails lead us to flowing water? Loren Eiseley wrote about his experiences with water in an essay he titled “The Flow of the River.” He describes floating on his back in the Platte River, feeling “cold needles” of alpine springs at his finger tips and the warmth of the Gulf pulling him southward, feeling “the immense body of the continent itself, flowing like the river was flowing, grain by grain, mountain by mountain, down to the sea.” He notes that we are three fourths water,
YOUTH AND ADULT PROGRAMS
“a microcosm of pouring rivulets” coursing through our veins. And, he posits that if “there
To promote experiences of wildness and wonder for young people and adults, the Institute offers annual internships, camps, clinics, lectures, conferences, retreats, and outings.
The authors and young photographers who contributed to this issue of Intangible regularly
T H E COV ER Josh Peterson and his daughter, Miriam, on the banks of the Sukunka River in British Columbia, Canada. Photo by Christine Peterson. ©2022 Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute 7 15 - 6 8 2 -12 2 3 soei@northland.edu • northland.edu/soei
is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.”
immerse themselves in the flow of rivers. They recognize that our relationships with rivers extend beyond the instrumental, that rivers are nothing more, and nothing less, than themselves, and that rivers “calm us, excite us, challenge us, and move us in many ways.” They also recognize that we have allowed rivers to be dammed, owned, diverted, polluted, invaded, and warmed—that collectively we often fail to honor our rivers and the precious water flowing through them. Ultimately, they affirm, with Loren Eiseley, the magic that is contained in water, reminding us that if we allow our rivers to continue flowing, they will continue to teach us “their secret lessons of connection and beauty” and to offer us a home for our hearts. A L A N B R E W | E X EC U T I V E D I R EC TO R | P H OTO BY J E F F M A R T I N (I N M E M O R I A M)
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I HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED THAT FISHING FOR BROOK TROUT IS A SPIRITUAL THING AND THAT THOSE WHO ENGAGE IN IT SOONER OR LATER ARE TOUCHED WITH ITS MAGIC. ALL TROUT FISHERMEN, EVEN THE MOST SOPHISTICATED OF THE DRY-FLY PURISTS, ARE BOYS AT HEART, WITH A BOY’S WONDER AND JOY IN A STREAM, THE FEEL OF IT, THE SOUNDS, AND THE SENSE OF BEING A PART OF ITS LIFE AND MOVEMENT.
”
—S I G U R D O L S O N , “ G R A N D M OT H E R ’ S T R O U T ” | P H OTO BY J E F F M A R T I N (I N M E M O R I A M)
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OUR RELATIONSHIPS WITH RIVERS The years have not dimmed my memory of maples
Olson, too, fell in love with these fish and the streams
in brilliant flame reflected in the broad limpid pool
and rivers of the North Country graced by them.
where we knelt to measure the large coaster brook
My favorite Olson essay is “Grandmother’s Trout,”
trout that ascend the Salmon Trout River each
which captures the wonder and joy of a 12-year-old
autumn to spawn. I held the fish gently to admire the
boy pursuing “speckles” on a tiny stream near his
intricate vermiculations gracing their hunter-green
home in northern Wisconsin, all recounted for his
backs, and the fins edged with creamy white followed
grandmother in her kitchen at dusk. Brook trout
by jet black and crimson sweeping across their bellies.
define cold clear streams from Wisconsin to Long
Just beyond, the river murmured and laughed in
Island, and brawling rivers from Hudson’s Bay to
lilting tones as it cantered through riffles and chutes
Labrador. But like most rivers and their fish, these
on its journey to Lake Superior. Although my early
trout face many challenges, including dams that
experiences were with Minnesota lakes, I fell in love
fragment habitat, nonnative species, and overfishing.
that day in northern Michigan, my first September of graduate school more than 45 years ago now, with all the sights and sounds of the river and its beautiful fish.
Last fall I met with members of the Grand Traverse Band of Anishinaabek, a people who originally lived along the Boardman-Ottaway River near the northern tip of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, to learn their
Brook trout hold an intangible beauty that still
relationship with this river that they recently helped
awes me even after four decades of research. Sigurd
to restore. Rivers are the lifeblood, the circulatory
BY K U R T D . FAU S C H | P H OTO BY JAY W H I T E
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system of their mother, Aki, the Earth, who provides
only an eighth, although in my city four of every ten
sustenance for trees, fish, birds, and other animals,
gallons are used to water lawns. Most water is diverted
all
Anishinaabek
during June snowmelt and stored in reservoirs for
helped lead removal of three dams built by white
summer use, but winter flow is also stored against
settlers a century or more ago. These dams blocked
the risk of a poor snowpack. No one wants to run
the river’s lifeblood, hushing its voice, and were at
short of water. But a result of diverting water and
risk of failure during floods. The one remaining dam
fragmenting habitat is that half the native fishes
prevents invading sea lamprey from penetrating the
have been lost from the river in my city, including
headwaters, along with salmon and steelhead whose
our native cutthroat trout, and ageing cottonwoods,
offspring can compete with native brook trout, a
which rely on floods to disperse their seeds, are not
valued icon of Michigan’s trout streams. Discussions
being replaced.
their
other-than-human
kin.
continue about how to manage the passage of fish at this dam with the goal of honoring the values of both Anishinaabek and others who love the river and its fish.
In pondering the tradeoffs for these rivers and others, I have grown to realize that humans need much more from rivers than fish to catch and water to drink and irrigate. Beyond instrumental values
Far to the west where I live, winter at the foot of the
like these, and separate from the intrinsic values of
Rocky Mountains in north central Colorado brings
rivers for their own sake, scholars of environmental
snow interspersed with sunny periods of melt. I walk
ethics recently have recognized values founded on
the bike path along our river, the Cache la Poudre
human relationships with nature. These include
(Hide the Powder), named by French trappers who
the web that enfolds the Anishinaabek with their
cached gunpowder to lighten their load during a
rivers and forests—the other-than-human beings
snowstorm while traveling west in the 1830s. The
from which they derive wisdom and knowledge. For
February late afternoon sun slants through a gallery
others, relationships with rivers revolve around the
of cottonwoods that forms the narrow strip of riparian
coolness in the riparian on hot summer days, and the
forest still left within our city. But here, the river has
mists rising from the bends on crisp fall mornings,
lost its voice. A low concrete dam sweeps water into a
intangible values that can calm us, and heal the sorrow
canal that fills a reservoir on the Great Plains to the
that haunts our souls. As for me, the relational values
east, drying the river nearly completely. It is one of 25
I hold for rivers will always flow from memories of
diversions after the river leaves the mountains, and
coaster brook trout illuminated by the reflection of
four of these can divert all flow during winter. Below
autumn leaves in a pool of the Salmon Trout River,
each, the river must begin again from seepage, a few
and winter walks along the Poudre as it flows beyond
small tributaries, and outflows of treated wastewater;
the mountains.
it can manage only a whisper.
Kurt Fausch is Professor Emeritus of Stream Fish
Rivers throughout the West are diverted to support
Ecology and Conservation at Colorado State University,
humans like me in the region beyond the 100 th
where the Rocky Mountains meet the Great Plains
Meridian, where water falling from the sky cannot
in northeastern Colorado. Author of the 2015 Sigurd
support crops and lawns. These ditches along the
Olson Nature Writing Award winning book For the
Poudre were among the first dug in the West, starting
Love of Rivers: A Scientist’s Journey, Fausch is at work
in the 1860s, and now divert three quarters of all flow.
on a second book about rivers, themes of which are
Plans are pending to divert half the rest, leaving
reflected in the essay above.
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IT IS ITSELF RIVERS BIND TOGETHER THE LESSONS OF A YOUNG LIFE A couple of weeks before my daughter was born—a couple of months before she was supposed to be born—I carried her across a rushing, garbled creek high in the Bighorn Mountains of northern Wyoming. We paused as I walked over rough logs flopped from one bank to the other. Above us stretched a valley full of willows and flowers and rimmed with limber pines. Framing that valley were granite peaks, their frozen reservoirs of snow and ice sending cold water rushing down through patches of delicate lupine. My husband and I joke that our 10-mile hike into the backcountry that day, over South Clear Creek and up to the Firehole Lakes to cast for golden trout, inspired Miriam to make her early request for delivery. The sheer, gray mountains, bright pink phlox, and clear, gurgling streams were just too much. She wouldn’t wait a moment longer. And maybe she did, in some way, sense the landscape around her. For a child born into the arid West, she remains, years later, drawn to water in the same way bees flock to columbine. She spends every moment she can in water. Every request she makes is to be near water. In the winter, when snow falls and ice blankets lakes and slow eddies of rivers, she lays on her belly and marvels at bubbles frozen in time. Water doesn’t just give her joy, it gives her life.
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Water in a place like Wyoming has always been a precious resource. Bumper stickers plaster cars here with phrases like “Whiskey is for drinkin’. Water is for fightin’.” An old rancher told me once, years ago, that “you can mess with my woman, but don’t mess with my water.” Climate change, bringing its shorter, drier winters and longer, warmer summers, makes it even more so. But for Miriam, water is less complicated. It’s for playing and swimming, for fishing and touching, for carrying away small boats made of leaves and for damming into pools for splashing. Streams, rivers, and creeks are threads that weave her young life together.
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She spent her first year near water, tucked into my waders then wrapped under my coat. I talked to her as I cast for brown trout in the wild Wind River, tea-colored water careening over Volkswagen-sized boulders. She slept that day, in spite of the frigid temperatures, snow, and strong winds. December 31 in a blizzard may sound like a strange day to take a 6-month old fishing, but she did not seem to mind. She learned to wet her hands before touching the slimy skin of a rainbow trout on the banks of Rapid Creek in the Black Hills of South Dakota. She could barely walk, but she knew dry hands hurt fish, and she didn’t want to hurt the fish. She turned three on the shoulder of the Sukunka River in eastern British Columbia. We spent weeks as a family following glacier fed rivers through Montana, Alberta, British Columbia, and the Yukon. We cast our lines for bull trout, Westslope cutthroat trout, and Arctic grayling. Miriam cared mostly about the rocks on the bottom of the river and less their swimming occupants. She filled her slick rain jacket pockets with those smooth, round stones shining from the bottom of the river with their iridescent greens, blues, blacks and whites. They dried out in her pocket, though, away from their river home, turning those shiny colors into a duller, less enchanting version of themselves. She discovered the magic of river water that day. That it takes the mundane, the rocks we see everywhere, and turns it into something spectacular. So we sat on a granite boulder and ate our Triscuits and cheddar cheese with sweet cherries we found somewhere earlier in our journey and took turns pointing to our favorite river rocks caressed with color-changing water.
• • •
We return each year to that creek in the Bighorn Mountains. We can hear its calls long before we see its water. It rushes over and around rocks and roots and through the wet earth with its insistent mission. We still cross the logs each year. The first couple we carried her, and she demanded a pause to put her hands in the water. Last summer, she walked across by herself and scanned the pools for signs of fish. She grows, as does her relationship with water, though she still stops to put her hands in its cold embrace. Scottish essayist Nan Shepherd wrote in “The Living Mountain” that water “wells from the rock, and flows away. For unnumbered years it has welled from the rock, and flowed away. It does nothing, absolutely nothing, but be itself.” Maybe that’s why Miriam gravitates so much to water. Maybe that’s why most children do. They, like rivers, are nothing more than themselves. She may pretend to be a trout hooked on a line, or an otter come to gobble the trout, but she remains completely and utterly herself, a product of rivers and creeks in an arid land, wandering from one place to the next with no other mission but to be herself. And for as long as humans will allow those rivers to flow, they will continue to teach children their secret lessons of connection and beauty. Now if only I pay attention long enough to learn as well. From her home in Wyoming, Christine Peterson writes about wildlife, the environment, and outdoor recreation. She recently traveled to northern Wisconsin to ski the American Birkebeiner and enjoys wandering the West with Miriam, her husband, and their greying yellow Labrador. Learn more at christine-peterson.com.
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WATER “WELLS FROM THE ROCK, AND FLOWS AWAY. FOR UNNUMBERED YEARS IT HAS WELLED FROM THE ROCK, AND FLOWED AWAY. IT DOES NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, BUT BE ITSELF.” — N A N S H E P H E R D , F R O M “ T H E L I V I N G M O U N TA I N ”
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REFLECTIONS ON RIVERS
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Rivers calm us, excite us, challenge us, and move us in many ways—and we don’t need Heraclitus to tell us that they’re never the same twice. Our experiences near, in, and on moving water are often our most treasured memories, whether fishing an eddy or braving the rapids. Not many people, however, spend a lot of time under rivers. Here we share photographs from two related underwater photography programs. Under the Surface is a therapeutic outdoor program for clients of Northwest Passage, a residential mental health treatment program for youth located in Webster, Wisconsin. Zaaga’igan Ma’iinganag— Lakewolves—is a program sponsored collaboratively by Northwest Passage and the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute. It combines science, Ojibwe culture, and artistic expression in water-based outings for students from Bayfield High School in Bayfield, Wisconsin. These pictures are unique not only for their perspective relative to the surface but also the perspectives of the diverse array of young photographers – the future protectors of the waters we cherish and hold in trust for them. As directors of these programs, we are privileged that our lifelong dedication to rivers is something we can share directly by immersing young people in underwater photography. These experiences are platforms for our students to explore art, science, culture, and conservation. We hope this small set of their work inspires your own reflections on rivers and what’s under the surface.
E n j o y !
IAN KARL Experiential Programming Director Northwest Passage, Ltd. TOBEN LAFRANCOIS Research Associate
THE SURFACE
Northland College
A Shallow Place, by Star, Namekagon River at Pacwawong
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A Profile by Mitch, St. Croix River at Gordon Dam
Below the Flower by Victoria, Bwaan-ziibi (Sioux River)
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A Little All Over by Destiny, St. Croix River
Asabikeshiinh by Gray, Miskominikaaniing-ziibi (Raspberry River)
Held Under by Elle, Bois Brule River
Leech by Vanessa, Namekaaniwi-ziibi (Namekagon River)
Fish by Dayton, Wiisaakode-ziibi (Bois Brule River)
The Void by Richard, Pacwawong Lake on Namekagon River
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Untitled Sponge by Angel, St. Croix River at Gordon Dam
Pattern by Victoria, Pike’s Creek (Anishinaabemowin unknown)
To see more photos, check in with the In a New Light Gallery of Northwest Passage at nwpltd.org/inanewlight and with the Zaaga’igan Ma’iinganag at lakewolves.org to see updates on outings and galleries.
Fine Art by Madigan, Namekagon River
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HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS WRIT TEN IN THE BOIS BRULE
Submerged within the planet’s wonders, I allow myself to be carried downstream by the river’s own volition. Feeling this new feeling that I’ve never felt before, I’m tempted to do something that I’ve never done before. As second-nature as breathing, I allow myself to ease into my surroundings. I open up my chest, and let the fist-sized mound of red fall out from my rib cage. I watch it sink down and land peacefully with a soft “thump” on the riverbed. Despite the little voice of hesitance in my mind, I swim away with a new kind of confidence. I leave my heart here in the river, so that I will feel forever compelled to return back home. —S A DA F N A S I R
(re-printed with permission from Agate Magazine – April 2019)
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A Mussel Awaits, by Anna, Minerva Dam