Thursday September 17, 2020

                        A Fine Trip Up Mikinaak Creek 

    
“Looks like you found some quicksand there Ozaawaa,” I said from the jonboat. “Neighbors always said there was quicksand down here.” 

     “What’s quicksand?” O asked, with both his rubber knee boots stuck in creek mud up to his ankles. “How do I get out of here?” 

    “Quicksand is a watery mix of sand and mud that’ll suck you down and drown you, the more you struggle,” I said, laying my paddle against a gunwale. 

   “It’s sort of like the Chinese handcuffs that you get at the carnival. You know, the kind that you put your trigger finger and your pointer finger into, and when you try to get them out, the way they went in, it won’t let you go. That’s what you got there. Good thing you’re not alone. I’m here to help you should you get up to your chin . . . This is a good life lesson.” 

    “I can use my paddle,” O said confidently, leaning on it this way and that, trying to pull his feet loose. “To support me when I jam it into the mud like this . . .” 

 

 

    “No, better not. That’s Joe’s paddle,” I said, correcting him. “He won’t think kindly of me if I return just one of his paddles. Don’t be takin’ it with you to the bottom of Mikinaak Creek.” 

    Ozaawaa, never one to quit a challenge prematurely, put on a culturally stoic expression, and with a mighty heave pulled one foot clean out of his boot. 

    “Gramma’d have a fit you get that white sock muddy for no good reason,” I warned him. “Better think of something else.” He gained a little footing after that. 

    Thinking of Gramma getting mad over him getting his socks muddy because he got out of the boat to explore a little island, then got stuck in the mud, did some good. Wriggling his boots one at a time, he finally broke loose of the mud and was able to get both his feet loose. 

    “Ya better wash that Mikinaak mud off before getting back into the boat, eh,” I said, pointing at the grass growing on the bank. “Walk through that high wet grass there and clean ‘em off.” 

    Mikinaak is the Ojibwe word for snapping turtle. In Minnesota and Roseau County maps, this tributary of the south fork of the Roseau River, is spelled ‘mickinock,’ as an English variation of Ojibwemowin (the Ojibwe language) just as cartographers have mislabeled many other Indigenous-named places around the state; an example being the word ‘Ojibwe’ (Oh-jib-way) spelled, Chippewa, as (Chip-pe-wa). 

    This annoys me, so when I write about this creek in any of my stories I spell it as Mikinaak Creek. The Mikinaak’s wetland basin that we live along, was shaped by thousands of years of receding Glacial Lake Agassiz meltwater and then was deepened and widened periodically by innumerable generations of amik (beaver), who have created habitat for flora and fauna here throughout its millenia. And it’s still true today. 

 

    There’s evidence of beaver activity up and downstream of the house, whether as old beaver-hewn stumps near an unused runway, or newly-cut beaver sticks, without bark, floating along the bank. A year ago, beaver had built a nice dam about 150 yards southeast of our house; we could hear water rushing through it when the wind was just right. 

    In the evenings we could watch beaver regularly swimming by, notably about the same time every day. We saw otter and mink and muskrat ply the water too. But to the wife’s dismay, beaver were cutting poplar trees across the creek at an alarming rate about which she often angrily voiced her lament. I countered, saying, just as frequently, that they’d eat themselves out of the vicinity soon enough -- or be eaten in the vicinity -- as their numbers grew, because they tasted so good to coyotes, wolves, and anything else with a hankering for a slow-moving blob of fur-covered fat. 

    Beaver populations have rose and fell along the creek forever, it was nothing new. Yet, beaver were obviously changing the landscape across the creek, as anyone could see, by beginning to clear a stand of thirty-foot tall poplar saplings, one by one, and reopening the woodland to sunshine. 

    Spring of 2020 came in on heavy rains and the Mikinaak ran bank full for the first few weeks, growing to lake-size so often over its tenure here that Google Maps have symbolized a permanent lake near our house that always makes me smile. 

    I doubt my grandfather, Wilhelm Palm, 1884-1937, ever thought that the Mikinaak would look practically the same in 2020, as when he and his daughter, Irene, stood on its bank in maybe 1933 or ‘34. 

   He’d be equally confounded to hear this conversation below the east end of the schoolhouse road, and see such a beautiful looking boat with two people from the future in it; one of whom was his eldest daughter’s son and the other a great-great grandson, by marriage, with Indigenous ancestry. 

 

    “Dad said I could get a good dance stick from a beaver lodge,” Ozaawaa said, walking back and forth in the grass. “He said the Grass Dance came from them stamping the grass down, and it works . . . See?” 

    “Yah but... , “ I answered, wondering if his dad’s answer wasn’t just him being facetious, as he’s like that sometimes. “Yes, you are flattening the grass, but you’re not cleaning the top and sides off your boots, eh. Just the bottoms.”

    Ozaawaa and I had set off upstream for a few hours of adventure in my old aluminum jonboat. Gramma filmed us from the big picture window over the walk-out basement. 

 

     “We live in a deer shack,” Gramma is fond of saying about our home, dismissing its inherent old-house-badly-in-need-of paint country charm as merely a cross-over between a deerstand and a hunting shack because of its scenic view and yearly maintenance issues that seem to multiply with daily use. 

    I enjoy Ozaawaa’s visits, especially now that he’s older. He’s a good strong paddler and likes being on the water, even when the water is just a little slow-moving creek ‘in the middle of nowhere.’ We had heavy going east of the house because floating pondweed slowed our travel. It ensnarled our paddles as we lifted them from the water, almost making us stop and drift backwards in the wind. 

 

    I started to worry he’d get fed up with all the trouble we were having and just want to call it quits, so I was thinking of something to say when he said, what every grandparent wants to hear, 
“What’s that?” 

    He was pointing at a old beaver runway overgrown with grass that angled from the water up onto the creek bank. “That’s a beaver runway,” I said, welcoming the change of subject. “Beaver make those along the creek to get from the water to the trees they cut down. They drag tree limbs and branches down them, then slide into the water. That one is old. They’re not using it anymore. 

    “You know, I read that the Dakotah made boats out of big cottonwood tree trunks that they hollowed out,” I said. “Uffdah, that must have been a lot of hard work . . . Think of how hard they had to work with the tools they had.” 

    “Grampa, how do you know these things?” Ozaawaa asked, from the bowseat ahead of me, paddling his best. 

    “Oh, I read a lot. I listen. I enjoy learning about different cultures, such as the Dakotah and the Ojibwe/Anishinaabeg,” I said, wrestling with a particularly long tenacious weed on my paddle. 

    “They lived here long before I did, as have a great many other people. “I was taught by my cousin, Dean, who was born and lived here as a boy. He said to think about, ‘What came before us? Who was here?’ So it was they were the Dakotah, then the Ojibwe, like your ancestors. I think of that, and that there were other Indigenous people before them.” 

   “The Ojibwe built canoes out of birchbark, cedar, and spruce pitch that were very light and fast, but you know all about that,” I said, not wanting to sound too much like a know-it-all. “Think of being passed by a canoe that could almost fly on the water when you’re paddling a long heavy boat sitting deep in the water made out of a big ol’ tree trunk!” 

    “Like this old boat, Grampa?” he said as we broke clear of our entanglement and fairly coasted around a bend, me steering from the stern. 

    “Just like this here boat,” I agreed. “Flat bottomed and all.” 

    Long about that time, our paddles skimmed the sandy bottom of the creek below a washed-out beaver dam. “What happened to this dam? Did the beavers do it?” Ozaawaa asked, laying his paddle across the gunwale. Water dripped from its blade as we glided toward the hole in the dam. 

   “No, the beavers didn’t do it,” I answered, lowering my paddle and twisting it to put us against the bank. “We had a lot of rain pretty fast and all the water washed the dam out. The beaver had moved out for some reason, so they weren’t here to repair it. Gramma is pretty sad about it.” 

   “Wasn’t she angry about them cutting down all the trees?” Ozaawaa asked, turning on the boat seat to talk to me. “I’m confused.” 

   “Well, she likes all the water they hold with their dams, but not at the cost of our trees,” I said, looking at the eroded face of the dam and whether we could get over it or not. “I think we can scoot through this ‘here’ if we take a run at it. You might have to grab hold of some of them sticks and help pull us through. I’ll push, using my paddle. Here goes!” We made it easily. 

   The upstream part of the dam and the exposed bare dirt bank along its approach showed how high the water had been when the dam was strong and maintained; I was surprised that it had washed out in such short time for it had stretched from high bank to high bank, about a hundred yards east and west, and was busily monitored by beaver all the previous year; until they didn’t. “But they’ll be back,” I assured O, as we began paddling again, matching strokes; he on one side, me on the other. 

    Occasionally, I’d strike the aluminum gunwale with the wooden paddle eliciting a dull thud and utter a swear word simultaneously, quickly changing sides when Ozaawaa did. I just hate to do it as it makes me sound like a beginner, and the fact its unnatural sound breaks the relative stillness of the day, and I’m sure, reverberates through the water.

    It was about here that the creek once again proved shallow and Ozaawaa asked to step from the boat to explore ashore, finding quicksand on his first try. 

    Okay, so it wasn’t maybe real quicksand like you see in the movies, but he got seriously stuck in the mud over both his ankles, which made it seem real enough, especially knowing that Gramma wouldn’t be happy should he slip his feet out and get his clean socks all muddy. He was happy he wasn’t alone when it happened, just as I was, and even more so when he got out on his own without my help. He was never scared. 

    Farther upstream, the wind changed to be at our backs, which, unknown to him, meant it would be in our faces as we headed home, eliminating the benefit we should have had flowing downstream with the current -- if there was one. I kept seeing beaver chewed sticks and pointed them out to O, saying, “They’re using that runway there. There must be beaver up here somewhere.” 

    “Looky, there Waa,” I said as we rounded the bend. “A big ol’ beaver dam with alot of water behind it! It’s been there awhile! Whoooee!”

 

 

    And there it was, holding back about eight feet of Mikinaak water, five feet feet above where we floated. Two streams gurgled from its base and downstream; one from below a willow brush island extending off to the east. The two joining as rivulets across a broad mud flat. 

 

     Ozaawaa was interested in seeing what the other side of the dam looked like, so we backed away from the face of the dam and paddled onto the mud flat until the little 10-foot boat ceased having buoyancy and he could stand up and step out, allowing me to do the same. We climbed the grassy shoulder of the dam and stood there above the boat, looking at all the water behind us. 

     “Don’t think we can get over this one, Grandpa,“ said Ozaawaa, studying all the logs and sticks making up the dam. The dam looked old as there wasn’t any fresh-cut branches or sticks in it; we could see water far to the southwest and through the openings of willow islands. 

    “We can portage over it,” I said, gauging the four feet of height we’d have to pull the boat up the bank beside the dam. 

    “You pull the rope tied to the bow when I lift it toward you so it’s almost standing on end, then I’ll climb up there beside it and we’ll heave it into the water from there. Okay?” He nodded his head affirmatively. 

     “Have I ever told you, I love this boat?” I said as I secured the stern back against the bank so he could get in. And off we went again until we came to yet another dam, somewhat lower than the first one. 

    “This must go on quite a ways,” I said as we paddled through open water with no pondweed in sight. I wanted to try skirting the big dam going back if we could find an opening in the willows. We pushed on upstream, farther yet, another fifty or sixty yards, always looking for an exit to the north. 

 

     “We’ve been gone a couple hours now, I’ll bet,” I said. “Do you want to stop for some chips and Gatorade? We can find a place to pull into to eat.” 

   “Will Gramma be worried?” O asked, paddling toward a shore of sorts. 

    “No, she knows where we are and how tough it can go back here. She can always call us too,” I said, cutting open a bag of nacho chips and wringing a bottle of Gatorade from its plastic holder to give him. I shook out a handful and laid them on my Mikinaak Creek picnic table.

 

     “You know, it seems so wild back here. I think very little of this area has changed over the past couple hundred years,” I said to Ozaawaa, turning in my tracks and gesturing with one hand. “The contours of the land along the creek, how deep the creek basin is here, how the creek flows; the animals that live here, where its been and where its going . . . 

 

     "I think of beaver and how their very presence here in North America changed whole cultures of people, of how people trapped beaver for their furs . . . many of whom were Indians who traded beaver skins for trade goods like guns and knives for hunting, and metal pots and blankets and things they and their families could use.

     “Do you know why they wanted beaver?” I asked the kid who was hoping I wouldn’t notice how many nacho chips he was devouring after inhaling a liter of Gatorade, and who figured if he could just keep me talking, I wouldn’t. 

     “No,” he managed to say with orange-tinged cheeks bulging like a chipmunk’s. “Hats,” I said, obviously on a roll. 

     “The Europeans had trapped all the beaver out in Europe, so when Spanish, French, and British explorers came back from ‘The New World’ -- failing to say that the new world was inhabited by five hundred thriving Indigenous nations -- among the very first things to tumble out of their mouths was all this talk about their new found treasure trove, including beaver, over here.” 

    “The very next trip back, the French, Spanish, and the British leaped ashore and claimed this land for their kings and queens, then set out to find gold, land and power for themselves, ignoring the fact the land and all it contained wasn’t theirs to claim nor seek. 

     “Beaver fur has a special property to it, that the Europeans learned they could make into felt, using mercury and special forms made of wood,” I said, hardly stopping for a breath. “You’ve seen those tall hats, in videos, that some men wear, with the little brim that goes all the way around? Well, these were the hats the rich people wore that they all had to have. You know, like your NBA sandals that all the big shooters wear in the locker room and by the pool?” 
     O nodded, his attention aroused. 

     “Well, the Europeans, and later, the Americans, stopped at nothing to get what they wanted from the land. They made treaties they never intended to keep, they greedily wiped out the beaver for their fur, killed almost all the buffalo on the Great Plains in an attempt to defeat the Dakotah and other Indigenous people. 

"Genocide of Native people was common currency . . .”

 

"So is racism," Ozaawaa said

 

    “So is racism," Ozaawaa said, shocking me into momentary speechlessness.  

   He had been listening ...

   "Yes, Ozaawaa, sadly, it still is."