Spring shed: Place Post No. 8

Wind is blowing in from the Southwest when I get to the lake. Not a cold wind, but strong, the force pours into my ear as I clear paint chips from a picnic table and view my surroundings.
Ducks on the water are invisible except for the slender, black tubes of neck and curves of head. I can hear them, however, fart-like noises and squeaks reach across the water's edge. A robin, clinging to the branch above me, yells at the wind and flaps its wings, remaining if not steady, attached to its wooden landing. even though the winter wheat is a green, shimmer carpet beyond the boundaries of the area, the bird's rusty orange breast is the only brightness I see in this drab surrounding, and I am thankful for it.

There is no sun today, so even though the day is in the low 60s and imaginatively warm, I want tome color to my surroundings. Yes, thin stabs of grass poke up through the dead leaves and grasses around me, and the wheat fields to the north and south beckon with luxurious industry, but what I am feeling is a lack of color—in mind and physical presence. I feel shadowed and dark, as if the melanin under my skin reflected only "bruise" as a color.

The ducks take off, and I watch the water "settle" after them. Its ripples flow and bounce like static on a television: jittery lines that move up and down, and up and down again, then across the gray surface in a haphazard pattern. I am mesmerized by the movement, much as I am when settled (reluctantly) in front of a noise box that must be plugged in. Television transports the viewer to other places; here at the lake, I too disappear, but only to the landscape within. My semester is almost over, and I feel that I've come to see the wildness of the lake in a way I never had before. The flora and fauna were just sticks and grasses and animals..and they still are, but I feel like I'm seeing them with an awareness that others who sit at these picnic tables might not notice. I don't really feel that way about those human others—I don't feel any more connected to the people I went to school with or sit with at the bar when I rarely go to town. I don't feel any more interested in the history of my home county than I did before. I feel settled here only in the temporary way I felt settled here when it was "home:" as if it were a place to be, for a moment. Like a sun-dappled bit of grass that invites an afternoon of reading in the summer.
I have just returned from Denver, from the annual AWP conference and bookfair, and even though I went to sessions on the Nebraska writer, or the importance of place and home and habitat, instead of the rosy color of promise, my heart is shadowed like the water before me. The conference connected me to authors and ideas, and hearing the words of authors I've read all semester float above a crowd in person was wonderful. The words of Leslie Mormon Silko, and David Gessner—words in favor of ancient rootedness or of seeking it until one is connected to a new place, respectively—stick with me, but the words of Debra Marquart have probably done more for me, because she took the stagnation of small town life and wrote about it, honestly, Compassionately. But as part of her past.

The air swills around me, traces whorls in my hair and marks my skin with invisible patterns, as I walk to the edge of the water and settle on a smooth, white stump. I run my hand along the arch of thick branches, marvel at the smoothness where the tree has shed its bark. Parts of this felled giant feel like the soft, curved back of a lover, the sturdiness of shoulder blade and bone and muscle, wrapped up and protected by a porous, peach cover that sometimes shivers with resistance. The smoothness of the tree is a second skin, and I think about the many times I've talked of "skin" when referring to the frozen water. That cover is gone now, the one before me is active, fluid. Moving water.
Moving.

As I stand up to leave, I look behind me an notice a dead fish, (a huge bass? wallye?), eye sunken in and horrid, a muddy scab of brown. Two ants crawl from its gill and march across their scaly, silver territory; I squat and look at its distended belly, the yellow opening of its mouth. Dad would have loved to catch a fish this big (maybe four pounds) at Walgren, so I wonder what happened to him, how he washed up to the shore, and if he drowned in the heavy absence of vital water. He's brittle and dry, so there's no stench of rotting fish—I probably would have smelled him before now, if there had been—and for this, too, I am thankful. The air today smells light and beautiful, like spring rains and cottonwood down. It's sweet, and sticks to me, but is not sweet and sticky like some smoke, clogging the air with a resinous, wet blanket. No, it's sweet and sticky in the way pine gum is when it covers pores on your hand and lingers in the air with a movement of fingers.

I walk back to my car, across foot-deep ruts of peeling mud that puncture the road's surface, and again, I think of the skins we are shedding, always, everyone of us. After this coursework, all of it, I will never come back to the lake and look at it the same way, nor will I be able to write of the natural world without a need for deeper connection and understanding. We might spend seven years shedding our skins—a time that seems like forever—or see new elements of the world with the dawning of new seasons, but in every moment, sun-dappled or crusted with snow and ice, our own landscapes are transforming.

Hardiness: Place Post No. 7

The lake has shed it skin for another winter. Sunlight shines on the ridged surface this afternoon, and I think that the gulls bobbing on the water look like small, white boats or dutch shoes floating in the distance. In just a matter of weeks it feels like winter has come and gone, and yet there's still a feeling of harsh cold in the air. I wonder if the wildlife below notices something similar? I know that fish like rough water, still, beautiful days above the surface do nothing for for the fisherman or woman.
I still see only dead plants, and a few birds, but no abundance of animals (or people). We've made it through the winter, but where is everyone?

The trees are beginning to send out small knobs of brown buds, and I can't wait to see the green life that sprouts from them. Their barren branches are now familiar, but they're not as inviting as the fullness of color is. Is the algae and other underwater greenery undergoing a similar process? Do these things live and die and move in cycles like the same things above water? I know the water grows its own furry covering sometimes in the late summer, but that's just what I can see. The filamentous algae covers the wooden legs of the dock with a mustardy yellow throughout the summer but is absent now; but what's it like underwater? Is the curly-leaf pondweed flourishing (I scout it out online and learn that it is, but will die back in the summer)? We don't have to worry about the invasive Eurasian watermilfoil in Walgren, but I know it exists in rivers throughout the south-central region of Nebraska.

I don't think we have Zebra mussels here, like Yankton county, South Dakota, so that's one less lifeform to worry about. But for all of those that should be here that didn't make it or don't, how many of the bad guys do? How many survive our winters (the zebra mussel comes from the Caspian so it should love the cold)?

I don't think about the wildlife that I know as invasive--he plants I see, the animals.. pheasants are not native to our country either--in much the same way I don't think about how hard it is for other life forms to make it through the winter. But as spring creeps around the corner and curiosity blossoms, how much will I begin to think about the existence of these things, and mine, relative to them?

Thaw: Place Post No. 6

Friday. March 19

Finally, I can sit outside without freezing. It'll be cold again in a bit, when the storm moves through, but for now, we're having some nice weather. The ground is damp underneath the grass and the leaves, but it is so nice to sit under the cottonwoods that for once, I don't mind the soggy coldness of winter.
The ice on Walgren is rotting today, beginning its spring thaw. A little more will go out everyday, but if we get cold weather again on Monday, that will slow it once again (It's Tuesday as I type this, and we got more snow today), but not allow it to freeze over. That's pretty much it for the winter on the lake. As the ice continues to melt for the next three weeks (or longer, depending on the weather) the hazy patches will separate, looking like oil on water.

In my light hoodie, I'm getting hot, it's almost 65 today and nothing but a mild breeze. I can hear the Canadian Geese overhead, so I know summer is coming, but today's temps aren't going to stay, not yet. That hasn't stopped dad, who's getting the boat ready and putting away the ice gear. He hopes to be on Minatare (another lake , about an hour from home) by next week. I think that's pushing it, but that's what makes him happy.

I rise from the damp spot on the ground, uncrossing my legs and shaking them. Heading down to the bridge sounds like a good idea, so I scramble down the gentle hillside and hook a hand over the wooden slat of the bridge. The little creek/crick in front of me has been running for at least two weeks; we've had more snow this winter than I have seen since my childhood memories of snow tunnels behind the house. Those snowdrifts were up to the gutters, and I suppose that was more than 20 years ago.. a lifetime, at least.

Seeing the water run clear in quick in front of me makes me smile. When I leave work in the evenings, I curse this same water, because it has pooled in the ditches along the highway that joins home and town. For fifteen miles I have to squint as I drive south; the sun, as it sets across the dried, yellow grasses, burns brightly in this melted snow runoff, and blinds me.

But here, today, looking at the results of warming temps and the coming of spring, I'm not blinded by the sun, only a little dizzy. The small ripples of water absorb some of the bright beams, which filter through the pale cabbage-colored water, but the other bit of sunshine that hits the water gets caught on the crest and moves along with it, a soft ripple of molten gold.

I want to see a fish, a minnow, maybe a turtle, but there's no activity like this yet. Maybe in a week. I lean over, squeeze and empty juice bottle in the water, suck in a great gulp of it, and return it to the Rav. It's too late in the day to go over to my old elementary school and use a microscope, but I'm tempted to pull a Dillard and see what I can see.

I have been awed and amazed all year by the readings I have had in my MFA courses. Some I've read before, others I've not, but in this light, the light of context and contemplation, I'm seeing things I've never seen before. This week we're reading about the urban landscape, how we find and create nature in the city. This nature doesn't necessarily even have to be of-the-earth type stuff, but seems to be adaptable to whatever is always around us. It is all our perspective, as Dillard wrote, it's all about how we take the time to look and see.

After leaving my bottle in the Rav, I walk over to the edge of the lake, where it's too reedy and marshy to still be frozen, and squat down, sniffing, looking to see what I can see. The edge of the ice that is close and observable for detail, is smushy looking, like wet cotton, and there are sticks and dried leaves and fine sediments stuck in it, a little further out. The mud here smells dank, like the holes left behind in week-long mud when you pull up a rock and air rushes in, trying to seal it over. It's smelly, the breakdown and decay of all the dead things that got stuck, but it's spring mud, and this thought moves me.

Cabin fever hasn't hit me as hard this year as it has in the past. I thought winter on the Plains was bad, here where everything is so wide open, so susceptible to snowing one in and blowing things closed, but it sure beats winter in the city. I feel like beyond the comfort of the winter--the bounty of snow, which means fuller lakes and rivers and better harvests, the ability to drive from place to place and not walk, and the warmth of my home (the heat is not my responsibility!)--I've come to find a general comfort in my placement at the moment. I'm certain I'm not here forever; in fact I'd like to leave next month, but instead of feeling quite so vicious about "home" I'm beginning to feel a bit of warmth.

Something splashes out beyond the silent reeds, something that has broken a spot in the ice and jumped up. It's got to be a fish, or maybe an otter? A beaver? A muskrat? A cheese rat? Who knows what it is. I eye the general area but see nothing, then walk to my car. It's inevitable: the next time I come back there will be less ice and more water; more mud too. More animals. In a month, kids will be out on the dock fishing, and the sheen of bruised, rotten ice will be gone. In a month the semester will be almost over, and it's just as inevitable that I'll be thinking strongly about what's next for me. It's human nature, nature that things come and go, change and progress. Even in it's solid, stagnant flatness, the ice too, is moving slowly. Yes, this is the thaw.

Random sketches and thoughts: Place Post No. 5

I'm clearly not a visual artist, not without the aid of a camera, anyway, but I've been sketching some of the random encounters I have at the lake. Here, the dock at Walgren Lake, snowlocked but soon to be freed by the melting waters that run in from the hills and snowfall. We went fishing just a week ago, and now, even though the ice is softened by 3-4 inches of snow, the shoreline is warming, the edge ice is thawing and a good foot of water lies between the shore and the thinnest of ice holding the dock captive. It's pretty impossible to tell, with my inaccurate depth perception and ability to draw angles and distances, but the dock doesn't stick straight out of the water like that. It slopes back, is made of wood (but covered with snow).

And a hawk, as seen from the ground. Ok, that's a terrible picture, but when he's kind of coasting above, it's hard to see the exact curve of his wings or his coloring. I'm gguessing it was a Red-tailed Hawk, since they are so common here(I see at least 5 of these guys a day), but I'm not sure. The birds in my field guide look so similar.. Regardless, hawks always make me smile. When I was little, dad used to call them 'Henry" or 'Henrietta," and until I was old enough to know better, I always thought it was up to him to name the hawk, and that it was always the same ol' Henry hanging out around the tractor or feedlot or wherever we happened to be. Our school's mascot is a hawk, so he's got some pretty big pull around here!

This UNL study, done in the 50s, shows that there were 14 types of hawk in the NE Panhandle; I can't find stats on those same birds today, but I'm sure that even though this land is sparsely populated, numbers have decreased, if only slightly.

And a wax worm, the mealy, translucent bait we use for ice fishing. These worms are the larvae of the Pyralidae, or wax moth. In nature, they live in bee hives, eat the cocoons and wax, thus earning their name. In my house, they live in the fridge (in a round, plastic case) and get lost behind the cottage cheese or other small round containers. These worms are pretty slow moving, but I came across this thread from the Ohio Game Fishing community and couldn't help but post it:

It has always been a concern that the wax worms would get left out and die from heat, so we always made sure we had them in the cooler. This is fine, however sometimes it's a pain to have to get them out and put them back, especially with kids. So, this weekend we were fishing the shoreline and I just carried them over and set them in the shade, of course the sun moved and soon they were baking in the heat. I LIKE IT! As it turns out, I discovered when in the sun, wax worms go nuts when in the heat. They were crawling all over themselves and looked like redworms in the way they were moving around and getting into a corner of the container. Also, they "grew" fatter the longer they were in the sun.

I will tell you, a warm - fat - squirmin wax worm WILL catch a ton of bluegill!

When we were done, I put them back in the cooler and the next time they were fine. The kids just loved it and I could not fish because the 3 kids were just one after another with catches, best fishing I never got to do.

So, anyone else have this happen with wax worms? Have I been living a wax worm lie all my life??"

A "wax worm lie".. ah, I love it!

***

The frost has gone out of the ground now, and with it has gone the stability of the land. When there's a blizzard blowing and zero visibility, getting to the lake is dangerous because I can't see what's in front of me, but it's not impossible. When the frost goes out, however, travel across the country roads is almost unthinkable.

We had to pull the wheels of my Rav yesterday and powerwash the gumbo off of them, because the Rav had developed a bad shake. All of the mud caked on the chassis and the tires had pulled the whole system out of balance.

I think of the people who settled this land, those who tried to move through the muck with wooden wheels and tired oxen or horses. Overland trips took forever back then, and adding this mess to them most certainly made life difficult.

I like the mud, the way it is a mixture of earth and water, the way it feels to squish it between my toes, even its variety of colors: shaley stuff so black it's almost purple; chocolate syrup smooth with a cinnamony swirly; cookie bar brown, with the warm, golden crust of a brownie. But It is a frustrating substance, akin to the quicksand that Edward Abbey encounters in his wilderness in the desert. Mud makes it easy for me to understand why settlers and farmers and ranchers come to think synonymously of "enemy" and "land." The natural world is a challenge; even in the promise of good weather.

Spring is definitely coming; the ice still coats the lake but is too dangerous to walk on, the mud is a crisscross of tracks and ruts leading the way to human productivity. We are leaving behind the winter, and in the mud we are recording our passage.

The terrible oxygen: Place Post No. 4

The fish come quickly, as pan fish usually do. A small, yellow jig, a 1 ounce weight and two wax worms: perch after perch after perch. This bait/lure combination works well in the shallow waters around Nebraska, and I as I pull up the small fillets with fins, I volley back and forth between feeling bad for the effective deception, and the self-reliance I am armed with. Within the first half hour of being set-up at the lake, I have at least five of the small, green and yellow fish.

Commonly known as the yellow perch, or simply "perch," Perca flavescens is about 12,000 years old. Found throughout the United States, this freshwater fish has a clean, delicate flavor unlike the rather muddy, gamey flavor of the catfish or even some Crappies. Of the fish we catch during the winter, Perch has got to be my favorite. Today, each of the little guys we catch ranges from 5-8," but it's not unheard of to catch 11-inchers in other, bigger lakes.

"Tasty little potato chips," dad says, smiling as I struggle to unhook the recent catch that's hooked itself through its nose. I pride myself on being able to bait my hooks, unhook my bounty, but when a fish gouges itself in the eyeball, or swallows the whole damn rigging, the self-assured part of me dies. Dad raised me to make sure I could do these things- bait my hooks and unhook my windfalls, but he didn't teach me how to combat the feelings of sorrow that sometimes break the water along with the goodies. As a child, I couldn't focus on fishing enough to even worry about those things, since I could hardly sit still long enough to wait for something to set my hook. As an adult, I have the patience to sit still and listen to the water burping under the ice around me, but with that patience comes the contemplation of my actions.


Nebraska's Sandhills lakes have a high alkalinity to them, and for many years of the 19th century, Walgren Lake was known as Alkali Lake. The water in this lake ranges from flame-blue to mossy green and bruised, but in the winter, the crispness of the clear, frozen water works its way into the flavor of the animals you're after. I'm looking forward to the homemade beer batter and finger-length fish-fries we'll have tonight for dinner, so I can justify my actions in that matter: at least I am working here to feed myself. If I needed to do this to survive, I have the know-how.

But the fact of the matter is that I don't need to fish to survive. I can eat all sorts of other things: grilled-cheese sandwiches, or soups or vegetables. I think through the list of all the other things I come up with-- chicken, turkey, even hamburger, and know that most of my diet consists of things that were once living but were killed for their food matter. If I ate only what I killed, I'd have to be a vegetarian. Even then, though, things would die... The great satisfaction of fishing comes, I guess, primarily in spending time with my family, and then in knowing that unlike those who simply purchase their fish-sticks in stores, I know the reality of an animal food cycle.

I rehook another wax worm, a small, steamed-onion-like larva, and drop the line through two feet of ice, and probably eight feet of water. Mom has already caught a couple of Bluegill, Lepomis machrochirus, and I wonder what other kind of fish are in store.

Bullheads, catfish, Northern Pike, Crappie, Bluegill, Perch, and even the occasional Walleye make themselves at home in Walgren, and for as long as I can remember, people come here to pull up a tasty combo pack of bite-sized fish dinners. The thing about fishing this lake is that you are here to make a meal, not a name for yourself. None of the fish in this water are not going to be worth mounting, but reaching the half-way mark in a five-gallon bucket guarantees a few tasty meals for a family.

The sun shines above us, wisps of cirrus clouds promise softly falling layers of frozen water later in the afternoon, and a whole morning passes. Mom has brought her little dog along with us-- a first for my family-- and he's bounding about our small circumference of drilled holes, lapping at the heaving water that sucks in and out of holes. He's hooked up to the gear sled, and his small lunges pull it a few inches every so often. He's kind of entertaining, but in his small, plaid coat, he's more of a plaything than a domesticated animal with wild tendencies. The anglers to the west and south of us sit hunched over their small, 2' poles, jigging and waiting, waiting and jigging. I feel like we're the group with the most action, and by 11 am, when I feel like I've had enough (we left the house at 7:30), we've got half a bucket of Perch and Bluegill, swimming sideways and slowly in their deathwater.

I catch a Pike too, " a little snake," as dad calls them, and because it had swallowed the hook and gouged its throat, when I release it, the fish is bleeding badly.

Throw it down, it ain't gonna live," orders my dad. We don't eat E. lucius. Their meat isn't as mushy and muddy as the Catfish, so they're not that nasty, but its not as buttery-flavored as the Perch, or as solid. Boney and narrow, this long, skinny fish is hard to clean, but if it weren't dying, I'd through it back down the hole. Dad would let it lie on the ice to freeze. Bloody and mouthing and S.O.S. in the silent unease of a suffocating being, the Pike wriggles in my hand for a moment. I hold him up, eye the snout, and drop it to my feet. Mom's dog (whom I call The Weasel, for his long snout and beady eyes) lunges at the fish, paws it then wraps sharp teeth over the caudal (tail) fin, flipping it. I watch for a minute, then retreat, sitting back on my bucket and jigging my pole slowly. The Weasel growls and lunges, squeaks and bares teeth; the fish continues to die, slowly.

Once last summer, while fishing for salmon on Lake Oahe, I told dad that I didn't like the way he bled the fish in the water as we prepared to leave. I'd been having a hard time salmon fishing all summer, growing more and more aware of what began to feel like greed. Two years ago we caught 45 salmon-- more than the average man, maybe even bear (OK, not really bear, but you know..), and last summer we caught at least 40. Dad doesn't keep them all for himself, several of his elderly friends can no longer fish, so he smokes the fish and gives it to them, and twice a summer he holds a fish feed in town at the golf course. I see and respect the way he spreads out the enjoyment of these fish, but I wondered if it was necessary. Yet I felt helpless and wrong in my contributions to his hoard.

The Pike barely flips its fins now, and its mouth has stopped opening and closing. It would have died regardless, had I thrown it back in the water, but if I hadn't caught it at all, I wouldn't have been the cause of its demise. I think of Buddhist lovingkindness, how all being are supposed to be equal and all actions will come back to haunt us. I think of "The Fish," a poem by Elizabeth Bishop, in which her catch-and-release is both humble and full of victory.

While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen... I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,...
They shifted a little, but not to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping of an object toward the light.

Eventually, the fish dies, his last breath a choking one, dry and raspy in the cold, winter air. Mom's dog loses interest in the inanimate fish, and I am even sorry for The Weasel. Not because he is no longer entertained--we sic-ed 'em on that poor fish to entertain us, didn't we?--but because he is a wild animal, trapped in a child-small coat, fettered by domestication and the power of bored humans.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to say "no" to dad for good, when he asks me to go fishing, but I do know that when he too, has cast his last hook and sucked in his last gasp of air, my days as predator on the ice and the water will be over. I tell myself that for now, it's OK to fish, I eat what I catch and I am intimate with the life cycles of these aquatic animals, but if it weren't for my family, fish sticks and white fleshed "potato chips" wouldn't even cross my mind or my stomach.

Cattails: Place Post No. 3

I picked up a plants guide at the library the other day, so my recent lake trip was informed by this info booklet. Hoping to use it more as the shore thaws and the days grow longer. Looking at plants and then the guide feels kind of like going on a biology scavenger hunt.

Typha latifolia, or "the Common Cattail"catches my eye as I walk along the edges of the lake. These velour-like fuzz rods feel like memory foam when you squeeze them, and even if they can be bad for their environments (because they choke out the plants that provide food for ducks and other animals), the multiple benefits they offer are good. Used by blackbirds as nesting sites, the leaves of this plant also protect reptiles such as snakes or salamanders (not so good for the birds!). Native Americans have used the plant for both medicinal and textile purposes. And besides all this, there's just something fun about this weed: I think of this perennial monocot ( plant that lasts at least 3 seasons; has only one seed-leaf) as the aquatic version of the dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), because their fluffy seeds fur the air when they are released. Like dandelions, this plant is edible, and although I've never eaten one myself, I remember a friend who tried to do so deciding that the shoots would perhaps be better than the fuzz itself (long story). Maybe this spring I'll have to experiment with the tender green shoots myself.

With the strong winds and warm sun we've had lately, I'm pretty sure the water will be eating away at the ice soon, even if it is very slowly. March will bring another hard freeze and a big snow dump or two, but it's almost easy to think about spring coming.

Full Wolf Moon: Place Post No. 2

9 pm. Saturday, Janaury 30.

Full moon over the lake tonight, and the clouds look like fish bones in the sky. Serrated and fine, they hang with a hollow presence, suspended above me with the weight of a navy blue sky. Quickly, a coyote runs in front of me as I nose my way along the shore; startled eyes are like moonbeams in front of me. Tonight is a Full Wolf Moon, the name bestowed upon the January full moon by the Native Americans who once roamed this land with coyote as a guide. I come to the lake tonight to see its beauty in a new light, and despite its familiarity, the shadows dancing on the ground incite in me an eerie sort of paranoia.

At the main shore a streetlight burns, its fake orange light as appealing as a spray-on tan. Because I'm here trying to see things as they really are, I move away from the main shore, go south and then west, looking for nothing in particular but the spirit of the night.

Night time in Nebraska has always been a sacred time for me. When I was 17 and sneaking back in at first light, the cover of darkness and its activities made me feel most alive. When various boyfriends lived in other places and I told them to look up in the sky, to see the Moon and feel her shared light, despite our distances we were always, in that moment, connected. The fragile quality of moonlight lends a surreal presence to everything it touches, making out world seem something more than normal; making everything a little less comfortable for humans.

No matter where I have been or how old I am while there, or who might offer company, the light that comes from the sky makes me feel like there is something special about this life. The glistening promise of stars, reaching out to us from distant and past galaxies is reassuring smile from a special someone, a reward of some kind. My life in cities has been mostly devoid of this light; light pollution robs me of that feeling and the connection to the sky and all that will be or ever was.

I drive to the edge of the lake-- as close as I can get and still know that what I am seeing is actually land, and not frozen water. It's been cold at night, in the negatives, but I'm not sure how sound the ice is, the Rav is heavy; this is the side of the lake that sometimes bubbles with new water. Because nothing looks as it normally does, I'm not tempting a horror story.

And yet everything looks like a nightmare. Dead trees strain blackened branches to the sky, bony limbs of dark wood laid cold and bare in this winter night. Even with the moon's glow my eyes fight for understanding and adjustment; a barbed-wire fence choked by tumbleweeds seems like something less ordinary until my eyes get their bearing. There are no lights on this side of the lake, and eventually, when my eyes are fully adjusted, I can take in the frost on the ground, sparkling with the only animation I've seen since that 'yote ran through my lights.

I've cut the lights on the Rav, the radio and now the heater. All I can hear and feel now is the quiet of the night. Slowly, a small anxiety warms in my ribcage, and I shake my head at this. I'm in the middle of nowhere, a place I've known forever.

But the way I'm knowing it tonight is all but familiar.

Sitting there in the expanding cold and chocolate pudding of the night, it occurs to me this is probably how many people feel in nature: paranoid, unsure of their surroundings and what lurks behind every twig and crevice and noise. How terrible it must feel to consider oneself a stranger in the natural world.

How terrible to only know domestication false light.

In front of me the lake is a section of slivers and pockets; silver bars reflecting moon light and humped waves of snow that devour it and cast shadows. I am saved by own foolishness: I would love to walk out across it, to the middle of the lake and open myself to that epicenter of rippling light. But because I am human and my eyes aren't made for this dark, I am still apprehensive: I won't risk walking out onto the lake tonight. I know my limits, but I am human, after all, and as much as I like pushing them, I think this is far enough for tonight.

I twist the lights back on and the Rav warms its metal parts with a deep intake of air, it sounds almost like a sigh. The trees spring to life in the glow of my headlight-- I see finer twigs and piles of shed leaves on the ground. Suddenly everything is made familiar. Grasses shoot across the spectrum from black to yellow, and even though it is fake light, it makes me feel better. I crush through a mirror of frozen water in the rutted road (broken bones, broken bones, I think to myself), and soon am back on the main road. It's funny, if something were out here and wanting to get me tonight, it still could, despite the headlights and plastic. How we have duped ourselves into comfort, plastic shells and fake lights.

Walgren Lake: Place Post No. 1

“The first name for this lake was ‘Sicamma Ble,’ which means “Stinker Lake.” It was named by the Lakota Sioux Indians because of the alkali smell it gave off.

In early 1885 settlers started making their homes in the area. W.A. Chappell built a rock house across the road to the west. The rock came from John Elwin Reid’s rock quarry two miles to the west. People used to gather in this house when there was an Indian scare when they were on the war path. …the lake was the meeting place for people for miles around. They would get together for visits and picnics. It was the only recreation area for miles around." - Hay Springs Centennial Book

The lake sleeps before me under the mottled sheet of snow and ice that our pastures wear in the winter. I have not been here for years, at least five of them, and I can't help but notice how small and still and quiet everything is around me. Where once there seemed an endless horizon forever slipping off into the distance there is now only a reedy outline of frozen grasses on the opposite shore. This small expanse of frozen water seemed large to me as a child, and I can hardly imagine being afraid now of swimming in the ragged circumference of water.


"The drought came in 1889 and 1890 and the lake dried up to a small puddle. When the rains started coming again the lake started to fill again… and it wasn’t too many years before people could again enjoy swimming, fishing, boating, ice skating and their many picnics and celebrations. There was a nice beach around the lake, and at this time (about 1900) it was used for horse races. About 1932 we used to use it to race our Model T Fords."

I step away from my car, the 1996 Toyota, Rav-4 in model, and taste the harvest-chill fragrance that drifts from our field to this area. It is dry and papery, a cold reproduction of air that tastes like popped corn. It is January 18, too late for a corn harvest, later than my dad has seen in all his 77 years, but today still, there is corn slowly drying in the field across from me. We have seen our share of dry weather in the last twenty years, but this winter, already, we're dealing with intensely wet conditions and a later, probably too late, harvest. The snow has kept the farmers in bars, or shops, or the office, and even though winter becomes recreation time once the crops are sold or sheltered, if we get the dry spell we're so desperately needing, the work will be a welcome, celebrated occasion. I've camped at this lake, wandered around it so many times while my dad was in the field, and even though I didn't believe the rumors about the lake monster, there was always something otherworldly and old about the mosses kissing the sandy body of land half-hidden by the mossy waters.Even though it is 2010, and I'm no longer a child, I would love to feel the atmosphere of this place during a Native scare, or a monster sighting.

"In the early 1920s the story got started that there was a sea monster in the lake. This story was spread all over the world. E.A. Johnson, who lived close by, said he had seen weird “Chimera” tracks on the ice. In 1923 a clipping from the London Times said “by far the most vivid picture of the action and features of a medieval monster which for three years has been terrifying the native of the vicinity of Alkali Lake near a small town of Hay Springs, Nebraska, USA."

I cut across the ribbon of concrete that wraps around the west side of the lake, hoping to sidestep snowdrifts that glut the dock. I've worn my rubber boots today, the green ones that are flecked with roses and match the depths of the lake, but I'm not interested in busting through the dunes of snow and taking the chance of missing the dock. instead, I loop around a clutch of cat-tails, palm a fistful of their frozen, golden stalks, and stand by the old Elm tree, the one that juts up uncomfortably, broken and weeping with the scourge of Dutch Elm disease. All of the trees around here have got it, and unless they're dead and charred from lightning, it's hard to miss the mucusy yellow snot that drains from crack and crevice.

"It is known far and wide as Alkali Lake, although it is so located as to catch a very large amount of surface water and also has an inlet from a branch of Hay Springs Creek generally known as the dry branch, which in certain seasons of the year carry heavy rainfall and overflow from the main branch into the lake, so that for the most part, the waters may be said to be fresh or at least fresh enough for fish in abundance to live in."

I walk around the old playground, see that the rusted water pump is now missing its handle, and sit on the cold sidewalk in silence. I don't think of Walgren Lake as anything special--never have-- but because I have returned to this familiar place--Hay Springs, in general-- I want to feel something special too, about the lake. It's not like Lake Michigan, the lake I to which I have become accustomed, and very few fishermen have any kind of "real" luck at this place. But in my knowledge of Lake Michigan and cities beyond this town I am spoiled; my ideas of luck in fishing run as counter to this area as the same ideas do regarding the magic of a place.

"Fishermen are seen daily in season with hook and rod. Some years ago the state hatchery deposited fist there which seem to thrive and grow to very desired size and good quality."

My back stiffens in the 40 degree sunshine, and eventually I rise, knees creaking like dry branches. I've not found my moment of magic here yet, but because I am drawn to lakes and water, I am as surely here for this place as I am for home. I turn and walk slowly back to my modern marvel of a car, and as I face south, a winged one dips his inky wing across the blue surface of the sky in front of me. It is a bald eagle, most likely one half of the pair that lives in the Cottonwood next to the Orange farm. Last year, when harvest was delayed through November and I was home to ride in the combine as we got out the last of the corn, the pair of eagles was floating and calling out their presence above us as the loud machinery spit out its corn. It is the second eagle I've seen since I've been home, and although my body connects to the Seagull as my totem animal, I find it fitting that this feathered life form is drifting toward me from the farm. It passes from my line of sight to the western edge of the horizon, back toward other small farms.

"The lake is situated in nearly the center of section 29, township 31, range 45, Sheridan County, and is about 5 ½ miles from Hay Springs. The N.E. fourth was homesteaded by Rev. Adams and is now owned by the Johansen estate, the NE fourth was homesteaded by a Mr. Fisk and is now owned by Lawrence Walgren; Mr. McDervitt filed on the SE fourth, which is now owned by Mr. Walgren, and the S.W. fourth was homesteaded by a man by the name of Chappell. It is now owned by Mrs. Anna Walgren. It has been ascertained by actual measurement that this body of water contains 113 acres and is near round in shape. At present it is from 12 to 15 feet deep, although in the spring of the year is considerably deeper. In 1900 it is said the lake was dry, and there are those who say that they have driven over the bed when there was not a drop of water in it. The lay of the land around the lake is gently rolling and affords a pleasant scene for miles to the north, south and west. On the east the view is not too far reaching but very picturesque. Nearby are farms and barn houses, herds of cattle and hogs. The farmers are prosperous and hospitable."


I don't know the names of many of the people farming the land around our pivot; the old ones I knew as a child are long since gone, and soon, I'm sure, my own familial attachments will follow. But there is something open and raw about the golden stems of wheat in the summer, or the hard-crisped shells of sunflowers in the fall that will forever linger on this land and all that surrounds it. The snow-kissed backs of Black Angus in the winter, or the rutting grunts of mini, spring hogs are becoming once again, pleasurable.

"A huge water animal again seen on surface of lake by four reliable Hay Springs citizens, also Jerry Hanks of Wyoming at about 4. It surfaced, sprayed water and disappeared again."

Maybe this feeling of connection is the magic and the mystery, something intangible that comes and goes, but always lingers. I cross once more across the rusted shadow of the swingset's form, I hear a slow "breaauup" come up from the lake, and this noise makes me warm. It is a sound like a human belching, the kind of burp that starts deep in one's abdomen and never fully reaches escape or public form.

I smile, think to myself that there is, after all, a monster in the lake, and maybe some magic to be found. I know it is simply the magic of winter, the movement of water as it flows from the creek into the monster's bed; it is the creaking crack of a sunny day and ice that grows slightly warm. But for a moment, as all things intersect and become one, I almost believe it is nature's call, a dialogue that might be entered between it and this human form.

***

I have chosen a local legend as my "place" of study and reflection this semester. Walgren Lake was first known as Alkali Lake in the 1800s when my part of the state was being settled. After the Walgren family amassed the lands surrounding it, it became known as Walgren Lake, and has been thus known since then. My great-great-grandfather Vaclav Prokop came to the US from Czechoslovakia in the 1800s, and my great grandfather Joe, who was 12 when he emigrated, eventually built his home a mile from the lake.

My grandfather Elmer built a house about 5 miles away, and when my dad married his first wife and began farming, he lived on the original "homeplace" that my Great-grandpa had homesteaded. That original house still stands today, and my dad has fields just to the west of the lake.

The "pivot" and "the Orange farm" that I refer to are the same place, a field we call "the orange" because of the orange-colored pivot that my dad bought for for irrigation. He was the first farmer in the area to use the mechanical irrigating system in the 60s, even though modern crop irrigation was pioneered in this part of Nebraska by Old Jules Sandoz in the 1800s.

Water is intensely important in this part of the state, as we suffer from dry periods and soil erosion; Sheridan County sits on top of the Oglala Aquifer, which is an immense, underground water system-- one of the largest in the United States. I have always been drawn to the water, and even though my love of it has nothing to do with farming, or fishing, I'm lucky enough to have spent a good deal of my life around water because of these two things. Because of this inherent love of water, and the family history that lies so close to the lake, it felt natural to pick Walgren Lake, which is about 10 miles from our home, instead of the rive that runs south of our farm.

The italicized parts of my setting come from the Hay Springs Centennial Book, and selections from this hefty volume will reappear throughout my place writings. The snippets were collected from old newspapers in the '80s and arranged in this book; when I worked for the local newspaper I wrote a column called "A Leaf Turned Back" which focused on similar newspaper writings.