The Flood

An essay, a watershed musing, and an update

Most of my writing the last few weeks has been laying the ground work for a book I am hoping to write, but I wanted to share this essay, The Flood. It was part of the University of Minnesota’s Project for Advancing Healthcare Stewardship Newsletter. The essay weaves together the social, physical, and spiritual adversity of my experience during COVID. Perhaps, you will find some resonance with your own, or perhaps yours was totally different.

Speaking of floods, watersheds have been on my mind recently. For those of you local to the Twin Cities, I have a real artwork in a real gallery, in The Water Where We Live exhibition. I have also been reading Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, which got me thinking about elk. From that, this brief musing was born.

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I live in this Willow River watershed, home to Willow Falls. Though far fewer people come to see her, the most spectacular time to visit is late winter, after two or three cold spells where the days don’t get above zero. After that, Willow Falls is a rather timid waterfall, flowing through an ice castle. Turrets built of ice stalactites, full of sparkle, even on cloudy days, static and constantly shifting. A little downstream, a tiny spring emerges from a rock, flowing freely even on the coldest days I visit, cloaked in green moss. A little further downstream, thirty robins weave their working, dancing, and singing together. I’m surprised to find them here, they aren’t supposed to be back until early April.

Two springs ago, I attended a Dakota event at Fort Snelling, also known as B’dote, the place where the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers meet, a place that is sacred because it was the site of creation. Inside the fort there was a map, it showed the names of many places, including Willow River, in the Dakota language. A man explained to me that that word meant dead elk, so Dead Elk River. I had never known that elk had lived in Wisconsin. Until last week, I didn’t think about why this particular river would be called Dead Elk River, that of course this ice castle could sweep an elk off his feet when she reverted to her liquid form. Three years ago, a huge storm blew through, it blew the roof off the shelter at the beach and into the windows of the library. Nine inches of rain fell that night.

There aren’t words to describe the power and churn of the river the next morning, the torrent, the wall of water, the solidity of the liquid that kept pouring forth. She surely would have killed any creature who could not fly away or breathe underwater. Aldo Leopold tells me that the last native Wisconsin elk died in 1866. What does it mean to the river that elk are no longer pulled through that rocky churn? What does it mean to be a person who doesn’t know the name Dead Elk River? What does it mean to be a person who never knew there were elk living here to die?

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In other news, I was recently initiated into a style of West African divination from the Dagara people. Divination is a way to consult with ancestors, elements, and spirits of the wild for guidance on the questions in your life. I am offering divinations on a “pay what you can” basis. They can be done in person or via Zoom. If you’d like to learn more, you can do so here.