Walleye, Blueberries, and Chanterelles: Please Let This Not Be an Elegy

Back to the cabin with a walleye, bass, maybe a “northern”; buckets of wild blueberries cool in the shade; neon-orange fans of chanterelle mushrooms, dusted of pine needles and moss, lie ready for a hot pan swimming with butter. An ordinary summer morning. Childhood, and yes, I did know how lucky I was, how tenuous this potentially permanent dynamic of life – delicious and beautiful – was in the face of human greed. I loved the wild, so loved that place, its lake connected (in the way of natural things) to our nation’s public lands, water having no regard for human boundaries.

I’d seen the push-and-pull of human nature, the inclinations to wisdom and the inclinations to ignorance and greed. I had nightmares of humans paving the pine-studded islands; of fleets of gas-spewing boats trolling the waterways; no darkness, no quiet, no peace.

And here we are.

Good people had worked hard for years to secure protections on public lands that serve us all. Yet the greed of a money-powerful political elite blew them away in moments thanks to the complicity of Congressional Republicans (not a single Democrat). Yes, I’m getting political here. That’s because it’s about the polis, about “the people” and governance. And how it’s gone off the rails. Most recently as regards the unparalleled Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) (the nation’s most visited wilderness), and all public lands.

But it’s about food, too, of course. And the wild spaces and beings that feed us. It’s about manners. It’s about proper etiquette, the goal of which the grand dame of etiquette, Emily Post noted is about putting people at ease, imperatives that make living together – all of us, human and more-than-human alike – possible, for each of us to feel good. The worst breech of etiquette in our country these days, Judith Martin (a.k.a. Miss Manners) opined is “blatant greed.” I couldn’t agree more. And the real kicker is that it’s bad for the “winners,” too. They just don’t see it that way. Yet.

I grew up in the far north of the United States, at the tip – the wolf’s nose – of Lake Superior. When summer came, my family went even farther north. On a tiny island in a wilderness of interconnected lakes and rivers, we spent long weekends and more. No running water, no electricity; but a “permanent tent” as I think of the plywood cabin, with a tiny propane-powered range that my parents bought in the 60’s at a yard sale. It still works. At night, northern lights drew us onto the broad rocks, never blasé, never old, ancient as they are. Diving, heart-pounding into the ink-black water to swim up the path of the moon.

Now imagine with me all of it poisoned – mercury is the least of it. The tea-colored tannic lakes of the cleanest water on the planet rendered a soup of mineral tailings in garish colors. The deafening slam of rock-busting machinery grabbing huge swaths of land only a fraction of which run with bits of not-even-yet-copper. The glare of constant work light in what is now a “dark sky” region, and toxic dust rising and settling wherever the wind will.

The science is clear, the wisdoms well-earned, and so widely known and accepted as finally to impose a ban on mining in the area. You can read it all in tomes of detail publicly available as it has been for years: Do not mine this area. Not sulfide-ore copper mining with its 100% failure rate of containment. Not in this place where waters run into waters run into waters and all of it fresh and the cleanest on Earth. Not now. Not ever.

Yet here we are.

In an unprecedented and terribly dangerous abuse of the Congressional Review Act, a few greedy individuals (the congressman from that region of northern Minnesota, in concert with interests from the Chilean mining company and Trump family cravings) have gotten members of their Republican political party to vote to dismantle those protections. They won. Up next: any public land in the United States presently benefiting from such protections against extraction. Up next: Grand-Stairway-Escalante “the crown jewel of the nation’s public lands system.” Up next: Chaco Canyon (UNESCO World Heritage Site). Up next: fill in the blank with any national treasure of a place that you might even know personally.

All these places ask is it leave them alone. But no. There’s money to made, people, money for the wealthy, the powerful few. Manners be damned.

A Recipe

This is a recipe for a summer morning Up North. Please let it not be an elegy.

Rise before dawn to your dad whispering, “Shall we go?” Grab the poles, the tackle box, and net from their spots in the “necessary room” behind the stove. Ease the “duck boat” with its stubby oars and wooden bench seats into the water. “I’ll row,” I offer. Under a lightening sky, speak seldom, and only to decide where to cast, to troll. Row easy, no faster than a fish might swim. “I’ve got one!” bends the pole. The other readies the net, scoops the fish. Thread to the stringer. Another, and we head back. Sun crests the tall pines and paints the undersides of here-and-there clouds. Pull the boat up. Dash ahead, quiet now into the cabin – your mother and sisters are still sleeping – grab the “fish knife” and the clean battered rectangle of an aluminum pan. Out again, grab a scrap of lumber from under the deck and meet your dad on the rocks by the shore. “I want to try,” you say, and he talks you through: first to kill swiftly, no more suffering, definitively severing the spine at the base of its head. This being, so strong and beautiful. It’s a sober thing. Lay your hand gently over the body as it stills. Make sure the fish is dead before gutting. Fillet in a clean stroke down the backbone, steady on through the flesh at the tail. Toss the “waste” back into the lake. Crayfish and snapping turtles will make swift work of the rest. Crouching on the rocks, rinse the board and the firm, translucent fillets. They smell barely of fish. Back to the cabin, start the coffee. Scoop some of the dry mix Mom prepared ahead – flours, dry milk, baking powder, and salt – into the big speckled bowl. Add a few eggs, water, and oil. Stir in as many blueberries as you think the batter can take. Start a skillet heating, start a pan heating, add oil, add butter. On the skillet, flip pancakes, one batch after another piled on another battered aluminum plate. In the pan, fry the mushrooms in butter and scoot to the side. Fry the fish – barely and only until the fillets turn opaque. Lay it all out on the table your dad made, your mom and sisters have set. Someone got the maple syrup. Someone starts another pot of coffee.

Please let this not be an elegy.