Sweet Water

Susan Brind Morrow wrote a piece in the NYTimes on August 31 - a fine little essay about her childhood summers on Lake Ontario. She broadens her thinking to include all of the area around the Great Lakes, saying, "Beyond Chicago and Buffalo and Detroit, this territory of the great freshwater reserves of the world is for the most part unsettled, and unsought, like a secret treasure long ago forgotten."

Sitting in the Bayliss Public Library in Sault Ste. Marie, I wonder if the residents of these small towns and communities feel like their towns are unsettled and unsought? My guess is their answers would show different POV on the subject. Some people are here because the area is "unsought" and others see the ebb and flow of tourists and other seasonal residents as an important part of how the areas define themselves. Either way - the treasure part is absolutely right.

She goes on to write about the history of the lakes, finishes with a question and then poses an answer: "Why is it necessary - all this diversity - why do you need it at this point in the evolution of life on earth?"

How she answers the question is a a long sentence - but almost a prayer - and certainly something that I feel everyday that I spend in proximity to the Lakes - from the smallest hamlet to the largest metropolis.

"The lakes and everything affected by them, the heavy blanketing of winter snow, the following slow thaw and mild growing season in a pervasively moist atmosphere, seem integrally involved in what becomes now at the end of summer, the production of all of the delightful and delicious things of this world: from the fish and the fruit to the vast migrations of breeding water birds to the bees that pollinate the vineyards and the orchards - their eerily acute sense of geometry and time translating into sweetness as it insistently flows forth throughout nature in this familiar yet rare landscape formed not long ago by huge bodies of sudden deep blue water, freshwater, the one thing needed to sustain, in all its wildness and diversity, life on this earth."

Morrow is the author of "Wolves and Honey: A Hidden History of the Natural World." The entire article is linked through the post title - and well worth the time it will take you to sign up for the free NYTimes subscription.....