Stories in the water

of a big spring

Welcome to all the new subscribers who I met at the Gammelgården this past weekend!  And no matter how long you’ve been reading Ordinary Collisions, I appreciate your presence and look forward to staying connected. 

A couple weeks ago we returned home from a week in Michigan’s upper peninsula, a spot of special significance to my husband’s family, a place where transplanted, yet deep roots tie those who emigrated there a few generations ago to those in the Barr bloodline who are alive today. It’s a place where the water touches the sky and waves lap the shore, and it’s a place where a deep spring gushes at the bottom of a 40 foot pool of crystal clear yet emerald green water, which is what I’ve been thinking about today.

This spring holds stories in the depths – stories of those who walked the land long before settlers made a raft to float out to its middle, before the Michigan DNR took control, before lines of tourists (us included, though my husband recalls times in his childhood when they would visit and be the only ones there) stood waiting for a chance to stand on that raft to float out and back across the pool. It’s a place where memories bubble up and phone cameras try to capture them but can’t quite do it, a place where stories of its history are continually told through the lens of colonization. It’s a place that I’d likely never have seen had those stories not been told through that lens.  It’s a place that holds otherworldly beauty but also a dissonance, one to allow to be there, and one to listen to despite the discomfort that gushes up like the springs when you start to listen for the full history of the land.  

I can hear the whispers of the people who were here long before those of us who walk this land now and the hum of the creature and plant life that abounds. It’s as if my own breathing mixes with the breath of those who walked or ran on this land generations ago. I sense my animal kin breathing alongside me. I can hear the story of the land humming. I can feel the call to reconciliation and the need for reparations. I can sense the part of me that originates in Gaia, Mother Earth, herself. —Collisions of Earth and Sky, Listening to the Land

This place is “Big Spring” or Kitch-iti-kipi, which means “Mirror of Heaven” in Ojibwe. It’s Michigan’s largest freshwater spring, located in the boundaries of a state park. The water stays at 45 degrees all the time, with the springs continually pumping 10,000 gallons a minute through fissures in limestone into the pool which drains via a small tributary into a nearby much larger lake. Most of the literature I’ve read about the area says that there are many Native American legends associated with the spring, though most sources also say the man who facilitated the purchase of the land in the mid 1920s¹ made many of them up to attract visitors.  At the state park, I didn’t find any information about the indigenous history of the surrounding land–at the info kiosks the history starts in 1926 which is when the state of Michigan acquired the deed. I haven’t yet been able to locate a good source of information to learn what the significance of this land is to the Native groups who were there before the UP was colonized in the early 1800s. 

(Presently, the federal government recognizes five Native American communities in the Upper Peninsula, which are the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians; the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians; the Hannahville Indian Community of Potawatomi Indians; the Bay Mills Indian Community of Anishinaabe Indians; and the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. We drove through a lot of Hannahville land enroute to our destination – The people of Hannahville are descendents of folks who refused to leave Michigan in 1834 during the years after the Indian Removal Act was signed by Andrew Jackson in 1830. Many of these people returned to the UP in the 1850s after some time living in Wisconsin.²)

So anyway, while I haven’t gotten as far as I’d like in my research, in my very recent investigations (i.e. today), I discovered a book that came out in 2020 by Carole Lynn Hare, who is a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe, called The Legend of Kitch-iti-kipi.  It’s inspired by the oral stories that were passed down in her family and discovered in her grandmother’s diary, so I’m excited to read and learn more about what the actual legend is. I’ll also need to keep digging for more stories about the Anisinaabe and Odawa history of the UP.

What history do you need to dig up right now? 

When we open to the true story of the land, there is no going back to pretending we didn’t hear what the land tells us when we truly listen. We can start to connect our own story to that of the land we’re on and ensure we are taking strides to decolonize our actions, honor the land’s energy, and add the healing necessary for our collective thriving. —Collisions of Earth and Sky, Listening to the Land

Here’s to listening more closely to the land, and discovering what bubbles up when you do. That excavation often brings with it a full spectrum of feeling, and it’s something to do more often.  Because truth isn’t always easy to hear, but learning to feel feelings fully offers a foundation from which to navigate the dissonance. 

Digging for the truth often includes a more mountainous, steeper climb than we feel ready for. The dust that gets churned up as we excavate doesn’t always settle where we’d like it to. But the time to go there is now. The weary world wants to rejoice, and the only way we’ll get to that place together is if we dig for the truth, starting with ourselves. —Collisions of Earth and Sky, Digging for the Truth

Thompson Beach, Thompson, Michigan

Spectrum

Emerson said

the earth laughs 

in flowers and while 

I think that’s true, 

I think the earth 

also grieves and rages

remembers and sings

a full spectrum of feeling

gushing along with the joy 

of her bloom

through rooting and reaching 

budding and blossoming 

letting go and fading

waters churning and settling

stories old 

stories new 

stories remembered 

bubbling up through stone

seeping into the horizon. 

1. John I. Bellaire talked the Palms Book Land Company into selling the spring and 90 acres to the state of Michigan for $10. The property deed requires the property "to be forever used as a public park, bearing the name Palms Book State Park. The state eventually acquired a bit more land bringing the park acreage to 300 acres today.

2. If you’d like to support to some of the behavioral health initiatives going on in the community, you can learn more at Hope4Hannaville.