The Bullhead Queen: A Year on Pioneer Lake

Preface

L ooking through my window past a fringe of green leaves, I can see Pioneer Lake sparkling in the morning sun. It is cool at the end of August, and the little lake is giving up its summer heat in wisps of fog curling from its surface. The patch of woods lining our shoreline is quiet, although I know that if I were to go looking, I would find small, nondescript birds skulking through the branches, birds that are already on migration. Preface vii Wild cherry and sumac, nonnative buckthorn and honeysuckle , dying elms and thriving ash trees all line the sloping path to the lake. It is a mixed forest with species from both its natural past and its human habitation. On the northern end of the lake is a densely vegetated alder thicket arising from a substrate that is neither water nor soil, so it remains undisturbed by people. Here is the lake’s last wild refuge, where one can find violet fleur-de-lis and dusty pink joe-pye weed, rosy swamp milkweed and spotted touch-me-not. Small birds nest in the brush of the alders and muskrats penetrate the watery interior. On the southern shore, the imposing profile of Chisago Lake Lutheran Church dominates the horizon. Constructed of distinctive yellow brick by immigrant Swedes, and studded with bejeweled stained glass windows, the structure is of classic proportions, a landmark in Chisago County that draws admirers to its hand-carved interior from as far away as Europe. The immigrant Swedes were not the first people on the lake, of course, but they are the pioneers that the name commemorates . The small, shallow body of water was a cattail bay of North Center Lake when the Swedes arrived in 1854. It was isolated from North Center and the other large Chisago Lakes—which the native Ojibwe referred to as one entity, “Kitchi-saga”—decades before my time here. A causeway was constructed that blocked its flow and dammed the bay, causing the water to pool. The lake that formed is seventyseven acres, about the same size as another literary body of water, Walden Pond. Both are glacial in origin, and neither is an isolated, wilderness lake. Each is adjacent to human settlement, and each bears the mark of people. But there the similarity ends. Where Walden Pond is deep and clear, Pioneer Lake is at most eight feet and not crystalline. Henry David Thoreau caught pike and pickerel on Walden; we catch only brown, slippery bullheads. Pioneer is, in truth, a bullhead queen, where the smooth, bewhiskered bottom feeders dwell in abundance. However, despite the heavy hand of human beings that has changed Pioneer’s nature, the little lake still exudes the unfettered exuberance of life. At certain times of the year, when the wind is up and sunlight glints off its surface, it appears wild, a northern lake. Wood ducks and Canada geese nest in its secret places, otters and red fox make use of hidden spaces. Migrating waterfowl rest on its waters, refueling on the bullheads that swim beneath. In my thirteen years spent living on Pioneer, I have come to see how both north and south shores influence my life. I am formally trained to see what inhabits the alder thicket. Attracted by a magnetism that seems to pulse in my veins, I viii Preface peer at its colorful, intricate denizens through my binoculars. I cannot resist their allure. But even as I stare into the tangle of branches and leaves, I am acutely aware of what lies to my back, the substantial structure of the church, and the theology of my childhood that so colors my relationship to nature. Are the residents of the alder thicket truly my brothers and sisters? What is my responsibility toward them? How far can I enter their world? What must I do to protect it? I am a habitué of both the north and the south, and as such I mark the passage of time in two ways. I witness the turn of nature’s seasons, the budding of trees, the leaves and the flowers, the loss of the chlorophyll, the dormant twigs. Spring, summer, fall, winter, the breathing in and breathing out of the natural year. At the same time, I observe the rotation of the church year, with its movement from Advent to Christmas to Lent, periods of celebration alternating with somber reflection...