For Love of Lakes

Seeking Hard Bottom

· · 108 · · Seeking Hard Bottom Thetraveleraskedtheboyiftheswampbeforehimhadahard bottom.Theboyrepliedthatithad.Butpresentlythetraveler’s horsesankinuptothegirths,andheobservedtotheboy,“I thoughtyousaidthatthisboghadahardbottom.”“Soithas,” answeredthelatter,“butyouhavenotgothalfwaytoityet.”... Soitiswiththebogsandquicksandsofsociety;butheisanold boythatknowsit. HENRY DAVID THOREAU An eroded sandy path leads past red pine and scattered aspen down a steep slope to the lake. The trail ends at what one might expect to call the lake’s shore. I choose not to use the word “shore” to avoid creating false impressions . No waves lap sand or stones here, nor bend the stems of rushes, nor ruffle lily pads. A fringe of alder and willow marks the edge where path meets spongy black mud. Open water lies half a football field away. A spongy, wet meadow lies between. Atrailofflattenedsedgeandanirregularstringofsteppingboardsleads from the edge of the alder through hillocks of grasslike sedge to the edge of openwater.Iwalkcarefully,pickingmywayfromboardtoboard,towardthe lake, Geri right behind. Soft squishy mud oozes up the edges of the boards with each step. Many boards lie beneath the oozy black, forcing me to guess where each hides. I take a misstep and my leg sinks to the shin. I understand why few people visit places like this. For them perceptions of such places will be constructed from fleeting views while passing by on roadways. Geri and I have never visited this lake. We have come to investigate its prospects as a place to gather wild rice. · · 109 · · The mud-boards end at a docklike assemblage of weathered slats and plywood held a few inches above open water by posts driven into the muck. A small aluminum fishing boat lies upside down in the sedge clumps to the side. • • • Alongside the dock the lake bottom appears half a foot down, shallow enough that presumably one could wade into the water and load a canoe floating on its surface. I once made such a mistake on a similar lake. My partner and I had paddled to the edge of what looked like a shallow shore. I hopped out of the canoe into the apparent foot-deep water to pull the canoe onto land. I sank instantly to my hips and, descending rapidly into thick black soup, grabbed a sedge clump and wriggled my way out like a waterlogged muskrat. Putting a foot into this stuff is like stepping into a bottomless pile of black down. Limnologists call this dark ooze “gyttja” (yit-ya). Canoeists and duck hunters, who know it as “loon crap” and by other more earthy names, may not realize how appropriate their scatological name is for the stuff. Limnologists describe gyttja as coprogenous, a fancy word for dung, excrement, feces. Gyttja is composed of the decayed remains of plant and animal bodies that have passed through the gut, not only of loons but of untold numbers of other creatures great and small. Bacteria and fungi convert such matter into this soft, black ooze, the keystone in the grand cycle of nutrients and flow of energy on which life in the lake depends. Viewed from the dock, the open water occupies only a modest portion of the lake basin. Not far out, rushes and lily pads emerge out of the black soup. Beyond the lilies, clusters of tannish-green plants with long ribbonlike leaves and robust stems bearing heads reminiscent of grain coalesce in the distance into an unbroken vista of plants. Zizaniaaquatica, wild rice. • • • The receding glacial ice left a poorly drained topography in its wake and millions of acres of shallow, sluggish lakes and ponds, weedy with rice and other plants. Such slowly moving waters are ideal conditions for creating the gyttja in which wild rice thrives. seeking hard bottom lakescapes· · 110 · · Native wild rice once ranged from New England through the Carolinas to Florida, from the Dakotas through Iowa and Nebraska to Louisiana. Indians once found it abundant along the Potomac River and the Delaware River below Philadelphia. But it was in the glacier’s backwaters of southern Manitoba, parts of Ontario and Michigan, and particularly Minnesota and Wisconsin that wild rice grew in large expansive stands to create the “wild rice bowl” of a continent. • • • A thin stand of rice grows close to the dock, and I see dark elongate grains within the seed heads. As rice kernels mature they turn from milky green to dark brown. Many of the kernels have not yet matured. Rice on any given stalk ripens over a number of days. Should we harvest today, gather rice that is mature, then return every few days to complete the harvest? Or should we...