Where's the K in Grateful?
We were two strong, happy women, both named Rebecca, beginning a challenging seven-day canoe trip. Kawishiwi, an Anishinaabeg word, is translated as “River Full of Beaver Houses.” I’ve been told there is another meaning that is closer to “a place where the spirits laugh.” When my first step into the river let me know my old Muk boots leaked, I remembered the second meaning. I’d chosen to wear these boots because they were the Arctic version—with fleece lining to keep my feet warm. The bottoms were rubber and the tops neoprene. What I didn’t realize was that neoprene ages poorly. My favorite winter boots were twelve years old and had been worn hard. Our seven-day canoe trip was in the first week of May. While most of the ice had melted a few weeks before, night time temps were still dropping below freezing. I wasn’t plunging through ice with each step, but it felt like wading in ice water.
My late husband, Mike, blamed Tepio, Finnish god of the woods, whenever things went wrong. He credited Tepio with a wry sense of humor. Perhaps the Kawishiwi River Spirit shared the same sense of humor. And when a predicament makes the gods laugh, we laugh too. Grudgingly at first, but later, the trouble adds smiles to the story.
At our first campsite, Rebecca tried her best to re-seal my boots with an art sealant and flowery duct tape. But the upper half of the boots were now water-logged old neoprene. Luckily, she carried extra plastic grocery bags which she was using as insulation in her unlined rubber boots. The bags didn’t keep my feet completely dry but they did trap my body’s heat in. In other words, I had warmish wet feet the rest of the trip. The linings I’d coveted weren’t removable. Rather than gathering warmth they sucked up water. And so, I carried the Kawishiwi River along with me, too. Beautiful water crashing along between sharp rock or rolling quietly in wide spaces carried the sweet smell of life and movement. But trapped in my boots with sweaty feet, wool socks, and plastic bags, its aroma rivaled a well-used outhouse in July.
The route we’d set for ourselves was ambitious. Our first three nights fell below freezing. Heavily laden with a cast-iron Dutch oven, layers of clothing, pre-cooked food, and cold weather gear, we made three trips across each portage. A fall under heavy loads could break a limb. Rivers were still swollen with snow melt. A capsized canoe could be life threatening. In the wilderness, we knew help wasn’t close and wasn’t likely to be swift. But at rest beside churning rivers or grand expanses of island studded lakes, what did we talk about? Our granddaughters: ages three years, two years, and an infant of one month. We told the stories of their births, marveled at our toddlers’ interpretations of life, dreamed aloud about bringing them along with us some day.
In northeastern Minnesota, outside and in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the Kawishiwi Rivers weave the land together. Dubbed North, South, and just plain Kawishiwi, like roots and families, where one ends or blends into another is hard to say. On our maps, on the other side of a series of lakes, just when we thought we’d left it behind, there was the Kawishiwi River again. Like roots and families, it gathers both nutrients and detritus along its length and spills them forward.
Day 4 was a hard day. We paddled through beauty. The waters held so many stories from my late husband, Mike, who worked the area on portage crew for the Forest Service. He survived the 1999 blowdown on one of the portages. He was gone before the Pagami Creek Fire, but I served as an Information Officer for it. We paddled past a place where co-workers had deployed fire shelters. The burned area sprouted with regrowth and memories.
That day we crossed a continental divide, from waters flowing north to Hudson Bay over to waters flowing east in the Great Lakes basin. Did the Kawishiwi River make a sucking sound at our boots as we left it? The land tilted and even short portages made leg muscles burn. I was spent both physically and emotionally when we landed in a small lake. The first campsite we saw was high-- its sharp cliffs lit by late sunlight. The site was three stories up of a promontory that was twelve stories high. I said I’d never make it up there. But we paddled around to the other two sites and both were low and dark. Rebecca coaxed me to stay at the high one by promising to carry all the gear up to the site. I wouldn’t let her do that of course, but it told me how much she wanted that site. We landed on a narrow ledge, barely wide enough for our canoe. Climbing up with our forty-pound packs, we had to use our hands as well as our feet. Rebecca carried the worst load up first. I followed with another pack. The trail was narrow. Despite the warmth of sunlight and exertion, I felt chilled. Looking to the back, cedars cast deep shadows around a tumble of boulders, some creating caves and tunnels at the base of another cliff. A dark stand of water, a spring, lay beneath a grotto of stone.
Heights don’t scare me, but I avoid high rock sites because of lightning. There was no lightning in the forecast. Still, something in the dark recesses bothered me. It felt like a spirit heavy with grief. My fear lasted only a few moments, but later Rebecca told me my trepidation was obvious.
Rebecca built a fire while I pitched our tent. She filled the Dutch Oven with roast beef and rice, then buried it in the coals. She’d precooked the meal, so before long we enjoyed a long-light evening on full stomachs. I’d never before eaten so well on a canoe trip. But as we laid down to sleep, I said we needed a bear plan. We’d hung our food at the back of the site. “If a bear comes and we get out to chase it, we need to stay together, otherwise we might accidentally chase each other off the ledge.” I didn’t include my fear of a mountain lion’s den among the caves. And my deeper fear, of a grieving spirit, was too ephemeral to name.
And in the end, we both slept well. The sleep of the just? Maybe we were a tad more respectful and quieter, than the typical group of Boy Scouts. We are both widows so grief isn’t unknown to us, but we had no cause to be sanctimonious. Just tired and comfortable, perhaps. In my dreams, Tepio and the River Spirit threw their arms across each other’s shoulders. They held each other up as they laughed, watching me tap dance across a rock-studded, root-woven portage in soggy, stinky boots.
The next morning, I freshened my wool socks and other laundry with a cold water beating. Hanging them on cedar branches to dry, a roar startled me. Did a float plane drop down into this little lake? Rebecca was out on the cliff edge. “Wow! Did you see that?” In only a few steps I was beside her.
“No, but I heard it. What was it?”
“A waterspout! A big one!” The wind witch, having dropped her water dress, spun in front of us. We grabbed packs and tossed them into the tent to weigh it down, then prepared to crawl into it ourselves. But the witch, like a teasing auntie, ruffled our hair and the newly sprung birch leaves across the narrows, then smoothed the lake’s surface before she became invisible again.
Rebecca said the spout sprung suddenly, an instant tornado of water and wind, three canoe lengths wide at the base and taller than the sixty-year-old jackpine on the shore behind it. We felt chilled, imagining ourselves in our canoe in the vortex. Grateful we hadn’t been.
Until the spout, we’d treated the day as a layover, eating a leisurely breakfast, doing laundry, leaving the tent set up and our gear unpacked, planning writing and drawing time. But the sunny day—the warmest we had so far—was suddenly suspect. We pulled out our maps and counted portages and paddle miles. Nope. We couldn’t stay without leaving ourselves unrealistically long days ahead.
Some of our packs were cinched closed when I thought of it. Kinnic kinnic is tea in Anishinaabeg. I’m not Anishinaabeg, can’t even claim a Cherokee grandmother. Indigenous ceremonies of gratitude I experienced involved tobacco, but we didn’t carry any and it’s not part of my heritage. Tea is something I cherish. My practice of gratitude when I tapped maple trees for syrup was to sprinkle my favorite tea at the base of each tree with words of thanks for the sap the tree would share, the tree itself, sunlight, rain, and wind. My tea bags were somewhere in the food pack. Rebecca pulled out some of her favorite loose tea. We sprinkled some at the cliff’s edge and said simple thank yous.
Somewhere I read that the purpose of prayer isn’t to change God’s plans but to change the nature of the one who prays. Naming gifts that flow freely through my life, saying thanks, and letting go of something cherished, calms my mind, changes my heart, and clears my soul.
I know I’ve found the right ‘offering’ if I hesitate when deciding how much to leave. When my greed says ‘Don’t leave too much’ and my ego says, ‘Make a grand gesture. Dump it all!’
On this trip, we had said ‘thank you’ aloud for charming camp sites, no rain, new leaves popping, portages beside water crashing over rock, our deepening friendship, dry wool socks, plastic bags for boot liners, thoughts of our granddaughters, and unexpected cellphone connection with our children. We’d cleared a few portages of winter pull down. Our trash bag was filling with garbage we collected. But until the water spout inspired us, we hadn’t done a ceremony, hadn’t consciously left a gift of ourselves.
Afterward, we carried our belongings along the narrow ledge and down the steep trail to the tiny landing. When our canoe was loaded and we rode the water’s surface again, we studied the steep sides of the T-shaped lake and imagined a hot, dry wind spilling into three narrow canyons above the winter-chilled lake. No wonder it spun itself wild with water. But we didn’t paddle with fear of being caught up in another water spout. Our hearts were steeped in the kinnic kinnic of gratitude.
Today I offer prayer and sprinklings of my favorite tea for: the Anishinaabeg who share a practice of gratitude, this land, and words like Kawishiwi and kinnic kinnic with so many. For Rebecca who shared her journey, herself, and her resources with me. For Kawishiwi Rivers, their beavers, and their spirits, wherever they flow. And for our granddaughters, Lila, Ailish, and Sive—may they experience wet boots, friendship, and water spouts on their own river travels. Maybe, they’ll even bring us along on a few.
photo from author’s collection
