Pukaskwa

They say the wind screams here in the winter and the First People thus named it Old Woman Bay. It's lovely and remote, 200 miles north into Canada along Hwy 17 on Lake Superior. We used to go here every 2 or 3 years and stayed in old campgrounds or cabins that no longer exist. 

There are many walking trails one can take; my favorite leads straight up, looking down at the lake and the river that leads into it. There are deer and black bear but they are shy and I only saw evidence of their scats. 

Delicate lady slipper orchids are common and remind me of a story I read as a child of a fairy-type being, she had a hickory nut as a head, and she tied these flowers on for shoes. One day a squirrel ate her head and she, being an apple twig, found a nook in an old tree and gave it new growth.

It's a relatively easy 3 miles through dense pine forest with ferns and mossy rocks. Little squirrels would squawk at me from the trees and when I stopped I could at first hear nothing, not even the big logging trucks on the Trans-Can. If I kept silent I could hear insects buzzing, rustles in the undergrowth, tiny streams trickling and, occasionally, something bigger. The sense of peace was so complete I did not feel afraid.

After about 3 miles I would come to an ancient river bed, lined with stones. Here the Ojibwa people dug shallow pits in the dry bed and replaced the stones. They are called pukaskwas. These are about 1-2 thousand years old and are sacred places, places to sit and meditate, to go on vision quests. With reverence I removed my backpack and camera and carefully sat in one.

There are two versions to what happened next. In one version I was quickly beset by swarms of mosquitos as big as sparrows and my tender backside was gouged by the hard rocks and stones. I jumped up, slathered more bug spray on, and galloped back down the trail. Actually that is the true version of my first experience.

But the second time I was more ready. More open. A friendly breeze kept the bugs off me and the stones seemed to cushion rather than poke me. After awhile I was just there. There was no me that was separate from the forest, the sun, the lake. I breathed without realizing it. I was liquid. I was in the most profound peace I have ever experienced. I might never have left.

I know what distracted me and brought me out of my trance; it was seeing a piece of plastic left behind by a careless hiker. I was annoyed at that and it broke the spell. I got up and left. I did not have a vision or any great insight. I did not see my future. I just went somewhere else in those moments. But it was good. And I carried the plastic out.

This sort of experience has happened to me a very few times, the last being one time in Florida a year or two ago. I should practice meditation more often; I do sometimes but not on a regular basis. It's not the place that matters, it is the openness.

But still, it was a beautiful place. 

Movie review: Lincoln

The joke is that Lincoln didn't do well in theaters...

A friend of mine has as part of his profile that he stayed awake in class. By and large, I spent my time doodling or writing notes to my friends.  So I found suspense in this movie where there should not have been. I thought Lincoln freed the slaves in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation. But as he and everyone else knew (except me) this was a largely symbolic gesture and had little, if any, effect on the slaves being held in the "nation" of the Confederacy. 

Lincoln is a movie on several levels. It is the story of the 13th Amendment which did free the slaves in 1865 and it is also the story of Lincoln, the man, husband, father, national icon and master manipulator. And on a third level it is also the story of how white America regarded black America with implications for how race relations might be today.

To get the usual stuff out of the way, the acting was great, the direction great (with one exception I will get to), the writing fabulous.  Daniel Day-Lewis portrays a Lincoln beset by two goals: to end the bloody Civil war and to end slavery. The South has sent emissaries to sue for peace, but they want to keep their slaves.

Pushing for an end to slavery will prolong a war no one wants. Pushing for an end to the war will leave black Americans in slavery. Accomplishing both goals: an end to the war and an end to slavery will take an amendment to the Constitution, and to get this amendment through Congress will take negotiating, manipulating, horse-trading, and politicking on a grand and inglorious, even criminal, level.  The players in this fascinating drama, particularly Day-Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones, Hal Holbrook and James Spader, give bright sharp performances, finely nuanced, of real people struggling with complex issues and strong passions.

As well as family life. The thread of Lincoln the family man, with a loyal but over-wrought wife and 2 sons, is nicely woven through the political intrigues. As a father, Lincoln is stern, tender, autocratic, indulgent. The scenes of him waiting with his young son Tad for the result of the congressional vote on the amendment are among the movies most poignant. And of course, for me, who didn't know how the vote turned out, suspenseful.

So we all know how the war ends, how Lincoln meets his end, the triumph and tragedy of that era in US history.  My one quibble with Steven Spielberg, the director, is that he throws in a couple of sentimental scenes that are not needed and that detract from the ultimate true character of the man. Yes, he was noble, but he was also Blagojevichian. That's what makes him, and the movie, interesting.

There is another subtle theme woven through the movie. It is made clear that, except for the black Union soldiers, the war was not fought to free the slaves. The Republicans (republic-ans) were fighting for the Union, for the United States of America. While many were also Abolitionists, not all were. Many, if not most white Northerners, did not believe in the equality of the races, neither Democrat nor Republican. Racism ran deep and one of the major obstacles Lincoln faced in getting the anti-slavery amendment passed was the fears of white Northerners that, once freed, black Americans would want to vote. "In a hundred years" someone hollers. Knowing the history of the Civil Rights movement of the nineteen sixties, that seems a prophetic statement.

There were more casualties in the three days of fighting at Gettysburg than deaths in Vietnam. More men were killed in the Civil War than in all our other wars combined. This is a movie about a facet of this time and it is well worth seeing.