Clean Your Lake In Your Canoe
In the morning after the fireworks, my grandfather paddled around the lake in a canoe by himself. He circumnavigated the water’s edge despite its deadfall and vegetative encroachment, cutting cobwebs and scattering the sunfish from the shadows. I imagine he did every maneuver possible to avoid stepping out of the canoe, though in some places wading might have been easier. Exiting a canoe is awkward for anyone but nigh unimaginable for an octogenarian with an artificial hip and precise paddling capabilities. From his seat in the stern, he reached the darkest crannies of the shoreline, breaking branches with his oar, an extension of his arm, reaching back to get every morsel of debris.
Sometimes, when our school and familial schedules aligned, my grandfather was in his canoe on the 5th of July. The night before, we would have descended to the lake at dusk and watched our dads and uncles floating a couple hundred feet off the end of the dock, sparking an array of fireworks on a spot-scorched piece of plywood from the front deck of the pontoon boat. They were one of a dozen or so boats doing the same thing around the lake, private pyrotechnics all booming in concert. Sometimes, we weren’t there on Independence Day exactly and so we’d set off our Blackcats and Bottle Rockets later in July. The date didn’t matter much; we wanted a show and the same stands sold fireworks all summer.
No matter our timing, my grandfather was in the canoe the next morning. He never watched the fireworks, retreating to bed after dinner and a glass of chardonnay, we grandchildren streaming in the opposite direction. He'd have preferred not to have the show at all, I suspect, though I never heard him try to dissuade us. Instead, he let us have our joy and then he cleaned up after.
I know now that fireworks disrupt the migration of birds and startle moths and other pollinators from their flitting purpose. Fireworks send dogs huddling into bathtubs or berserking off the porch, rocketing across the dark with a whimper. Humans, too, can be triggered by the noise. One's celebration explodes another’s peace.
Regardless the loons that dove beneath the lake’s surface and the swamp frogs that ceased their song, my grandfather’s main complaint was the garbage. His excursions in the canoe sought to pick up as much of it as he could. He would return to the beach with a pile of damply stinking cardboard at his feet, unloading it into a trash bag without complaint or blame. I never joined him on these missions though I wish now that I had. I’ve thought of him on many January 1sts when I have taken my first turns of the year over firework shells groomed into the snow. I’ve dislodged the big bits with my ski pole and gotten soot on my gloves. The rest melts out in spring.
This summer, and for the last several past, my grandfather's not here to clean up after us. He’d be glad to know that we’re making smaller messes and fewer of them. We’re more concerned with resiliency and respect than sparkler shows. We’re seeking what’s important and impacting that which we can. But despite our tidying, the mess around us grows.
June brought a heart-wrenching week of Supreme Court decisions, an assemblage of policy that will distribute harm unequally across our nation, narrowing choices for many while increasing permissions for a powerful few. The Court expanded state authority in some cases and metered it in others, it diminished rights and privacy for the individual one day and impinged on tribal sovereignty the next.
I have always been taught that I am a participant in democracy. By voting and engaging with my elected leaders, by virtue of my citizenship, I am part of a system that might serve and care for all. Such decisions from the Supreme Court, an appointed body of increasingly demagogic stature, makes us rightfully question what, if anything, we as individuals can do. Calls from leadership asking for our donations and our vote are tone-deaf and disingenuous. Democracy is not meant to be a full-time job for every citizen; we elect these leaders so they will take action on our behalf. Amid a great constriction of our options, we must make hard decisions about what we wish to do.
First, I say, clean your lake in your canoe.
The debris from these decisions will be widespread and toxic. It will fall, smoldering, into the dark corners of each our ponds. When it splashes down in our waters, we will need to choose:
We could leave it where it lands. We could pretend that we didn’t see its bright trail in the sky, that we didn’t feel the mix of awe and horror at its exploding, that we didn’t reach for a camera, a loved one, that we didn’t wonder if it was real. We could leave the shells of these decisions, the fragments of our rights, to collect on the shoreline, to become bits of bird nests and decaying habitat for worms. We can, if we choose to, keep our eyes on the sky or on our screens, awaiting the next great hailstorm of defeat. We can hope it won’t be fatal. Or we can learn to paddle a canoe solo, trace the lake’s edge, and dispose of the harm we see.
It’s easy to instruct in metaphor. I suspect my work is weaker without concrete actions and how-tos. I should tell you how I’m running for public office, where I am sending my monthly donations, which waterways in particular are choked with waste. I should tell you to take these few easy steps to shore up our systems which will protect choice and environment and democracy. And I would do so if I knew each of your lakes as my grandfather knew ours but I don’t. You must get in your own boat and trudge through the weeds.
There is no one as brave as those whose response to an explosion is immediate, unthinking restoration. All that which is well-tended can be defended. There’s nothing so radical as care for each other. Each of us—grandfather, swamp, and sparking fuse—are part of the whole. Feeling helpless? Find your paddle. Any small action makes a measure of control. It's up to us to use it.
