The Muse of Lake Michigan

So here I am, standing on a jagged-edge shore of the icy waters of Lake Michigan, braving biting winds and freezing rain, trying to figure out how in the hell my Native ancestors could have ever been inspired to come up with a good lodge story by this sea of empty.

The calendar says it is May, but the Earth tells me it is still February up here, near the tip of the Wisconsin’s Door County Peninsula. I reluctantly agreed to tag along with my friends, Karen, who is Ho-Chunk Indian and Diane, who is a first generation Chinese American. Door County has never been on my lists of places to visit in this state. It’s a tourist trap for those who love buying blue cow and pink pig refrigerator magnets, for those who love fishing, smelling, touching fish and eating fish.

I hate fish. And I think that’s part of my problem.

Between posing for digital photos, taking turns clicking images of ourselves, I light up a smoke and stare into the redundancy of waves. The woodland Indians around here used to ride birch bark canoes into these great seas. They used to get right in the face of these waters. They had to be one with the waters. They had to learn the rhythm of the great sea’s moving, tumbling over itself if they wanted to eat.

I take another drag of my cigarette and squint as if I might see something in the waves – something I may have missed when my friends and I first stood on these shores this morning, something I may have missed all of my life.

But damn, it’s cold up here. If it takes patience to earn the gift of story from the Earth and her elements then I won’t be writing tonight. If it takes swimming into the belly of frigid seas, if it takes learning to eat fish to get inspired to write from a place outside of myself then for now, I’ll just have to continue to rely on my usual writing muse – a pack of Pall Malls.