She Demands Your Attention

“that is why i do not eat sturgeon

because i know

when a sturgeon is caught in the rainy river

i am a sturgeon

and i dangle on hooks.”

- kateri akwenzie-damm, Anishinaabe, “sturgeon”

Summers across Ontario always lead to the best, most vivid memories. The cold isn’t biting your ass anymore so there’s what seems like an infinite amount of time to just look and notice what’s near and growing in front of you. If you walk around enough, sometimes you catch yourself thinking you’re a part of it. Thinking that you could sprout and bloom like the buds on spring magnolias, too.

One time, my boyfriend showed me a trick on Google maps and started to zoom in on Ontario to recognize just how much water there really is across the province. It’s magnificent: a network left to us by the glaciers. It’s as if those massive ice giants had us in mind when they slowly dragged their bodies across the land. They saw into the future and said to themselves, “this’ll make a nice drive for some kids on the road someday,” and chuckled to themselves as images of lovebirds parked at a lookout flashed across their eyes as well. And I think about that a lot, as I drive around the bends of the Great Lakes and hear the loons call out to me, as the leaves of the birch, poplar, and willow trees rustle together, as the air that passes through them fills my lungs. Isn’t it funny how the Prime Minister’s melting pot of diversity is most abundantly clear, realized, and diverse in the population of that which precedes and exceeds us?

And I suppose that’s where each story starts and ends. Because that’s how it always was and will be. However, I do have one story of my own that I’d like to share before my time is up. It’s about my friends, but it’s also not about my friends. Actually, I think it might be up to you to decide what it’s about. I’m just the messenger.

Not too long ago, at this beautiful bay about forty minutes past Agawa called Old Woman’s Bay, my friends and I sat together on a piece of driftwood that had bleached from the sun. It was a little wet now that all of us had just braved the water for a little while, only swimming for short stints since the water that comes in from Lake Superior never really warms up. And, in general I think, when you sit next to water that clear, with a bright powder blue sky spattered with Toy Story clouds atop old spruce and cedar trees that line choppy rock formations next to the beach, it’s pretty much impossible, for me at least, to escape the deep sense of overwhelming awe that takes a hold. But I guess I’ve always had a natural affinity for pretty things. Not my friends, though, who always made fun of me for crying at everything. Speaking of my friends, its likely high time that I should give them a more individual introduction.

Like the bay, all of us make up the parts of a whole system. Adriana is our sky, always watching over us. Darius is our forest, wise and strong, oldest of us all. Katherine is our cloud, shadiest of us all. Jonny is our rock wall, the protector, the unshakeable. And then there’s me, trying to be the water, the vein that connects us together. All of us have different backgrounds. I kind of raised myself while my parents let drugs become more enticing than my third grade report card. Jonny is Ojibway and two-spirit and outside of us and his kokum, he doesn’t have much support in his life. Katherine’s parents don’t know that she’s lesbian. Even though all of us are in our twenties, coming out to parents whose home country prohibits homosexuality, punishable by death, is hard. Darius still struggles with chronic pain and walks with a cane every day. It’s tough for him. He feels like his youth was stolen by illness. And Adriana, our sky, has the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen, the most patience I’ve ever witnessed, but also lives in the van that takes us to places like the bay. We all chip in to pay for her gas and insurance. But we never used to talk about these things. It was easier to just push them down and try to focus on being positive for each other, or on the bigger things like elections and climate change.

On the surface, I’m sure our crew, as it was then, seems hopeless and pitiful to you. The hardships of our life weighed on us, indeed. Sometimes we found ourselves in moments like the one in this story, where we would run out of the water, laughing and panting for breath, and as we sat down to catch it, a sudden torrent of sadness ripped through each of us at the same time. All of us were lonely amidst our togetherness, in our own world, and silent. In this sudden shift of mood, it felt like our differences closed us off from one another and we were left with the unsettling idea that summer would come to an end, each of us would start to live our own lives, separate, and the gaps would become uncrossable. Each moment of genuine togetherness felt like the last.

But suddenly I guess the moment became too much for Jonny as well, as he stood up and walked back towards the bay. He muttered something intensely. I think he said, “it’s calling me,” but all of us were too lost in our own minds to follow. If any of us thought anything, it was probably the cringiness of someone saying that water “calls” to them. That is, until Jonny started to yell at us.

“Holy shit, guys! Come here!”

Suddenly snapped back into being a group again, the four of us hurried over to discover what Jonny had found. Out in the distant reaches of our sight, something was moving in the water. You could tell it was massive just by looking at it, and it was headed slowly towards us. A little nervous, but somehow sure of our actions, we all slowly descended into the water until it reached our hips. The cold didn’t sting quite so much anymore.

Once it got closer, the identity of the being revealed itself to be a miraculously large sturgeon: the old woman of the bay. The sight of her was breathtaking, as she was definitely larger than any sturgeon any of us had ever seen, probably longer than two of us put together. Her age and wisdom were palpable as she poked her head up through the water, and by some miracle looked at us with those big glassy eyes.

As Jonny’s muttering came back to each of us, it was clear that she demanded our attention. She had something to say to us. And somehow, we heard it. She said,

“I have been waiting for a group like you for decades. Many have come, many have attempted to reach the potential you five have, but each group has fallen short. You may not understand the extent of how important you are, but I hope someday it will sink in like your toes in the wet sand. What the five of you have together is the opportunity to expose the power and potential of a group willing to listen. Each of you has such a different story to tell, and if you all come together to share them with each other, those stories combined will become the medicine each of you need to heal from the loneliness you’re all so deeply entrenched in. It may even be the medicine that all humans are in dire need of right now.”

Evidently confused, we all stood in silence as she looked at us with patience and continued,

“Look around you. This bay is beautiful, right? Because we each see the potential life it can give us. The water laps our toes and rejuvenates our spirits. The smell of the cedars is its own kind of medicine that makes us feel protected. The rocks remind you of the time it took to for this bay to become what it is. The clouds bring rain, and rain brings life. And the sky brings clarity. They all are so different yet work together to create what we all love. But if you look at the signs of death at the beach, like the rotted driftwood, or the garbage that the seagulls pick at, then the beauty becomes muted, less prominent. All you must do is remember that death, even metaphoric death, is a part of life. And although the garbage thrown into your circle did not come from you, it is up to you to do something about it. It is up to you to be the bay now. It is up to you to demand the attention and be the example.”

And with that, she did not wait for us to reply. She did not ask if we had questions. She gave us this knowledge, and moved back towards the depths of Lake Superior, likely to reconvene with the sun and stars.

We all stood there feeling every kind of emotion you could think of. Sad but happy, scared but ambitious, tired but rejuvenated, confused but with more clarity than any would understand. After she left our sight line, we took a step back and realized we were all linked together in some way. Hand in hand, hand on shoulder, around the waist, or hips gently touching. We were more connected than we had ever been.

Understanding that we couldn’t leave the bay just yet, we agreed to watch the sun go down together and set up a fire to talk around. The conversation was hard. I won’t lie. We began to talk about the parts of our lives that had remained hidden for too long. The heaviest branches of our memories, the most difficult challenges we face. We cried, a lot. For the first time, no one got teased for it. We fell asleep like that, too, never letting go of our physical, emotional, or spiritual connection for the night. And we all felt it. We were beginning to heal.

I don’t know how we ended up on Old Woman’s Bay that day. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure that I remember thinking it was because of the interesting name. But now that I reflect, it was certainly her, the old woman, calling to us, and I think she would want me to pass on her wisdom. Not sure how. I think that’s up to you to decide.