And here are the two essays that they published:
Superior
Lake Superior is one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world, its cold, clear water submerging nearly 300 miles of border between the United States and Canada. Of all the Great Lakes, Superior is particularly famous for sinking ships. Her long, frigid Canadian coastline has been battered by epic storms and littered with impressive wrecks dating back over one hundred years. In Munising Bay, tourists can take glass bottom boat shipwreck tours of the lake's many victims. She creates her own weather. She has a mean temper and a reputation for high winds, sudden storms, and disappearing boats.
Chris and I were sailing along the western shore, exploring a clump of weather-beaten islands called the Apostles. This was the morning of the third and last day of an island-hopping adventure in Chris's 15-foot sailboat. The weather had been perfect. We'd spent the last night moored in the Stockton Island Bay, which harbored a pristine red sand beach, moss agates, and piles of gnarled driftwood. Beyond the beach, an enormous shattered cliff lay in the water in huge toppled chunks. Tiny black snails clung desperately to all sides of the fallen rocks as waves crashed over their backs.
The wind had shifted overnight, and with it, it seemed, so had our luck. Deep, restless clouds hung low in the pallid morning light and a steady rain threatened our camp stove as the coffee boiled. Chris hastily described what each of us would need to do if the boat capsized, as we both peered uneasily at 30-plus foot sailboats struggling over the whitecaps in the angry channel, and strapped on life jackets as a flock of agitated gulls squawked and paced the dock. Neither of us could eat any breakfast. We packed up and climbed into the boat. Lightning flared and ebbed on the horizon as Chris quickly ran up the sails and we were swept oug to open water.
The waves were huge and dark gray and their surface was pocked with the driving rain. The wind whipped the water and filled the main sail beyond its capacity. Immediately, the boom swung sharply and the boat threatened to lie down on its side. We tipped. I clung to the hull as gravity pulled me toward the surface of the water, now a wet, solid wall in front of me. Chris emptied the sail and we slammed down hard. Within seconds, the wind grabbed at the sail again, and again we went over. Each wave seemed to come bigger than the last, breathing and bearing down on us, and the boat's body was too small to cut through the hard swells. The lake lifted us with her swirling hands and then dropped us, grinding our vessel into her over and over, like vicious child slamming a toy boat into her lap.
Hours passed tenuously and seemed not to pass at all. No amount of adjustment could make our sails contain the wind that ripped greedily into them. No amount of steering could get the boat's thin bones to move over the heaving waves. We were swept side to side and pulled up and down, but we could not move forward. The will of our small craft and meager crew was no match for the will of the water. We spun like a leaf on the surface of her vain and indifferent body. Rain-soaked and straining, we forced our way down the coast of Stockton Island, then on toward Hermit Island, slowly weaving through the lake's wind-swept fingers. She screamed and kicked.
Just as we slipped past the point of Stockton and it seemed as if we might be making some progress, the wind and rain suddenly stopped. Sky and water cleared. The lake had suddenly forgotten us and we were left to float, quietly bewildered, in the calm. The sails dangled impotently from their ropes as we sat in the filtered light, waiting for some wind. Over our heads, an eagle taunted us as it circled on a strong air current, its black wings outstretched and unmoving. Minutes passed uneasily. Chris and I watched the sky. Slowly, a gigantic thunderhead began to gather and expand over the trees to the west. The small marina that perched on the edge of the far shore disappeared into a haze of white rain, and we watched the squall line skate over the water toward us. The lake held her breath, fuming in the stillness. Chris's hands held dead ropes. There was nothing to do but wait.
And in a moment, the storm broke over us. A gnashing wind swept down and into the side of the boat, slamming hard into the sails. A heavy curtain of rain descended and lightning seared the blank white sky. The air smelled like electricity as water and air merged into a shroud around us.
"We need to get out of the water. Now!" Chris's face was set with tension. He had to yell to be heard through the storm. I looked around. There was angry water everywhere.
"What do we do?"
"We'll head for that dock!" He tried to turn the sail, but the wind would not let go. He pulled and pulled. "Okay," he looked at me, "we have to take the sail down!" I stared at him dumbly as prickling spindrift crashed over my head, into my mouth. It tasted mean. He repeated imself tightly as the little boat pitched desperately. " You have to take...the sail...down."
Numbly, I leapt up and over the cabin onto the top of the hull, wedging my legs into the hatch for balance, and clawed at the sail's rope with stiff stupid fingers. It came loose and whipped wildly at my face. The sail came down in a heap and we spun out of control. Without the main sail, Chris could no longer steer the boat. With only the smaller jib sail flapping off the front, we careened away from the dock and turned back out to sea. We swung back and forth with each icy gust, floundering like a plastic bag.
Chris fought to control the jib, but the wind caught it and the entire boat was slapped sideways. Then the wind caught it from the other side and we turned again. We were spinning in circles now, and each turn was bringing us closer to Madelin Island's rock-littered shore.
"I can't control it!" Chris fumed. Without the main, we were eddying violently about halfway between the jagged shoreline and the dock, but had no way of getting to either.
"Put the main sail back up!" I went forward again, desperate, trying to grip the sail and the rope. I had never put up a sail before. I pulled ineptly. Lake and storm had joined forces now and were working together, lifting and dropping us, as I awkwardly fed the sail up the mast the way I'd seen Chris do it. As it went up, the sheet filled with air and tightened.
With the main back up, Chris managed to drag us out away from the rocks and then back toward the dock. I pulled my body forward on the hull to find the front rope I would need to stop the boat, and prepared to jump onto the dock if we swung close enough. We couldn't get close. Thunder rolled over our heads like deep laughter, crowing at me as I made the awkward too-far leap, fell hard on my knees, and yanked the rope.
We quickly gathered the boat to the dock and tied it up. My legs shook with exhaustion and my entire body hitched as a string of terrified sobs broke over me. Chris made some hot coffee while I wept, and we huddled there, wet and shivering, as the rain subsided.
We were still miles from the marina on the mainland. We could see the little town now, though, at the far end of the channel that separated it from Madeline Island. We drank coffee and peered wonderingly at the distance. It looked like we had about as far to go as we had come in eight hours. The wind was forecasted to increase, reaching gusts of fifty miles per hour by the next day. As the sunlight waned, we tried to make a plan. It should take two hours to cross the channel, and we had about one hour of light left. The sky was already paling. Sailing at night would be risky. I silently willed the sun to stay in the sky, but it had problems of its own. It was being slowly devoured by the next cloud bank building over the horizon.
"We don't really have a choice," I reasoned. "But can you sail in the dark?" Chris scratched at the lichen that clung to the weather-worn wood of the dock.
"It depends. The wind looks good right now, but if it shifts...if it goes bad...in the dark..." We looked at each other. It would go very bad.
There were no options. When the rain stopped, we jumped back into the boat and hastily raised the sail once again. This time, I knew how to do it. The blue was fading out of the sky, and the moon skipped light over the lake. Somehow, the expanse of black water before us was calm, exhausted and pacified. The waves became smooth, rippling cloth before us and the wind caught and carried us, but gently now.
As the darkness slowly enveloped everything, my body relaxed into the rhythm of the movement beneath me. Chris held our course steady. The lights of the marina came closer and we swept over the channel as if we were sliding across black ice. Lake Superior held us. She breathed and expanded, and we acquiesced to our rightful proportion: a fading white speck in the long, perfect planes of darkening sea and sky. Those dark planes stretched out, blending into one another, connecting every two points, containing every straight line, and all things.
Peace March
I have been an advocate for peace in many ways for many years. My journey through the intricately-woven web of peace through violence, and violence inside of peace, has been as disheartening as it has been confusing. For every flash of hope there seems to be a bullet of despair. For every step forward in the march toward peace, there has been an unexpected battering of bitter resistance. But I remain hopeful.
I can trace back my own education on the topic of peace, and hate and violence and denial. For four years I was a member of a women's performing arts group based in my hometown of Bismarck, North Dakota, whose mission was to promote peace and social justice through the arts. We taught as artists-in-residence in public schools throughout North Dakota, promoting peace, self-esteem, respect, and ecology, and we performed at a variety of venues throughout the Midwest. We led a workshop for surviviors of domestic abuse, engaged in advocacy for women's and gay lesbian bisexual transgender (GLBT) rights, and led a sprial dance on the grounds of the International Peace Gardens. We also walked, sang, and chanted in multiple peace marches.
September, 2008: Codepink International, a global women's peace activist organization, invited our performing arts company to participate in a peace march in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was to correlate with the national media attention the city would receive as the host of the Republican National Convention. We were all excited for the opportunity.
As we approached the Minnesota State Capitol grounds, we were confounded to find our way blocked in almost every direction by swarms of security vehicles and crowds of armed officers. As the march proceeded through the city streets, the security became an impenetrable wall of warning, consisting of armored vehicles and lines of men and women dressed in full SWAT body armor, armed with semi-automatic machine guns and tear gas launchers. Marchers were enclosed and herded into huge, elaborate temporary fencing constructions, complete with holding areas, tire-shredding spikes, and soldiers jogging in formation.
The scene was the closest I had ever come to seeing a police state. It reminded me of videos I'd seen of student uprisings and military coups in Asia and Central America. More frightening still was the transformative effect this aggressive security had on the body of peaceful marchers as it weaved its way through the hostile maze of roadblocks.
Young peach marchers shoved at the security officers, shouting into their shatter-proof face shields, inviting them to lose control. One man, who was wearing a sandwich-board collage of bloody and mutilated child-victims of war, danced in front of a line of officers, screaming, "What are you going to do?!" Tension on both sides ran high as people threw things and swung their signs angrily, taunting the police officers who stood silently, anxiously twisting their batons. It seemed everyone was itching for a fight. My colleagues and I ducked out of the march, trying to decide where we could go to be safe as the peaceful demonstration disintegrated around us.
July, 2007: Over one year earlier, I volunteered to help set up the Eyes Wide Open display on the North Dakota Capitol grounds. The display was a traveling exhibit making its way to different cities around the U.S. to raise awareness about the human cost of war. At that time, it had been displayed in 44 states. The exhibit featured one pair of empty boots for every North Dakota soldier that had died in Iraq and the name of each soldier, as well as a field of civilian shoes and wall of remembrance for the many tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who had also died in the conflict.
Setting out shoes in the early morning, I shuddered and cried more than once as I looked up to see the ever-expanding grid of black shoes our volunteers laid out. I wept, too, when I sat out the tiny pairs of baby shoes; I knew they were only symbols, but still I was overcome at the depth of their emptiness. Throughout the day, families came and placed flowers and ribbons in and around the shoes that represented their lost soldiers, and people who happened by were stunned into silence by the grief and loss made visible by the display. Many people sat quietly for hours, gazing over the field of shoes, trying to comprehend it, trying to grasp its meaning.
But the exhibit was not without its resistance. A small band of marchers circled the mall throughout the day with American flags and patriotic signs. They spoke loudly and self-importantly, fighting the empty shoes for attention. The protesters chanted pro-America slogans and hurled pro-troops jeers at the exhibit's volunteers and visitors. Each time they approached, they shouted, "Support our troops!" perhaps not realizing that troops and their families were among the crowd trying to observe silence that day on the capitol lawn.
The noisy protest against (and apparent lack of understanding of) the Eyes Wide Open display felt ironic. It was a living representation of blind patriotism that could not bear to open its eyes to the tragic, real, human losses inherent in war, even as they marched past it. Their signs were pro-war (well, is anyone really pro-war?). But war isn't all flags and patriotism. It's also families trying to remember and honor and live without the people they loved the most.
A march or an article or a photo or an intellectual debate is as close as most of us need come to the reality of war. Over the last century, Americans have had to find a way to reconcile our seemingly peaceful world, which is defined in many ways by international violence our own nation perpetuates. Although we are aware that it exists, this violence lies outside of our personal experience. We are a nation at war, but even the days of victory gardens and scrap metal drives are gone, and we are left with a chilling normalcy in wartime. I saw it in the faces of the people contemplating the empty shoe display: a desperate inability to fathom the damage that military violence can do, or the lives that that same violence can undo.
August 2006: Working with a local safe house for women and children, our performing arts company was involved in many strange and surprising events in our community. One sunny, unassuming summer day, we were asked to be present at a funeral service for a woman with whom the safe house had been working closely up until the time of her death. Even though none of us knew her personally, we agreed to attend her funeral.
As we drove uneasily up the thin, winding road to the freshly-dug grave, we were given some of the background details of the situation. The woman had been struggling with an abusive partner for many years, legally restraining him, leaving him many times, but always inevitably returning. He finally shot her in the back and left her on the couch in their living room. Because the woman had no known family other than her husband, now in jail for her murder, the employees of the safe house had purchased a grave plot and headstone for her, and were holding a memorial service that no one but a handful of workers and us would be attending.
The small group of mourners circled the grave and began the service. Because no one knew this woman well, the eulogies consisted mostly of the observations of the people who worked with victims of abuse. For them, this funeral represented another defeat. This fresh grave echoed the seeming futility of their work, the failure of the system, and the anguish that for some domestic abuse victims is literally inescapable. There was a collective sense of despair. Someone wondered aloud how a social problem so pervasive could remain so hidden. Someone else prayed that this would be the last time a woman would be killed by her partner.
After the service, 46 balloons were released into the air, one for each year of the woman's life. I watched the balloons spread up and out into the wide sky. I strained my eyes to be able to see them long after I knew that I couldn't. They had disappeared before I was ready for them to be gone.
Is this all that we can do for her? Is this really all that's left of her? The group dispersed slowly, hesitant to leave the woman's grave alone, perhaps knowing that it might never be visited again.
I think about what I've learned from the lonely grave and the empty shoes and the violent peace marchers. Is there a connection between the unseen violence inside of our homes, the distant wars our country fights, and the rage we feel within our own society? Maybe we feel uneasy about the outward peacefulness of our lives, knowing that violence is just under the surface. The violence that defines our lives is a violence that we can't control, because we can't even see it. Maybe our rage is a symptom of our helplessness.
As I try to reconcile my thoughts, I keep having the sensation that there is a connection between these types of violence. It may be that we have all become confused. If the violence of war is acceptable, then maybe the violence of our husbands or wives is acceptable. If soldiers are present to protect us from the threat of protesters, then maybe the protesters are dangerous. It could be that the ambiguity of our attitudes changes our definitions of words like
peace or
violence or
safety into something relative. Peaceful compared to...what? Violent compared to...whom? Safe compared to...? And slowly we may become defined by the extremes, sacrificing our ability to judge, whether or not we know it, whether or not we allow ourselves to open our eyes.
I finished by BA in English in May 2011. Mom and Dad came to Dickinson for an awards dinner, which I did in the place of actually walking in graduation. My shirt perfectly matched the napkins--I was so relieved.
