What once was marshland remembers

I was born under a Water sign, and live in a watery place encircled by lakes, wetlands, a creek and two rivers. 

As a young girl I learned how to swim in the waters of this lake. I did not know then that this was, and still is, a sacred place, where wild rice once grew freely, as a gift to all who would gather it. Where wild, shallow marshlands offered a home for herons and a gathering ground for humans who were here long before my ancestors came to this continent. 

When I was young, mowed turf grass ran down to the lake's barren shores. Once a marsh, with liminal margins, the lake then had an artificially neat edge. It was intended entirely for the use of people, not any wild inhabitants. The plants that had for centuries lived in relationship with the marshy shores were mostly gone. Wildness didn't belong at an urban lake of that era. It was at best an inconvenience, and at worst a threat. 

Fifty years on, frogs at this same lake sing loudly in the springtime. They chorus from dense stands of young willows, habitat for the frogs that also protect the the shoreline from erosion and help filter pollutants from the water. Turtles nest on the sandy beaches. Great blue herons stalk the shoreline under dangling willow fronds, and bald eagles circle high overhead, fishing. 

Now, the waters are allowed to find the shape they want to become...to flood at will into adjacent marshy pools thick with reeds and frog songs, where red-winged blackbirds can weave their nests amid the deep tangle of cattails and sedges. 

And fifty years later, I am thankful to have gained some understanding of what a living lake is, and how it may be abused or ignored or cared for and treasured by the people and culture that surround it.

When I think about this place, I feel gratitude that these waters and lands that I love were always cared for and honored by the Native peoples. They were still honored and remembered for generations after the people were displaced and robbed of their sacred homelands.

I am also thankful for the wise minds in recent history that are allowing wildness to return, even a small degree, to these public lands. Allowing them to be who they are, to do the work they were created to do.

I want to remember that these waters, and all waters — even in the midst of a city — are living and ancient, and that they remember.

That the land I walk on remembers its ancient past as marshland, savanna, prairie, woodland. 

That the land also remembers the original peoples who listened to hear its voice...the people with whom  it lived in deep, reciprocal relationship for millennia.

I want to believe that if I sing to the waters, speak and listen to them, chant my thanks and feel their liquid touch upon my skin, that they may someday carry a memory of this woman, as well.

I want to believe that my deepest self, like the marshlands, will always remember who I am; always return me to my essential wild shape — to the person I was made to be in this life.