From Mighty Muddy to Shining Big-Sea-Water

as seen in the Marquette Monthly November, 2019
By Beverly Matherne

I grew up on my Father’s farm, hectares of sugarcane in furious wind along the Mississippi, the Mighty Muddy, whose currents could yank you by the hair and pull you down. Below headlands in fields, irrigation canals emptied into swamp waters, gumbo by day, celestial fire by night, when will-o’-the-wisps burst on the surface like stars.

Summer sun baked my little-girl skin, bleached my blond hair, cropped for the season. My head shone in the light-filled days, and they called me “Cotton-top.” The scent of ripe melons wafted from our father’s garden over lawns and into the house. Cucumbers, Creole tomatoes burst with juices on platters. When hurricanes ravaged, we knelt on hardwood floors around our parents’ bed, said the Rosary till dawn, hoping our house would not split, the levee not breach. With frost came the brilliant orange of Chinese pistachios, our gums deep red and purple. In winter, dank odor from sewers in New Orleans spoiled the air, countered only by festoons of Christmas greens on staircases, over-sized bouquets of American Beauties in Grecian urns, and lavish chandeliers in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel. Dogwood came in spring, limelight in green leaves, a profusion of azaleas in pastels, dew or drizzle, hail or downpour, ever present, the river rising, nothing arid in this semi-tropical paradise.

Fate plucked me from Louisiana and planted me in the Flint Hills of Kansas, grassy, rolling, neither wind-swept plain nor tumble weed, hills camel-hued in summer against skies so blue they hurt, Tuttle Creek Reservoir, the only body of water in dry Manhattan, home of Kansas State, home of the Black-eyed Susan, where I taught drama. When hackberries and elms lost their leaves and winter came, I longed for Louisiana. In my office, on sills of windows six feet high, I grew geraniums, hot pink, the only color against limestone, snow, and grey clouds.

Then came the University of California, at Berkeley, expanse of huge-columned facades, oak groves, Tasmanian tree ferns, green lawns, and, to be sure, the homeless in Peoples’ Park, on littered Telegraph Avenue, bare feet wrapped in plastic for winter. A left turn through Sather Gate lead to the French Department in Dwinelle, a right turn, to my own desk in the great crowd of desks in Wheeler. Teaching assistants of French, minions all of us, and the great Michel Foucault come from the Sorbonne to address us that one unforgettable afternoon.

Then came a detour from French literature to the computer industry. Some eight blocks east of Maiden Lane, location of our headquarters at Information Management Specialists, the Ferry Building, its Beaux Arts clock tower after the Giralda in Seville, Westminster Quarters chiming, homeward throngs on Market. A little north-eastward, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay churning beneath it. The Bay, as ever-present as summer papaya, black seed embedded in pregnant flesh, as fall’s persimmon, as Blue Niles all year long. Weekends, we’d sail from the Berkeley Marina to Angel Island with bikes or to Sausalito for dinner. Our little son boogie boarded the swells of the Pacific on Stinson Beach in Marin.

Soon after the Quake of ’89, fate tore me from California and sent me alone on another journey. When I arrived in Marquette to interview for a position in the English Department in the dead of February, I required, no small wonder, a body of water at least as significant as that of the San Francisco Bay. I remember when, over a quarter of a century ago, the summer before my first semester on campus, I walked along an avenue of Lombardy Poplars to Presque Isle, stood on a lookout. Breakers lashed the rocky wall. Spume settled. I saw large rocks on the lake bottom, perfectly visible in clear water, the likes of which I had never seen in the South. “This will do, this will do quite fine,” I said, assured of a new home for my little son and me, a new beginning, a baptism of sorts, an immersion in cleansing water.

WATER-SAVING TIPS

Abandon the perfectly manicured lawn, turning swatches of green into perennial gardens of native plants, water-savers to attract bees.

Water plants, not the sidewalk.

Contributor’s note: Beverly Matherne, poet and professor emerita at Northern Michigan University, served as director of the Master of Fine Arts program in English and poetry editor of “Passages North” literary magazine. The author of six books of poetry and a member of the University Women’s Gardening Group, she lives in Ishpeming, where she is restoring her Queen Anne Victorian, the historic Butler House.

“The Gift of Water” columns are offered by the Northern Great Lakes Water Stewards and the Cedar Tree Institute, joined in an interfaith effort to help preserve, protect, and sanctify the waters of the Upper Peninsula.