Waiting for Water

Distant thunder talks to the land. Indigo clouds stain the western sky. The smell of rain is on the wind. I wait in the hot and oppressive air while dust devils are born and die over the newly plowed field and horseflies perform reconnaissance in menacing circles around my head. It is a dry spring and I pray for rain. The lupine beans withered to dry threads last week and the corn that sprouted in a green haze over the north field is turning to brown paper. The storm sweeps to the north taking with it the sweet and fragrant rain; only the relentless sun and the hot wind remain.

Later in the afternoon, I drive north into town for groceries. I discover the Rum River in full flood. Its water is brown with the soil of the spring fields to the north. Swirling eddies curl around the base of the Lagrande Avenue bridge. The river is high and fast and dangerous and threatens to overtop the levee and spill its chocolate waters into Riverside Park.

The mumbling thunder and the inky clouds and the delicately scented wind chose to bless the resorts on Mille Lacs Lake and the houses along Highway 169 and the farms in Onamia and Milaca, all along the upper reach of the Rum River. The water fell hard and fast and the lightning flickered until the storm moved on and the river began to receive the excess of the blessing.

Moving slowly at first, the water that could not soak into the rocky clay soil of Mille Lacs County began to pool in plow furrows, and the depressions left behind by the deeply-treaded tires of the John Deere and the Ford and the Allis-Chalmers. Then, when the furrows and depressions were full, it moved on in tiny streams to the old prairie potholes that pock the land. And when it had filled them too, it raced on toward the ditches and streams, faster and faster, thieving away tiny portions of the places it moved over. And when even those places could no longer contain this silty wash, it spilled into the Rum, eroding tiny canyons into the earth. And always, it was intent on reaching the Mississippi.

Standing here on the levee, I wonder whose field is passing by me now, suspended in the surging waters of the Rum River. Tomorrow, the river’s load of soil from field and yard, roadside and forest, will be the muddy high water lines that delineate the limits of today’s flood. The remainder of this load will settle behind the hydroelectric dam in Anoka, or flow over the spillway and on toward the Mississippi to be merged with the muddy waters of thousands of other rivers and streams. Had the rain fallen on the sandy soil of my Sherburne County farm seven miles to the south, its blessing would have been received more graciously and fewer would have left the thirsty land to go adventuring. But it did not. There, seven hundred dollars of beans that sprouted and died will be plowed under and the parched leaves of the corn will rattle in the arid wind and I will continue to pray for rain. I turn and leave.

Jorie Lamson-Nussbaum is a natural resources instructor at Aaniiih Nakoda College in Harlem, MT. Her reflection speaks of her own memories of the place she farmed and raised many children— and where she learned to observe and respect the dynamic natural world.