We are driving through Wisconsin, headed north on Highway 51 in our new Impala LT rental, when we notice trails of snow flanking the road. Parallel yellow stripes on grey asphalt continue endlessly through the woods as if Ariadne herself were guiding us through the maze of trees. It has been an hour or more since we last saw signs of human habitation. True, there has been the occasional tucked away hunting lodge or trailer home, but as for civilization, we have not really seen any. We look somewhat nervously on the fuel range display in the dashboard, and begin to wonder where the road might actually be taking us.

Climbing to the top of yet another hill, we finally catch sight of Lake Superior. As we drive down towards it, the icy waters seem to rise up in front of us, merging with the low clouds above. It soon disappears behind yet another line of trees, but looking to the sky it is as if we could still sense its presence up there somewhere. We pass through Ironwood, and continue west on Highway 2, just a few miles inland from the southern shore of the lake. A native American Casino suddenly appears on our right, and we figure that we must have entered the Bad River Reservation. Still, it is all trees around us, and dirt roads leading off into the gaps between them. You would need a good sign to tell you that you were on native American property, and if any were posted, we sure did not see them.

Leaving Bad River, we enter directly into the small town of Ashland, stretched out along the shores of Lake Superior for a good couple of miles. The surface of the lake is frozen in a rugged and uneven fashion. Tiny waves halted in movement, trapped in coats of ice just before breaking. We drive to the other end of town, and decide to book a room at the family-run Crest Motel, overlooking the lake and a small succession of villages across the bay. We have addresses and phone numbers for at least ten different people who have more or less out of the blue invited us to stay with them, but after the long drive up here, all we need is rest. We postpone until tomorrow to find out whether this is a town of great hospitality - or great desperation.

Of Wolf and Man

"Over there, right behind those birches, my grandfather's house used to be," Joe says, pointing to an empty plot of land beside the pow-wow ceremonial circle. It is as if the old town were still there in his mind's eye. The streets and houses are long gone, and all that remains to be seen is the catholic church of St. Mary that was raised by the missionaries just outside the native American township.

"In summer there'd be kids all over, playing games and having fun," he continues, letting the warmth of pleasant memories surge through his body. "And when Bad River flooded, we'd just move to higher ground. We had no indoor plumbing or insulation of any kind, so when we got back down to the houses, we'd just clean out the mud and wash the floors - and it'd all be like home again."

Just by looking at Joe, you would not be able to tell that he descended from a full-blooded native American woman. His skin is fair, his hair white, and his clothes unmistakably modern. He wears camouflage trousers from the army, a fleece jacket, and a cap. It is not only the blood of his German father that sets him apart from the stereotypical idea of a native American - it is his whole attitude. The way he seems to have fully adopted western lifestyle in all its outer attire, yet retaining that little secretive smile as if he knew that man is nothing but another tiny bobble on the waters of life. And his voice is differen, too - more contemplative, more resonant. Every time he opens his mouth and begins to speak, something else - something deeper and altogether more ancient - seems to speak through him.

Joseph "Joe" Rose is first and foremost a man of nature, and whatever lies hidden in the depths of his being is not one, but many things. To the community of Ashland, he is the head of the Institute for Native American Studies at Northland College, and somewhat of a legend among his students. To the native American tribe of Ojibwe, he is the keeper of the sacred peace pipe, and a man of great authority. And to us, he is nothing less than the perfect guide to the Bad River reservation. To himself, however, he is just plainly and simply - Joe.

"Man walked with the Wolf," he says, eyeing us closely, almost to the point of staring us down, before going on. "And the Great Spirit told him to walk Mother Earth, and give name to all her offspring, plants and creatures alike. You see, only by naming things can we know them, and only by knowing things can we understand them. With understanding comes respect, and in respect lies balance."

Joe grew up in the reservation torn between the communities of his German father and his native American mother. He served as an altar boy at St. Mary's, but every Sunday after mass his mother would take him into the woods, and have him perform the rituals of her own people as well. That was how he learnt the stories and traditions of his ancestors - an inheritance that is still very much alive within his own family and tribe.

"It isn't about control," he says as he walks us back to his black Ford by the river. It is a Charger with wheels for hooves. "It's about balance. Man isn't superior to nature - he is part of it. He walks a path similar to that of nature. When the Great Spirit told Original Man and the Wolf that they must walk separate paths, it also told them that their destinies would be intertwined. Should the Wolf perish, prophecy has it that Man shall perish, too."

Legends of the lake

Many years ago, legend has it, the Ojibwe tribe traveled west across the five Great Lakes in search of "the place where there is food upon the waters". Their journey took them all the way from the Atlantic coast to Madeline Island, just north of present day Ashland. There they discovered the prophesied wild rice that grows on the mouth of the rivers leading to and from Lake Superior.

Wild rice harvests have not yielded much in recent years due to receding water levels. Most locals blame it on climate changes caused by global warming, though some whisper conspirationally of a willful water drainage to the lakes further east. Perhaps the theory is inspired by the thwarted plans of George W. Bush to pipe clean water all the way from Lake Superior to his own native Texas. Whatever the cause, the issue is one of great concern to the student population in town, Kevin tells us as he shows us around Northland College. He is an English major and a talented writer, wearing earth-colored clothes that blend in nicely with the surroundings.

"Northland College is infused with a strong environmental theme," he says, crossing the wooden bridge that takes us further into campus, a reservation of knowledge in its own right. Below, a muddy river gently flows by. "Whatever your line of study, environmental awareness will be part of it. A lot of the literature we read in class has to do with nature. We have our Emerson and Thoreau, of course, but it also extends into poetry and prose. In fact, I was recently in a committee that gave our local Sigurd Olsen Nature Writing Award to a collection of short stories about the author's personal encounters with different animals in the wild. It mightn't be the most prestigious award in the country, but coming from Northland, still it should have a good deal of impact."

The red brick buildings of the different faculties are scattered over a small area with an appropriate lack of symmetry. They are surrounded by small groves of birch and fir. An underground geyser is utilized for geothermal heating, and several windmills and solar panels help generate energy. It is the ideal setup for students who not only want to read about responsible environmental action, but actually want to practice what they preach. Kevin provides us with a small yet significant example:

"You see that Coca-Cola vending machine over there?" he says, pointing out the machine as we walk down the hallway of the Campus Center. "Well, if the Student Council gets it their way, it mightn't be around much longer. They argue that it represents a kind of antithesis to everything Northland stands for. We had a poll about it a few weeks back, and the majority of the students actually backed them. I'm pretty excited about it. I mean, if we get rid of that thing, we'd probably be the first college in the country where you can't buy a bottle of coke. Perhaps it would even create precedence. Pretty cool, don't you think?"

We end our tour at a strange-looking little hut on the outskirts of campus. It has red clay walls and a slanting septagonal roof that ironically makes the whole structure look like a native American wearing a policeman's hat. Kevin tells us that it was built by students over the course of a few weeks. They used straw bales for insulation, and set up a solar panel to power the indoor climate control system. Inside, origami pieces resembling the thunderbird spirits that traditionally fight the sea serpent spirits of Lake Superior hang suspended from the ceiling. "I'm not really sure if too many people use it," Kevin thinks out loud, "but it's a nice little place all the same."


Of native Americans and environmentalists

Joe takes us to the office of Connie Burditt, Instructor of Native American Studies at Northland. She is a big lady with a big smile, and a good laugh, too. She is also a proud member of the Lakota Sioux tribe from modern day Dakota, and as such an old enemy of Joe's Ojibwe tribe. However, their friendly banter quickly reveals a bond between them stronger than hate.

As always, Joe seems to project an aura of time on his surroundings. He invites us to take a seat, and settles down comfortably in a chair himself. Connie has no objections. She leans back, and waits for Joe to open up the conversation.

"The environmentalist movement is very much the ally of the native American tribes," Joe says, locking his hands together in a tight grip as a sign of unison. "We often fight with them against the big polluters and all the others that tend to disregard nature. Our reasons mightn't be the same, but our purposes always are."

He eyes us closely, as if anticipating some indication from us that we have understood the full implication of what he is saying. We begin to shift uneasily on the couch, and finally break the silence with a follow-up question. Only, Joe's spell is not broken. He ignores our question without as much as lifting an eyebrow. Learning takes patience, he seems to say, and without it you will never be able to see things clearly.

"Amongst the Sioux," Connie finally fills in, "we're against keeping pets. Things of nature should stay where nature put them." She gently strokes the leaves of the nice little plant on her desk. "I probably even shouldn't have this in my office. But then again, it's somewhat exotic, and I guess if I put it out, it wouldn't survive. As for my home, though, I don't keep any plants there."

"All beings of nature were created equal," Joe elaborates, trying to stay informative instead of preaching. "We don't hold any special rights over plants and animals. In fact, humans were created last, and as such we're the most dependent. An animal may offer up itself to us, thereby allowing us to replenish our energy. What we need to understand is that everything we receive is a gift. And once we start taking what we're not offered - that's when we start putting ourselves in grave danger."

It does not take long for us to figure out that the native American respect for nature is something that is deeply rooted in their beliefs. As Joe explains, you do not take from nature, nature gives to you. In the Ojibwe language the word for "food" is the same as the word for "medicine". The direct translation is "strength of the earth". It indicates a power outside of our own control. Something we have to respect whether we like it or not. In the native American understanding of things, balance is everything, and the essence of our being here, on this earth, is upkeeping it.

"Still, you shouldn't force your beliefs on others, or interfere with their paths," Connie adds in with a wry smile, exchanging a quick glance with Joe. Whatever peace their different tribes have made with each other in the past, rivalry - however good-natured - still seems to run deep. "But what you should do is be aware of your own actions. If you leave a battery on the ground, you know that nature's not gonna swallow it up just like that - and you can be pretty damn sure that it'll still be there when you come back. So either don't make a mess of things, or at least expect the mess to be there the next time you come around. The earth can easily live on without us."

Joe breaks up, and leaves us hanging on to Connie's note of circularity. It is one of the key issues in fully understanding and appreciating native American beliefs and tradition. And it is certainly the one point that most clearly seperates their culture from ours. European beliefs are closely tied up to the notion of linearity and opposites, but pollution is much more than just a question of good and bad. It is a matter of respect, and it is a matter of getting smart - fast.

Two hours have passed without us even noticing it, and we have to be on our way. So many things to do, so many experiences to be had, and so little time for it all. At least for us, that is. We thank the Sioux and the Ojibwe for sharing their knowledge, and ask if we might see them again. "In our language we don't say goodbye," Joe explains teasingly, "we say 'see you again'."


The white man's prophecy

Down by the lake a huge wooden structure reaches several hundred feet out into the water. When mines were still open and yielding iron, the structure was used as a docking station for loading ore onto freighters. However, resources were depleted back in the 1960s, and the industry came to a grinding halt. Today the dock speaks of a time at the turn of the last century when Ashland was prophesied to become the new Chicago. It is slowly coming apart, eaten away by the icy water that laps gently against its feet. Trains no longer roll along its tracks, freighters no longer anchor up by its side. It is as if a piece of the shipwrecked past had lodged itself between the city and the lake, refusing to let go of the promise of prosperity it once held.

In the early hours of morning, a group of local kids scamper onto the dock, sleepers trembling as they jump sidewise from track to track. A girl wearing bright yellow waders several sizes too big for her diminutive figure clumsily tries to follow. Two guys with big unkempt beards and strong arms lift her up, and run down the tracks with her like a freight train carrying its load. A light fog shrouds the tip of the dock. As they put the girl back down, everbody starts to cheer. A bottle with the label scratched off passes around between them. The girl gulps down the remains before throwing it into the still waters below. A worried look crosses her face. Then it is gone.

A muffled thud and a splash cuts her off from the world above. The rubber soles of the waders keep the skin of her feet from ripping open as she impacts the water. She goes down fast. The old sailor's tale of the lake that never gives up its dead races through her head. She is all alone now. The warmth quickly dissipates from her body. Slowly she comes to a halt. For a moment she hangs suspended in the dark, oblivious to all sense of direction. Desperately she starts kicking her feet, arms held tight to her body. She feels like a whitefish senselessly beating its tail against shore-tossed rocks. The full weight of the lake comes together to press against her chest.

Suddenly a light appears. Vague at first, it soon grows stronger, almost blinding. Abandoning all will, she gives in to the lake. She belongs to it now. Its waters flow through her, choking her before delivering her back up to the surface. On the dock above, her friends cry out in relief. Their only answer is the distant wail of a siren. It is 6 am, and the party is over.

The story plays out in our minds as we walk by the old dock on our way through town. It was one of the students from Northland who told us how foolhardy youths would sometimes jump off the dock to wrestle with the spirits of the lake. She had never done it herself, and she could not help but shake her head and smile at the bad craziness of the white man's little ritual. An ode to despair and dejection in a town of historic misfortune - for Europeans and natives alike. And tourism? "Just a band-aid on a gaping wound," a guy in one of the many bars that line Main Street tells us later that afternoon.

As we make our way back up from the lake, we pass by one big old wooden mansion after the other. The architecture changes from house to house, and so do the bright and beautiful colors they are all painted in. Most of them were built in the late 1800s, and they too tell the tale of a time when things were looking up for the community. Today, they have mostly been converted into apartments or commune houses. But the students, artists, and nature-lovers that inhabit a good deal of them go to prove that this is not necessarily a bad thing. All those young people are just the new sprouts of Ashland, it seems. It is as if the grand industrial dream of the past had died down, and a multitude of alternative ones blossomed in its place.


Of Bad River and big corporations

The bumpy dirt road leading to Joe’s home in Bad River takes us through 93 acres of rough nature. Out here the silvery birches stand where they have always stood. The serenity is overwhelming, almost brutal. At the far end of the road we arrive at a large gate. Beyond it, Joe's house sits right on the shores of Lake Superior - or gitchegami, the great lake, as the natives like to call it. The Lakota Sioux tribe which Connie Burditt belongs to used to reside here before the Ojibwe tribe came down from the east and north, and forced them away. We cannot say exactly when this happened as Joe answers all of our questions about times and dates with a drawn out "looong time ago". It almost seems to amuse him to answer like this, and once again cyclical understanding kicks in on us.

Since every one thing connects to every other thing, the important thing is not when something happened, but simply the plain fact that it did happen. Our own obsession with linear time is not shared by Joe. He will just smile his pensive smile, and get on with whatever story he is telling us. With Joe you always come full circle, yet you never quite finish. Our sense of a lack of ending, our need for closure, is irrelevant to Joe's perspective on life. In his world, nothing ever ends - and if it did, it would instantly become obsolete.

"Continuity and change are endless," Joe muses in his wise man's way as he leads us down to an impressive tree lodge a couple of hundred yards from his house. "Tradition that isn't capable of or willing to adapt will die with the generation that holds it," he adds, and looks up at the rafter that holds together the protruding roof above the doorway. It has been carved into an eagle's head, and a rising sun has been painted onto the panel behind it. Joe explains that the eagle is his totem, and Rising Sun his name.

The woodwork inside the lodge is beautifully done with huge interlocking beams. They smell fresh and clean. The central room is shaped like a wigwam, reaching all the way up to the decorative canopy that tops off the roof. Joe uses it to host tribal meetings, and hold special lectures for his students. In fact, the lodge itself was built by two of his former students. "I like to bring the kids from college out here," he says, standing in the center of the room, looking at the empty benches lining the walls around him. "Some things about my culture are just too difficult to understand in an ordinary classroom."

Outside, the sun has begun to climb down low in the sky. "You should come stay here for month," Joe says as if time were the least of problems. "Instead of just watching the sunset for a day or two, you should watch it change with the seasons." He looks to the shore of his property, and suddenly a sense of sadness overcomes him. "In the old days we would enjoy catching and preparing the big fish from the lake. But not anymore. Nowadays, if they get a foot long or more, they're simply to full of mercury. Eating them would just make you sick. That's the kind of inheritance the big corporations have bestowed on us. It's such a shame."

Although native Americans have been on the front-line for years, fighting pollution and resource harvesting, there is only so much they can do. Reservations are subject to their own laws, and even have their own police force, but when going up against corporations, they have to play the legal game of the West. They can set up all the blockades they want in their own reservation, but that does not necessarily stop pollution from entering it. Harmful particles from iron mines and coal plants outside of native American jurisdiction travel by air and sea, spreading contamination everywhere. Man is not a threat to nature, man is a threat to himself.

"Come on," Joe says, and gets into his car. "I wanna show you the old town before it gets too dark. The houses are all gone, but it's still the place I grew up. That's one thing they can't take away from me. That, and my better sense of humor." As he drive off, his little secretive smile opens up into a big hearty laugh.


Gaia's Cradle

Gaia's Cradle is a student house just off campus at Northland College. An old couch sits on the porch, encouraging people to kick back for awhile, and listen to the wind play with the chimes. The door is never locked, and everybody is welcome whenever. The house used to be a gender theme house serving as a refuge for women in need, and it still retains a spare bedroom if anyone should turn up unexpectedly. Though we do not exactly fit the category, Calvin and Maggie readily agree to put us up in the room for a couple of nights.

Maggie is a quiet but strong-willed girl majoring in sociology. She comes from a small town just north of Green Bay, Wisconsin, whence she will return in a couple of weeks' time to do an intern in her mother's shop. But right now is Spring Break, and nobody likes to think too much about what they are going to do afterwards. Least of all Calvin, a lively cat-like guy majoring in art. He seems to wake up with a big smile on his face every morning, spreading good vibes all throughout the house. He comes and goes constantly while we are there, visiting friends and just generally making the most of his day.

"You might as well forget about doing anything with your degree," Brooke says one night at the dinner table. She is one of a group of Northland post-graduates who have joined us for cheese and wine. "All those peace and environmental studies are good enough in themselves, but they don't really take you anywhere. For that, you'll have to learn a skill, or go on to grad school."

"True," Mandolin's harsh voice joins the choir, long rope-like dreadlocks spilling over her shoulders, and onto the table. "I tried working as a mediator like I was trained to do, but hell - I just couldn't stand it! It felt so stupid. I mean, why would people even want a mediator? Why don't they just talk it out instead? There's a time for gloves, and there's a time for knuckles. That's all you need to know to sort out your own shit."

Calvin laughs at her straightforwardness, but Maggie seems more troubled by it. She does not buy in to that whole negativity thing. "I really hope I don't end up being stuck in Ashland all disillusioned when I'm thirty," she admits to us at a greasy spoon breakfast place the next morning. "Just thinking about it freaks me out. I'm a Midwestern girl, and I probably always will be, but I also want to do something good with my life. I mean, why else would I wanna study?"

"I'm not trying to be your old cynical know-it-all over here," Brooke interjects. "Sometimes I just feel like Northland needs to be fed a dose of reality. Idealism tends to get blind - useless even. You need to get out into the real world. That's why I'm going back to school in Virginia. To learn about urban planning, and start up my own organic farm. That's the only way I'm ever gonna make it out of here."

A lot of students do tend to stay in Ashland after finishing college. Job opportunities are infamously poor, but it is a good vibrant community with lots of wild nature and high ideals. The question is whether those ideals really need to be exported to the outside world in their current form, or whether Ashland should just remain one within a multitude of American dreams? Opinions seem to differ, and the more we are exposed to, the less likely we become to pass judgment on any of them. In another time and place we might, but right now, right here, all we want to do is listen and learn.

"But how can you do that?" someone at the table blurts out. "How can you not pass judgment?" For a moment we are caught in the crossfire of our own arguments, but we soon back down, and resign to the incredulity and frustration that our deliberately naive insistence on unprejudiced understanding sometimes generates. We bring out two bottles of excellent Californian wine, and the happy cheer of the evening continues.

After the guests have left, we settle down in the easy chairs with Calvin and Maggie to watch a documentary titled "King of Corn". It is all about how farmers get government subsidies for producing genetically manipulated corn to feed livestock, and ensure cheap foods for the American population. The only downside is that most meat used by fast food chains is actually more corn than beef. And since the corn they grow is almost pure starch with no real nutritional value, the population ends up, more or less, like fattened cows.

We are so disgusted that we immediately drive down for a late-night snack at Burger King's. To prove our point about unprejudiced understanding, if nothing else.


The great thaw

It was Maggie and a fellow student who set up the meeting with Joe. They also told us that according to custom we should bring some small gift for him in exchange for his time and knowledge. When we first met him we gave him a pouch of tobacco, but after spending a whole day and a half with, we still feel like giving him a little more.

"I got to thinking about the Norse gods you told me about yesterday," Joe says, drinking organic ginger ale at the local Black Cat Café. "I believe all indigenous people share a common bond with nature, and that their culture and identity are tied up to it as well. The snake is a universal symbol, drawing circles quite contrary to the straight lines of the cross. I wonder if you could me more about that part of your own mythology?"

And, of course, we can. Still, our answers would never be nowhere near satisfying to a man born and raised with the religion of nature. So after another round of talk and ginger ale, we break up with a promise to sent him a little present. Back at the Crest Motel, we log on to the internet, and order him a copy of both "Saxo Grammaticus" and "The Elder Edda". They are two of the most ancient and famous books on Norse mythology and Danish folklore, and buying them online seems just the right thing to do for such a wonderfully offline guy like Joe.

It has been a week since we first came to Ashland, and we are getting ready to leave. Through our motel window, we can see the sun setting over Lake Superior. We decide to go down to the shore one final time. The ice is beginning to thaw, and great pools of water are appearing on the surface. In a few days Spring Break is over, and all the students we have met will be back in college. We, on the other hand, will be in our car, driving east towards the Atlantic coast, retracing the journey that took the Ojibwe tribe all the way out here a looong time ago.