Lair of Mishipishu -- the underwater panther

You are standing atop Sugarloaf Mountain in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, looking toward Little Presque Isle in the distance. When I lived there, I often had the island and a mile of sandy beach to myself. It is where I saw the two wolves "on patrol" that I have written about here. The "prize" eluded me, however. That would have been to catch sight of Mishipishu, the "underwater panther." The spelling of "his" name varies. Pictographs of Mishipishu can be found around the Great Lakes. One is at Agawa Bay in northern Ontario. The Midewiwin Society claimed in 1850 that this pictograph was painted by an Anishinabe shaman and was part of a story about a four-day crossing of Lake Superior by a war party in five canoes. It is possible I will write more about this "legend" another day, but for now you can do your own research. The island and adjoining land form a county park today, which is both good and bad: Good, in that many people will be able to enjoy it; bad, in that no one will ever have experiences like I had there -- being awakened alone by the sun on my face dug down into the warm sand of the glistening beach with billowy clouds floating in a pure blue sky and the sound of lapping waves caressing the shore.

A lake is a lake is a lake .... except

The "Old Greeks" combined the prefix para- ("beyond" or "outside of") with the verb dokein ("to think"), forming paradoxos, an adjective meaning "contrary to expectation." Latin speakers took the word and used it to create the noun paradoxum, which English speakers borrowed during the 1500s to create paradox.

I "liberated" many of those words from the Wikipedia. "Liberated," for the uninitiated, is a polite way of saying "stole" and frequently used in military circles.

Progress is a paradox. On one side of the coin, it extends the life and leisure of humankind; on the opposite side of the coin, it usually comes at the price of disrupting and destroying the natural world.

I once lived along the shores of Lac Supérieur or, in the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Gitche Gumee, the shining Big-Sea-Water.

California Kelly, who has been thinking about moving, noted in a recent comment: "Today I went out to Malibu and the ocean was the bluest I've seen in ages. It was magnificent! The clear blue skies and ocean and green, green mountains is one positive for this time ... Today I thought to myself, hmmm, it may be tough to leave California."

To which, I replied: "In terms of Nature, I am sure it will be next to impossible to leave California -- with its forests and mountains and waters and deserts. I felt that way when I left Michigan and Lake Superior, but I left expecting to be back eventually. Now, the years slip away and I am no closer to a return than I am to winning a multi-million lottery."

As if some invisible entity traveling the time loop continuum was reading over my shoulder when I wrote those words and passed them along, I received a marvelous photograph from a friend who was born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and still calls the place home. Behold, Little Presque Isle as seen from atop Sugarloaf Mountain.

Agape means love in Greek today, but returning to the "Old Greeks," whose language was more precise than are the words of today, in ancient times it referred to a pure love without sexual connotations. Back then, passionate love of physical desire was called Eros. Aristotle used the word Philia to mean dispassionate, virtuous and unselfish love, while Philautia is known to be self love. There are other words/forms of love, of course, but enough for now.

If I ever have encountered a specific "Old Greek" word or word in any language meaning a love of and for Nature, I cannot recall it. As it is, I sort of define my religion as a blend of deism and pantheism, with Nature at the core of it. In a sentence, I love Nature ....

It takes only a flicker of imagination after a few moments of gazing at this photograph to see the waters shifting and moving and to feel myself once again in a canoe -- at times skirting the shoreline, at times paddling from point of land to point of land -- on the cold, crystal-clear waters of The Lake.

For now, I will recall the times I stood atop Sugarloaf seeing Little Presque Isle in the distance and staring out onto the waters of Lake Superior – on sunny days / on rainy days / on snowy days -- sometimes on indescribably beautiful days with "perfect" weather; sometimes in the midst of a raging gale or a blizzard. No matter what the weather, they were wondrous times experiencing the beauty and the power of Nature .... moments in which I understood what it truly means to be alive and thankful beyond words to be alive.