Great Lakes Backpacking wk 2 - 07-02-21 to 07-08-21

07-02 South Manitou Island.

Meditation: Lemme back up. I made a meditation visualization when I was younger and scared. I imagined standing in a clear tide and feeling my emotions as the water pooled around my ankles, then letting them go as the water pulled away. The water was clear with many stones. Land and dunes stretched out on the other side. I created that visualization when I was younger but only saw it today. The other night I was visited by a raven at camp. They cawed towards the lake, hopping towards it. They looked at me hard, then cawed at the lake again and flew away to it. What was it that brought me here? Why do I feel like I need to be here?

ALSO, AS AN UPDATE: NEW SHOES!! I thought I was *shit* at hiking/moving this whole time but I was just buying shoes too large for me ?? Anyways I can walk like a normal human now. Stopped in Fishtown, MI. What a cute little pocket. Touristy as hell obviously, but hell, I'm a tourist today. Yoinked a hat out of it.

Strange to think we're only a week in... how many big huge revelations will I have? What trusted gear will fail...

The hammock spider is a web spinner that weaves a "hammock". It's about 6mm long. The leafy cobweb weaver (viridian frondium) is a black and brown butt spider with spots. It has transparent yellow and green legs. The red spotted purple butterfly landed on me a few times. It's a hybrid with the white admiral butterfly and its caterpillars look like poops. The northern crescent butterfly has a black and orange top and a yellow butt. Equisetum ferns are silica rich.

7-03 "The Poison Ivy Episode"

hahahahahahahaha shit [postscript: I did not contract poison ivy. but we walked through a lot and washed off in the lake.]

7-04

Back to Fishtown. I miss boxed wine. I miss the boxed wine Zach and I drank while watching reality TV and waiting to see if he qualified for food stamps. We made up silly faux-French names for the wine, overbreathing on the R in Franzia. It was sweet and we drank it from straws.

To think that we stayed an hour on boat out from the pervasive nationalism that shakes and chokes me on this stolen land. Among other "holidays" I feel like the 4th stamps and cheers in the glory of the oppressor. The American flag sends chills chills chills down my spine. I didn't choose to be born here, under the flag of the colonizers and the rule of white people who don't give two shits about me. But I do choose to seek what I love - nature - within a society that frustrates me.

OKAY THAT'S OUT OF THE WAY. Last night I slept with my rainfly

NOPE nevermind oh my GOD society sucks

down. I watched the sky get dark and listened to the birds quiet down. Then in the morning I blinked bleary-eyed at the brightening dawn. I learned the rhythm and the comfort in Macho's snoring and the crashing of the waves. The waves were rough yesterday@ Sent small rocks into my ankles while I cleaned my clothes. I appreciate the way the lake pushes and pulls at me, tells me to share myself with both the lake and the land. My ancestors used to sit at the confluence of rivers for hours, and worship the big old trees. Meeting the old growth cedars was like meeting elders that hold the land together, physically in the roots.

How about you, Manitou? Do you squint at Leelenau and wonder what the fuck is happening over there?

How to detox poison ivy: Rub sand over the exposed areas, including clothing. Wash vigorously with oil or an oil based soap and water. dry and wait and wait and wait.

Mosquito bite abcess care: Drain abcess with sterilized needle and alcohol wipe. Bactiraicin under occlusive bandage, change and check every 12 hours. If fever or non improvement, seek care.

Hartwick Pines SF. The old growth braces for the storm/it's darker, cooler at last/the humidity on my skin clouds/into my lungs.//The chapel of the pines feels like/a scar on even the saved/old growth/Even if not molested by blades/and capital/the ground is turned unholy/in the house of the land's new lord.

I really need to learn snake physiology.

7-05 Harbor Springs

When we left Traverse City I felt a massive pit in my stomach form. Ever since I was younger I've been unwanted in houses and communal housing literally until my current lease in a house that's already a disaster. I was removed from my robotics team's national traveling team (actually because of transphobia) because I was "incompatible with living with others" including smelling bad, snoring, and being "too disagreeable". I proceeded to live alone or as closely alone as possible. When the truth came out that I was being removed as a trans person, I was told it was dangerous for me to share a bed with anyone at all. So you can imagine the the fear I'm feeling right now.

It's a long process to look acceptable again. I follow the rules i've followed since childhood: No furniture touching until showered and scrubbed raw. No laying down unless to sleep, and take up as little room as possible. No sharing beds because I'm trans and gross. At least I felt like I belonged in the woods, dirty and grimy and rained on. It's so much work to live in the industrialized (? need a better word) world. The trees and the thunder don't care about my gender. As long as I'm not growing something, I'm clean. I can't snore louder than the Sleeping Bear.

Bites update: 1 angry chafe point on chest. 1 angry chafe point on ankle. Ankle blistered open. Doesn't look great? Tx with antibac and knuckle band aid, works well for ankle. Hart brand band aids rock, they're great.

7-06

THE DANGER IN ANTHROPOCENE. The anthropocene, the sixth ME, the geological stratus. I think of endangered animals, the last of which are in captivity. The last of the humans will be safe behind their walls and all the others are fucked. "Anthropocene" blames the body without referencing the spirit. CHEAPNESS. Cheapness of nature reveals INTERNALIZED INTERSPECIES HIERARCHY (besides the intraspecies hierarchy that some humans have going on). Challenge to self: All living is equal success. EPISTEMOLOGY. Colonized and capitalized epistemology as drivers of anthropocene mentality?

I think we should have a holiday where white people stop talking for one day

"THE LAKE WASN'T ALWAYS THERE" The islands were once peninsula. The captured dunes were a bar. Traditional knowledge tells geographical history. Tribes aren't just from one static area and the glacial history and natural dispersion encourages comfortable non fixedness. "LEAVE EVERY PLACE A LITTLE CLEANER" Places, relationships, interactions. You may have to choose this multiple times a day. Lake Michigan is turning inhospitable for whitefish. Whitefish spawning is changing - can we encourage whitefish to spawn in the restored rivers? Maple tree //ninutiik// "our tree". By 2050, no longer natural hab. sugar maple. SOLASTALGIA: Losing your sense of place without leaving. To reserve the right to fish > relationship with fish. Fish as a property right can be replaced with money, but relationship rights cannot be compensated. By giving fishing rights, the Fed has the obligation to ensure relationship upkeep - ie, pollution cleanup. "IT'S THE RELATIONSHIP TO THE NATURAL WORLD THAT IS THE TREATY RIGHT."

7-07 Drummond Island

I was at a botanists' bonfire a few weeks before I headed out. Alan ,the president of the native plant society, proposed this to us: We must be vigilant about what we call "invasive". Which plants are introduced AND invasive, which plants are native and act invasively? Are invasive behaviors relegated only to introduced species - then what do we call those behaviors in native species? We argued until the beer was gone. (My only conclusions were that I don't know shit about angiosperms and Pam definitely admitted to tax fraud.) I think that humans addressing the invasions of species brought by human actions is a form of relationship repair with the land. Ultimately, species can act invasively but the center of it revolves around two points:

1) Are we acting in hierarchy or righteousness (or hierarchical righteousness) in species "management"

2) How do our land use delegations affect how we view invasive behaviors

Let's start with the second point because I want to.

The other week, we pulled sassafras from a developing prairie. Sassafras: Native, smells good. Prairie: Native, also smells good. Do these things go together: No, actually. Sassafras practiced an invasive behavior to the developing prairie but it wasn't an introduced species. Hypothetically, if we wished for a species to proliferate in a way like invasive species do, do we value these behaviors as we do with invasive behaviors valued as eradication worthy?

OK and the first point

IS INVASIVE SPECIES MANAGEMENT AN INDICATOR OF ANTHROPOCENE HIERARCHY? WHAT IS ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTEOUSNESS?

Is it out responsibility as the human species to deal with the consequences of introducing invasively-acting species? Or do we just do that shit for fun? It's a lot of fucking work. We pulled baby's breath because it threatened a dune ecosystem, but the interst in it came from tourist revenue. I think we care at all about invasive species because they threaten our cultural resources. AND THAT'S OKAY.

"IT'S INCREDIBLY FUCKING OK THAT WE CARE ABOUT PRESERVING NATIVE NATURE FOR CULTURAL REASONS" - me, now, here

We don't manage invasion because of some stupid divine right or responsibility. Just because we like culture and having it is enough.

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Drummond Island Alvar. Bedrock flat base with meadowed wetland atop. Ireland, Scandinavia, Estonia...and Michigan. Bedrock here is Dolomite (alkaline limestone) - alkaline-preferential plants?//Plants: Prairie smoke (Geum triflorum) wispy, feathery flowers; Indian paintbrush; coral root (corallorhiza striata)// so little soil above bedrock > protect from logging. Then are root systems shallow...? // Alvar categories Glade, pavement, lakeshore, grassland/ associated boreal forest, conifer/hardwood swamp, marsh. SITE 2: Alvar as primary succession. Because alvar scoured to point 0. The striations on the bedrock indicate direction of glacial movement. ROOTS are so important in alvar regions because of how fragile the shallow soil is. The sand on the bedrock is from when huron covered the island. Cephalopod fossils suggest past salinity. SITE 3: Small aspens, clones. 20 year old trees thinner than my wrist. I am really interested in little ground covery plants.