i found a piece of iron in the lake

this is not, on its face, remarkable.

there is a lot of iron in the woods and on the bottoms of lakes, here, rusting dinosaur bones sinking into cedar loam and snarls of galvanized steel cable from the first days of mechanised logging

the cold in the lake here preserves a lot of things. couple years ago a diver hired to check the anchor bolts on a float house (for insurance purposes) found the 18-years-missing remains of a prior owner. scared the hell out of him.

he was right there, right under the house he used to own, as if he'd fallen the 80' to the bottom through thin air instead of sinking, and they didn't find him for 18 years.

anyways, so i was looking at the broken bricks, shattered tiles, and upward curves of buried steel logging cable, and i found this piece of iron.

i am always looking at the ground. people drop an amazing amount of stuff.

you would not believe the number of quarter inch washers people lose everywhere, and they just leave them when they check for the clink and realise its not a quarter.

its still a washer, folks, and they're just so DANG USEFUL.

so i'm looking down at my feet (always a good idea on a rocky beach) and i see a rusty and nearly perfect square.

i remember how, at the OTHER end of the same beach and sunk in 20' or so of gin-clear water, is what looks like an iron box, big enough to be a coffin.

it does not have a lid, and there is nothing inside it. i looked, from far away.

come to think of it, it is almost precisely under the place where i found that front door floating on the water.

there is also a bunch of logging trash under there, including whole logs and tree stumps from before settlers build the dam that still powers the paper mill, and drowning the lakeside portion of the village of tees'kwat and demolishing the rest.

the dam is why the lake has sea-run cutthroat trout who have been unable to reach the sea since 1924

they are the same colour as sea-run cutties, but now - like the kokanee - they are present year-round.

they are delicious and eager to snap at my lures, but i would be lying if i said i don't have complicated feelings about killing and eating Indigenous members of a tribe who are surviving amongst the violent wreckage of their home, and unable to return to the other half.

i reached down and picked up this square of iron. it was rusty, but not with the mushy, soupy flaking you get on untouched iron standing in still water.

it was rough on my fingers, and had the weight of something created before planned obsolescence.

it was sand- and wave- scrubbed, not marking my skin or leaving an orange puddle behind, and what i had taken for lumps of rust was actually words.

HILLS
MCCANN? (presumably A)
CO
CHICAGO

and on the other side

PAT OCT
2
1900

in the early aughts (the other ones) Hills McCanna of Chicago sold lubricant pumps.

this is the closest item i can find.

and it seems tremendously, excitingly old - maybe even historical - if you don't think about the dead cedar snags standing all around and in the west side of the lake, still bearing the charcoal of a massive forest fire that happened in 1918.

its probably younger than the fire, cos the lubricant pumps were used for decades

when i think about how much damage the land has sustained in such a short time at settler hands, i think of the iron in the lake and the burned trees still standing.

this isn't ancient history.

and the iron will rust but the trees make more trees, and anishinaabek make more anishinaabek and tla'amin nation is surviving covid, and maybe cutthroat trout will reach the sea someday, and salmon will run in the river again.

it just takes time, i guess.

this collection of thoughts does not have a unifying point, it's just neat that the settler trash pile sitting on the bottom of the lake, the iron and stricken trees and tangled cable that eat so many of my lures, should finally decide to say something aside from "fuck you."

i would like to get an underwater camera and take you on a fishin' lake trash-hunter journey someday. i would LOVE to be able to do it while diving, but diving equipment makes me claustrophobic!

wait i just realised submarine drones are an actual Thing, Like For Real

maybe i can use one in the tiny flash of geological time before both Submarine Drone and Big Native Gay Weirdo are dust

amazing. a whole entire new way to bother fish.

me: "i should save up and crowdfund for one!!"
every freshwater fish for 50km: