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A River of Neglect, A Habit of Sin
By: Alex Anderson
Cracking beers in the
parents’ Chevy Blazer about an hour before noon on what is turning into
a gorgeous Independence Day. Nearly a straight shot east from Fargo
city limits on a stretch called Highway 10 to the party zone commonly
referred to by locals as D.L. (Detroit Lakes, MN). By the time the
teens have reached Glyndon, MN they’ve sparked a bowl and by Hawley, MN
they need munchies. As the D.L. Wal-Mart becomes visible out of the
tinted car windows, synchronous jubilation spreads throughout the
vehicle in the form of laughter, bicep punches and ear flicks. At a red
light nigh the Perkins sit-down restaurant a dangerous Chinese
fire-drill occurs and cars sit honking horns as the light shines green
on four young men laughing and circling the car with the doors wide
open.
A couple of turns through town and D.L. is left rubbing its eyes with
both fists and turning on the reading lamp to see just who’s there. The
last three miles do the best they can to explain Einstein’s Theory of
Relativity. A water bottle filled with Captain and Coke wheels around
the car counter clockwise, starting with me in the passenger seat. My
nerves are on ice as I have yet to see a copper. We pull into the
gravel-grass parking lot and make odious remarks regarding any woman of
any shape not guitaresque in appearance. We explode out of the car and
behind the open doors of the Blazer we strip out of our jeans and into
our trunks, while making fun of Greg’s small penis.
***
When I was
younger I would stay back at my grandparent’s cabin on Cotton Lake about
2 miles north of the Ottertail River. The adults would pack up a cooler
with ice, wine coolers, and cheap beer – sometimes some sandwiches. My
cousins and I would beg with no end to be permitted along, but the
grandparents would always get stuck with us. The allure of the river
even as a youngster was almost unfathomable. It was everything they
could do that we couldn’t. It was staying up late to watch that scary
movie, it was drinking as much pop as you wanted, it was having fun. To
me it was evident early on: if it looked like a hell of a lot of fun, I
wasn’t allowed.
So the cousins and I found our own entertainment, sometimes hiking
through the woods surrounding the lake or building gigantic sand castles
and trapping frogs and toads in them. On one fateful day, my sister and
I, while playing together and somehow not fighting decided to make a
summer lake stew. A concoction that consisted of sea reeds, sand, lake
water, moss, dead flies, cotton, and some sort of swamp residue that
looked like it should have stayed with the log we found it on. We mixed
it all with a fairly large stick in a plastic bucket that we used to
carry water and sand for aforementioned feats of sand architecture. In
the end it looked like mush and horribly disgusting. We arbitrarily
left it on the end of the dock and found other things to play with;
eventually setting up a game of croquet that led to a predictable
sibling squabble.
***
We decide that we will get our tubes from
Charlie’s, as it is a couple of dollars cheaper. K&K’s is little more
expensive for a longer ride on the river, but with Charlie’s the second
ride is free, plus you can stay on the river as long as you want
anyway. It was an easy choice. So Greg and I each grabbed an end to
the big red cooler and began lugging it toward the party bus. Kyle and
Danny sauntered ahead attempting to flirt with some women way out of
their league. We set down the cooler and stood with Kyle and Danny
giving each other apprehensive looks with not-so-confident grins painted
across our faces. Danny looked the oldest. He had sideburns an inch
long of dark hair that was of the same consistency as the stuff on the
top of his head, not to mention a naturally receding hairline that
seemed to add a couple of months to his tender age. I opened up the
cooler and took out a plastic bag that our wallets were in; we fished
out our respective 5 or 6 bucks and gave them to Danny. He groaned as
he hated to be the one, but he knew that it was coming.
Approaching the darkly tanned man in a cowboy hat and boots, we all
stood back and waited for what we were sure would be our damning. “How
many we got,” he asked immediately. “There’s four of us,” Danny said in
confidence while forking over the wad of bills. “You got a cooler?”
“Yup.”
“It’s an extra five bucks deposit for the cooler.”
“Yup,” we cringed as his response made no sense.
He opened up his wallet with shaky hands and grabbed out another Lincoln
and handed it to the old man. “Okay, how many we got,” he said again
while sort of searching around for something.
“Just the four of us,” Danny repeated.
Then we got our biggest scare. The man sort of chortled and asked to
see the cooler. Danny shot me a look and so I grabbed one handle and
dragged it over to the two of them. When he saw the beer, we’d be dead
for sure. I opened it up slowly and stood back. “How many,” the
question pierced us again.
“Excuse me,” Danny said.
“How many cans you boys got? If you want your deposit back you have to
bring back all your empties. So hurry up and count ‘em, we got a line
formin’ here.”
A wave of relief arced high in the sky and then splashed over us as
Danny and I added up the Mike’s Hard Lemonade that Kyle took from his
parents’ fridge and the cans of Ice House that we had thrown in there.
A number in the low 20’s was written on a wristband that Danny was
wearing. And we were free to find inner-tubes for ourselves and one for
the cooler. The party continued.
***
I recently sat down and talked with Christopher
Buchner, my Grandfather who now lives in the Fargo-Moorhead area, about
the way the Ottertail River is used and the effects he thinks it has on
the surrounding ecosystem. He has owned a cabin on Cotton Lake since
1993 and according to him the Ottertail problem has grown every year
since then. Mostly he cites the fact that Cotton Lake and the river
nearby aren’t as well kept a secret as they once were. When he first
bought the property he and my Grandmother actually went down to the
river a couple of times themselves - something I never remembered.
According to him, it was always a place for younger people to let loose,
but in recent years, especially around the time of Ten Thousand Lakes
Festival and WE-Fest, the river is entirely inundated with immature
people who couldn’t care less about how big of stain they leave on
Cotton Lake or the Ottertail River. Not so much the underage drinking,
but the large amounts of pollution is his biggest concern.
Interestingly he says, “It seemed more innocent when there were just a
few people who wanted to go down there and cut loose, but even at that
time it wasn’t all alright. The people still polluted then. And there
never was anything to stop it back then. We’re all guilty of the same
thing really.” I ask him about the can policy and he says that he
doesn’t even remember that being in effect at the time he went. The
only rule he could remember is that there were no glass bottles allowed.
That is still a rule that is enforced half-heartedly, but if anyone
truly wanted to they could get away with it. Oddly, that rule seems to
enforce itself on the same premise that one would hope the other rules
should: if you mess up the river beyond repair, there will be no river
for recreation. Anyone sneaking glass on to the river might even get
ridiculed by peers floating along, simply because nobody wants a shard
of broken beer bottle cutting open their foot. But when it comes to
cigarette butts and pissing contests in the river the most condemning
you’ll hear is a girl emphatically moaning the word gross, with
two more syllables than it would normally have.
Talking with my Grandpa we decide that there should be more done and he
encourages me to do something about it. But then, what exactly should I
do? I myself have fallen in love with the meandering water and the
river laced vodka drinking contests. I too attempt to crush cans on my
head and then wash the dripping blood off my forehead with a cupped
handful of dingy water. And really, how else to put out a cigarette
without dipping it cherry first into the pool of sin about you?
***
After getting off of the party bus that has driven
us to the official start of the river tubing ride, we find some orange
plastic string to tie our tubes together. In the slow moving pool of
water where people start, we introduce ourselves to a group of guys in
college that happen to have a beer bong. Four hits later and my group
of friends and I are beginning to feel the flow. As most of the beer
bong hits land in the water below us, I wonder if simply drinking the
river through a straw would intoxicate a person.
We start down the river over the rocks and quickly become familiar with
the practice of keeping the ass out of the donut hole in the
inner-tube. Ten minutes later we are all complaining that our asses
hurt and my good friend Greg has a cut on his leg. We start talking
about our crushes at school and what we’d love to do to them and about
the great parties we’ve been to lately. Conversation slowly twists into
the familiar territory of video games.
At the first party spot, as it is called, we hop off the tubes and start
talking with other people and taking long swigs of jungle juice and gin
with our new acquaintances. Some older people on the river ask how old
we are and we quickly lie and say that we attend NDSU. We make up our
majors. The party is amazing and we become accustomed to raising our
cans of beer and chugging until the last drops cascade down our chests
when anyone yells social! Greg and I decide we have to piss and
so we sneak off towards a shaded region of the river and begin to do
business. A girl with her top untied but still slung over her breasts
finds us before we finish and starts yelling something about us pissing
in the water. We’re both horribly embarrassed but we soon realize that
there is more laughing and drinking than there is ridicule and soon we
have met formally with Miss Untied Top and her left nipple, the one on
my right is now exposed. The party continues.
***
As of July of 2005 there is a growing initiative
among volunteers in Minnesota to keep track of the water quality of
Minnesota lakes. According to an article by Dan Gunderson put out by
Minnesota Public Radio, the initiative has
lasted for about 30 years now and is going strong with about 1,000
volunteers working to monitor 900 lakes. The group serves to look at
the algae growth in the lakes. But mostly the cause is to test what the
article calls the, “swimability” of any given lake, as in reference to
its recreational quality. This monitoring of lake clarity, while noble,
still leaves many unanswered questions. As stated plainly in the
article, “water clarity is only one small component of water
quality. There's no monitoring for pollutants like bacteria from runoff
or failing septic systems and no measurement to track the impact of
livestock or wildlife feces on the water quality of [Minnesota lakes].”
So what can be done? The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA)
which oversees the volunteers keeping track of lake clarity should
arguably be doing more. The organization seems to have a pretty good
grasp on the industrial elements of pollution, but meanwhile there are
lakes and rivers being absolutely terrorized by Minnesota tourists and
inhabits of debauchery. And could the fact that these are big tourist
spots be playing a sly accessory in the fact that this hasn’t already
been addressed. Nowhere that I can think of other than small town N.D.
is underage drinking condoned the way it is on the Ottertail River near
D.L. Will anyone step up and do the right thing or will this problem be
swept under the rug awhile longer yet? Is anyone here innocent?
***
Back at my grandparents’ lake cabin my sister and
I have long since been done playing nicely and the parents and aunts and
uncles return stumbling and laughing, asking about steaks on the grill.
By the late hours some people have retreated to campers and tents
situated in the big chunk of land owned by Grandpa. The 10 o’clock news
is playing quietly while a younger cousin is put in the crib in another
room. My sister, my cousins, and me lay on the ground in the living
room, bored with the news and fall asleep before midnight.
The next morning is a hangover for the adults and everyone is a little
crabby at the big breakfast table. A large plate of scrabbled eggs with
cheese is passed around and one of my cousins spills his cup of orange
juice. A knock at the door brings more bad news. It seems somebody fed
the geese something they shouldn’t have and now two have died. It’s
well known that my Grandpa doesn’t like the geese crapping on his land
and so it looks like he has purposely hurt them. “What is in that
feeding bucket on the end of your dock, did you poison them?” My sister
and I creep away from the table. An argument ensues and eventually the
two men my grandpa and a neighbor go down to the dock to investigate the
concoction. I tell my mom what we made while they’re away and she
shakes her head disappointedly. My sister and I were grounded from
T.V. and videogames, if I remember correctly. Eventually my
grandparents stopped getting heat from the neighbors about supposed bad
intentions. But the event still sticks with me.
***
The party spots
are over and the bugs are beginning to bite; the sun has clouded over
and I’m now shivering after being in the water too long. My fingers are
wrinkled. We’re all very drunk and we’ve smoked more on this river in
the past few hours than we had collectively the rest of our lives added
together. Not to mention the green from the trip up. We’re still doing
some general rough housing as we reach the end of the river. We tackle
one another into the water and continue to flirt with some girls in
inviting them to Zorbaz Pizza with us. They decline and so we march out
of the water and up the hill to where the cars are parked. We get our
deposit back; despite the fact that we know we are missing a couple of
cans. It begins to sprinkle momentarily and we quickly dry off and
change back into our jeans, once again poking fun at Greg’s small
prick. We swerve our way back to town to the Zorbaz and order something
exotic. Somehow, we aren’t pulled over. We drive to my grandparents’
cabin and pitch a tent in the yard.
We lay there talking about the great day we had on the river and in the
morning somewhere close to noon, we decide that if my older cousin will
buy us some beer we should go down it again. The river and the land
takes a back seat and we drive, pedal to the floor, fumes rolling out
the exhaust, into habits we know we should break. We know we should
brake. But the party continues.
FOR FURTHER READING:
"America's Animal Factories
." Minnesota. Dec 1998. Natural Resource Defense Council.
16 Apr 2007
<http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/factor/stmin.asp>.
Buchner, Christopher.
Personal interview. 14 Apr 2007.
Gunderson, Dan. "Volunteers
monitor Minnesota water quality." Minnesota Public Radio. 12 July
2005. 20 Apr 2007
<http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/07/30_gundersond_volmonitors/>.
"Lakes in Minnesota."
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. 12 Dec 2006. Minnesota Pollution
Control Agency. 21 Apr 2007
<http://www.pca.state.mn.us/water/lake.html>.
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