“The lake it is said never gives up her dead.
When the skies of November turn gloomy.”
[Lake Superior]

During the last Ice Age, glaciers spread across the Upper Midwest like slow-moving continents of ice. They buried mountains, redirected rivers, and rewrote nearly every landscape they touched.

But not this one.

This region was beyond reach.

The Driftless Area.

I find myself thinking of it as a place that remembered.

A few weeks ago, while driving from the Mojave Desert to Lake Superior, I realized I met the Mississippi upstream. I met the architect that built Southern Louisiana.

For millions of years—the Mississippi River has carried sediment southward. Sand, gravel, silt, and clay traveled downstream until they reached the Gulf of Mexico, layer upon layer and quietly shaping land. It built the bayou I was born on.

Southern Louisiana was never afforded ancient bedrock. Instead, it rests upon the eroded remains of distant mountains carried grain by grain to the Gulf. It is the accumulated remains of traveling stones. The finest sediments eventually reached the delta, where thousands of years of deposition became one of North America's great land-building events.

The bayou where I was born is measured in thousands of years.

The rocks of northern Wisconsin are measured in billions.

In driving north, I realized I had traveled backward through geological time.

You can trace the twists and turns of the Mississippi River from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, spanning nearly the entire height of United States.

The Driftless Area is an anomaly. Preservation by higher forces. Memory. Continuity.

I visited the Driftless where it meets the Mississippi River at Maiden Rock Bluff in Stockholm. Hawks circled above the limestone cliffs while the river flowed quietly below. Standing there, geological time was visible. Ancient marine sediments rested above an active river carrying fragments of distant mountains toward the sea. The Driftless is both a place preserved in geological time and a metaphor.

When everything else has been reshaped, what remains?

Upon meditation, I realize what has been “drift-less” within me is the same insatiable curiosity that led me here. If life is a “spiral dance,” over the last few months, I’ve witnessed that spiral unfolding. I find myself returning to ideas, places, and questions that first emerged years ago, but now with greater experience, understanding, and a renewed sense of wonder.

Touching the Mississippi River near its northern reaches reminded me that landscapes possess histories beyond our desire to control them.

They have so much to teach us.

Curious to know more about the Driftless Area? I think this video is a helpful animation:
https://youtu.be/JS0b19OqBJo?si=NEapp5NgBjm3N492

Driftless Area

“The lake it is said never gives up her dead.When the skies of November turn gloomy.”[Lake Superior]

Scaling Reality

“The lake it is said never gives up her dead.
When the skies of November turn gloomy.”
[Lake Superior]