Sweeping the Deck

I swept the deck at the lake house my grandfather built 70 years ago. Stuff falls from the trees and gunks up the place. I kind of like the detritus, but it enrages my mother. So, while I prefer to sit in the grossness of nature, I clean things out of respect for my elders.

Sitting on the deck, overlooking a lake created through the erasure of multiple communities, I am overwhelmed by my privilege. When Grandpa and Grandma bought this land, they were the beneficiaries of the repair necessitated after decades of poverty and war. They lived those decades, so I understand their desire for a calm spot in the woods. A hundred years before their trauma, other traumas happened on this land, so my annoyance at the broom is pathetic.

Castle Rock Lake is the fourth largest lake in Wisconsin, a state lousy with lakes. I’ve barely touched the water in 20 years, preferring to look at it, like it’s a stolen art piece in the British Museum. It isn’t. It’s just a lake created by a vision of American progress that existed in the 1950s.

There are still houses under that water. People my mom’s age watched as the water covered their childhood homes. Before them, Ho-Chunk people were forced off this land. I’m friends with some of their descendants, but I met my friends in Minnesota, not where their great-great-grandparents lived, where I sit on a beautiful deck watching the water.

The only place I feel fully embodied, fully connected to the ground beneath my feet, is here. Stolen land. That seems worthy of consideration, but every time I try to consider it, I fall into a spiral of frustration and confusion that leaves me looking at the water, a thoughtless dummy wanting history to go away.

History doesn’t go away.

There’s a little grove of trees between the house and the lake. My mom hates it, and I’m considering just chopping it down. They aren’t big, and I could handle it on my own. But I like the gunk, the unintentional trees interrupting the view. I like the stupid randomness of nature around this place.

Grandpa forced me to drive the boat. We hit the wake from the boat in front of us and my little body bounced out of the pilot’s seat. Grandpa grabbed the wheel and the throttle and righted us. He didn’t tell anyone because I was too young to be controlling the boat, and he knew it. He covered for me a lot. If others in the family knew about our shenanigans, we’d both get yelled at. That’s a lesson he taught me early.

I know enough to know I don’t know how to take care of this place. Last night, I did something I never do. I prayed. Not to God, but to Grandpa. I asked him what to do with the privilege and place he gave me. Could I pull one more trick and make the bad stuff go away, like he did? I asked him what to do while I’m standing on this stolen land, feeling rooted and stable, the sun hitting my face tempered by the breeze coming from the lake.

He didn’t answer. So, this morning I swept the deck.