State Representative David Bly, District 25B

My first memories of Northfield are of coming to visit my grandmother who lived in the house I now live in on Lincoln Street. We would pass through town and over the bridge by the Ames Mill and the dam. Once at the home my brother and I would race back and forth over the cracked sidewalk under the two towering elm trees. With my father we might venture down to the swamp to the north that Lincoln Street emptied into. There we might catch frogs or salamanders. If we brought them back my grandmother would tell us stories about them and how they fit in to the web of life never missing the opportunity to apply her skills as a teacher. Sometimes we’d make our way downtown and watch the river the fish. My grandmother died on April 1st in 1960 and we moved to Northfield that year to take over the home she left behind.

The river became more apparent to me first as a geographic boundary that divided the town - east and west. I was a Westsider and with some trepidation I would ride my bike across the rickety second street steel frame bridge. I didn’t think much about where the water came from or where it went. I was curious about the fish that occasionally leaped up or tasted the air. My father told me stories about how college rivals might meet en masse at the bridge threatening violence to each other.

Secondly, I knew the river as a fascination, I went with my father once spring to photograph the rising waters crashing over the dam. Even when the waters were not rising it was mesmerizing to watch the river fall over the dam. It seemed to take years before Northfield realized the aesthetic advantages of the river we now enjoy from Fifth Street down Second. As a boy scout I began to explore the river as something to explore and enjoy. As an adult I commuted several years to Faribault to teach and appreciated another aspect of the river as it flowed along the highway offering glimpses of its beauty.

All of these images and thoughts entered my mind when I wrote the poem for last years Cannon River Watershed Partnership Festival:

CANNON RIVER REVERIE

A rounded black stone at the river’s edge
A great blue heron waits for the wind to settle
Below huge carp fan the mud with their fins
As the river meanders through rolling hills

Chickadees hop along the shore picking up twigs
And a water bug skates across the surface unaware
Of what the river could remember of ancient ice and
Ancient campers trading along the banks

Black water fed by streams and rivulets winds its way
Past the wheels of commerce and indifferent travelers
Boys and recent immigrants cast their thin lines into the flow
Catching the feel of its pull and hoping to distract a fish

Snowmelts and summer rain make it powerful beyond
Its ordinary sense of self and hypnotizes passersby
Once a center of life now a quiet but pleasant distraction
That connects us to the beginnings of life and civilization

Civilizations emerge around rivers grow grain
Harness the river’s power and bathe in its natural
Tendency toward regeneration - rivers are the flow of time
And touch the brief moment we all exist in

Those living along the river learn to live within
The boundaries of the delicate balance that nourishes all
And like the river we become what we put into it
So if we strive for purity we must live a life more pure

Like the great blue heron at the river’s edge
We wait while the busy world passes over us
Newcomers strangers and rememberers we stand
Together with the pull of time and spin of stars

When I got an e-mail to help with this years CRWP festival it was an easy commitment to make. The partnership for those of you who don’t was created in 1990 to put forth several initiatives to protect and clean up the area waters in the watershed. I remember reading about it and being interested in their work but unable to commit the time to help. I had read poet Gary Snyder’s essay urging that a watershed is an ancient and natural region that watershed natives could organize around and manage locally. ” . . . the watershed is the first and last nation, whose boundaries, though subtly shifting, are unarguable . . . and the life that comes to flourish within it constitutes the first kind of community . . . The lessons we learn from the wild become the etiquette of freedom. We can enjoy our humanity… and take ourselves as no more and no less than another being in the Big Watershed.” –Gary Snyder, (The Practice of the Wild). He argued that if across the country the various watersheds could be organized and protected in this way it would be a natural way to connect people to the land and preserve the environment.


Judging by the commitment and enthusiasm of the various people setting up booths Saturday morning I would say Snyder has something. After setting up tables and chairs and helping various participants find their booths I was asked by Charlie Skinner to help with the Canoe and Kayak races.

I set up more tents, pounded stakes, and mounted signs. Finally, I settled in for a leisurely afternoon by the river. I watched the paddlers race against each other once I’d started them off with the clang of a cowbell. Time and the river let me enjoy the flow and the visitors to its banks until the canoes returned.