Isherwood column: On waters
By Justin Isherwood
I have a private belief that the oath of office of the President of the United States of America should include a glass of water on the Bible; to swear an oath to God and waters.
When President Obama was set to be inaugurated, to send him several options instead of the Bible.
The book oath options I presented to then about-to-be President Obama were; a volume of Sand County Almanac, Walton’s Compleate Angler, A River Runs Through It, and Thoreau’s Concord and Merrimac. The trendline here is probably obvious, a bias to water and perhaps, trout.
I admit my bias to trout waters, with pertinence to the pffice of the President of the United States. To posit the theory if the water health of the nation is good, so is the nation including its economy, its faith and its minorities. This is a lot to put on a single resource, on water, whether it’s bass or bluegill. Yet to include catfish, bullheads, mussel shoals, frog eggs, and trout, all these what water divines.
Every year, I drive Highway 13 due north, preferring Highway 13 for its reverence to small towns and rural villages. My destination lies 38 miles east of Superior. Engaged I am to this annual pilgrimage the same as others might to Mecca, the Sea of Galilee or perhaps the Bosporus; in my case the Brule River.
The Brule is 44 miles long, starting 418 feet over Lake Superior from where it tumbles into that cold sea – 200 of those feet in the last 12 miles.
For the record, five presidents have fished, canoed, or both on the Brule. Ulysses, the first in 1870 – an era when summer in Washington, D.C., was no sane place to attempt government.
Stories exist that Grover Cleveland came to the Brule but there is no official record.
Silent Cal, Calvin came to the Brule ostensibly to skip the Republican Convention on the threat he might be nominated for a second term. Herbert Hoover got nominated instead. Calvin fished but reluctantly, fly fishing he thought unfair to the trout. Hoover fished the Brule to avoid both Washington and jazz, he said. To suspect both were too sweaty for Herbert. Hoover to his everlasting credit translated his own version of the Declaration of Independence to read “life, liberty and the pursuit of fishing.”
Dwight fished the Brule while Air Force One waited at a secret SAC base west of Duluth. It was said, Eisenhower had two passions besides Mamie – golf and trout. He considered building his retirement home on the Brule, but an aide advanced the thesis that winter happens in Wisconsin. Dwight choose Gettysburg to retire.
President Obama during his term of office did fish for trout on Montana’s East Gallatin River. Perhaps he noticed the shortage of Democrats fishing the Brule.
I have since invited President Trump to try the Brule, but apparently it’s not his kind of place, even when I mentioned Lake Nebagamos has a golf course, as does Iron River and there’s Telemark at Cable..
I am of a mind to believe presidents are better for being fishermen, better if a canoeist; involved is some intuitive sense for patience, balance, and poise.
I’m not quite suggesting that waters can cure all ills, including political ills, but waters do at the very least marginalize our woe, and there is something uniquely godly about water, cleansing, forgiving, sustaining.
Cold waters, trout waters are a particular kind, purity is involved, what comes with a sense of original righteousness of being in a hallowed place tended by kindly gods. Water is to connect us to the simplest ingredients; cold water is of a kind to humble a person and restore them. There is an abiding need to know such places exist, where even the power of the Oval Office fades before simpler things, this is good for the person to know, who owns that office.