cattails along the edge of a baseball diamond, waving at me like old friends across the manicured outfield. I wandered away from the teenager whom my mother had often charged with my care that summer. As I reached for a velveteen bloom atop a cattail’s spindly stock, I slipped into the marsh. Black mud and swamp water crept up to my knees, and then, clawing against slick banks, I quickly slid neck-deep into the muskeg. I turned toward the narrow band of open water that snaked through the cattails and swam, struggling through the rushes. Before long the sky opened and I emerged into a pond. I recognized it as the same pond where my little brother and I shoveled snow and played hockey in the winter. And with this recognition came a realization: Twin Lakes Park, which had always seemed so far away, was connected by water to this known place.
I blazed a trail through the pond’s copious green algae, swam around a buoy, and pulled myself up onto the grassy shore. After catching my breath, I wanted to know where the water flowed next. I noticed in one boggy corner a culvert, which ran beneath Cedarwood Road. I had seen this concrete tunnel many times from the road. I had even stood on it, skipping rocks. But until this afternoon, I had never wondered what it was for.
I walked along the shore to the culvert and observed the gurgling inflow. It occurred to me that this was the water’s next pathway, underground through this pipe. I followed it across a series of wooded backyards, tracking an old streambed to where the water surfaced again through the grated end of the concrete tube. The creek flowed lazily to the east and then entered another dark, whispering tunnel. From its entrance, I could see the windows of my bedroom.
My siblings and I had always referred to this patch of woods as the “creek.” We played there, built dams and rapids, swimming holes and forts. Deer occasionally happened through. This was one of the places where I dug in the earth, searching for clues.
I roamed the woods along the creek for weeks after this accidental adventure, but I was unable to locate the far end of that last dark tunnel. Finally, I inflated a small air mattress and floated into the tube. The water was shallow, and I pushed along the cold stone walls until I spilled into a wetland along France Avenue.
I quickly recognized this as the spot where my four older sisters and I flew kites in dry seasons. I could see the upper floors of the IDS Center, Minneapolis’s newest skyscraper, rising above the treetops and reflecting the aqua sky. I abandoned my raft and, following the trajectory of another culvert, walked over Basswood Road. I stood on the western shore of Cedar Lake and watched as water from the tube—water that had begun its journey at least three miles away, in Twin Lakes Park—flowed into the calm blue. I took in the open water, breathing deeply.
In subsequent expeditions that summer, I pedaled my Schwinn Stingray around Cedar Lake, eventually reaching the opposite shore, where I came upon a canal. I stood on a railroad bridge spanning the canal and looked down at the water. Had I continued to the next links in the Minneapolis Chain, I would have come first to Lake of the Isles, then to Lake Calhoun, and on to Lake Harriet. From there I would have found my way to Minnehaha Creek, and then on to the gateway to the world, the Mississippi River, which flows from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico.
I can still envision the sunlight filtering down through the towering red cedars and swaying willows that lined the canal. As a child observing this waterway for the first time, I ached to follow it. To be like the water, which always traveled but was never lost.
When I catch wind of a newsworthy story, I feel like a burning man seeking water, driven to hit the road and investigate. I have experienced this compulsion repeatedly, working as a freelance journalist for magazines and newspapers across North America. It has motivated me to cover stories from Canada to Mexico, and from Washington, DC, to the Alaskan Arctic. But the first time it happened was in September 1988, weeks after the start of my first semester at the University of Minnesota.
The initial spark occurred when I took in a speech at Coffman Memorial Union. The speaker was a fiery Nicaraguan, a Sandinista rebel with a red beret. She railed against abuses inflicted upon Central Americans at the border. “The United States is starting wars against democratically elected governments in Central America,” she proclaimed. “The American government is backing violent dictatorial regimes and then imprisoning the individuals who arrive at the border seeking simple human dignity.”
Intending to write a paper based on this talk for my History of Civil Rights class, I scribbled notes on a yellow legal pad. The speaker was deadly earnest—the way people are when they’ve experienced war. And when she referred to the detention centers that had popped up in Texas as concentration camps, I knew I had to go.
My grandmother, Paulette Oppert, had lost a husband to the Nazis, placed her children (including my mother) in hiding during the occupation of France, and seen trainloads of Jews deported to the East. Maman had always taught me that my greatest responsibility was to remain vigilant against genocide. I was on this Earth above all, she often told me, to help make certain there was never another Holocaust. To this end, she had always encouraged me to write, and to keep a gun in the house.
Three days after hearing the Sandinista speak, I set out for the Rio Grande River Valley, 1500 miles south of Minneapolis. As I accelerated onto Interstate 35, blasting punk rock mixtapes, I felt as if I were finding my destiny. I had interviewed Maman extensively over the years, and I intended to write her biography. After years of searching for an identity, and having exprienced dozens of instances of anti-Semitism myself, I had settled on a personal narrative based on my grandparents’ involvement in the French Resistance. Maquis members served as guerilla fighters, underground newspaper publishers, and manufacturers of forged government documents. They fought alongside the American and British soldiers who liberated France from the Nazis. As I headed for the American concentration camps, I finally had a mission that paralleled this history.
Back home in Minneapolis after a week on the road, I submitted a 5000-word story to the professor who taught my History of Civil Rights course. He encouraged me to publish it, and so I addressed a copy to Steven Lorinser, editor in chief of the student-produced Minnesota Daily. I was ecstatic when he phoned to arrange a meeting.
I found Lorinser waiting for me at a secluded table in the Eric Sevareid Journalism Library. He was dressed in slacks, loafers, and a crisp shirt. His hair was neatly parted on the side and he comported himself like a professional. My head was shaved and I showed up in Chuck Taylors, a tattered sweatshirt, and frayed jeans.
Lorinser was impressed with the reporting I had done from Texas, and asked about my other interests. He called me gutsy, committed to printing my story in the Daily, and promised more opportunities for me to write for the paper.
I described my backpacking journeys in South America and Europe, and the extensive road trips I’d taken to every corner of the United States. As we talked, we discovered a shared love of the Northwoods and canoeing. I told him I’d spent five consecutive summers at a canoe camp on the Canadian border as a teenager, culminating in a 30-day paddle across northern Ontario. I went on to explain how those experiences had led to employment guiding youth on canoe and backpacking trips.
Lorinser’s face lit up like a match to birch bark. He asked if I knew of a book called Canoeing with the Cree.
I shook my head.
“It was actually written by that guy,” he said, pointing to a bust in the middle of the library. He went on to explain how Eric Sevareid had paddled from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay with his friend Walter Port, a distance of some 2300 miles. They undertook the expedition when they were just 17 and 19 years old.
After
