Ponder (pon’ der) v.i. 1. to consider something deeply and thoroughly; meditate…
In hindsight, maybe the title of this piece should be “the ponderer” (n., one who ponders)
It’s 6:00pm. Wedndesday evening. My belly is full of Vietnamese food from A Taste of Saigon. I’m alone, killing time before I drive over to UWS to teach environmental law to young men and women, mostly seniors on the verge of graduation and stepping out into an economy to look for their first “real” job. Things don’t look good for the kids at this point, what with the economy in slow gear as it climbs a hill created by graft, corruption, and greed. Not their fault. Not my fault either. But it is what it is and only the strong survive. That’s America, right? From kids’ Little League and softball to the majors; America is all about competition. Welcome to the Big Leagues is what my students will get come commencement. I hope they can at least hit for average.
I head over the Lift Bridge, Duluth’s iconic landmark of steel spanning the ship canal. I may or may not stop at the Park Point Community Center, park the car, and walk down to the beach. I did that the last time I was pondering.
Might be bad karma to do it again.
I listen to rubber whine over the steel mesh deck of the old bridge as I cross from city to point. A big laker rides low on Lake Superior, her belly full of coal or grain or limestone. The boat has just passed under the raised span of the bridge and is chugging north, towards the locks at Sault Ste. Marie. It’s too early in the year for pleasure boats to be out and about. I drive by powerboats and sailboats in Tranquilty Cove and Lakehead Boat Basin. The boats sit in wooden cradles awaiting the application of copper bottom paint to their hulls and whatever mechanical adjustments the long winter requires. I stop at the stop sign by the vacant Bayside Market and ruminate (something akin to pondering) what I would do with the building if I had money and time. I have neither but, what the hell. A guy’s gotta dream, right? With visions of a great little convenience store-coffee shop-bookstore-bakery-law office-art gallery in my head, my Pacifica pulls away from the silent building. I mosey down Minnesota Avenue (the only real road on Park Point, a spit of sand that juts out into Lake Superior). “The Point” (as we Duluthians affectionately call it) ends in sand and red pine forest and poison ivy near the only natural break in the dunes: The Superior Entry. I say mosey because the speed of my car, as is so often the case, is in tune to the music on my CD changer. No Springsteen or Pearl Jam spins tonight. It’s Duluth’s own Low, the band’s new CD, “C’mon”, and the lush, slow sounds of orchestral rock done right that plays behind my pondering. I drive slow, at a crawl, in tune with the tunes so to speak. And because there is no traffic, no pissed off Pointers rushing to get home after work, no one cares.
I pass the community center without stopping.
My last visit to The Point, I stopped at the community center and walked down to the beach to watch waves stirred up by gale force winds. I picked sand out of my scalp for a week after that bit of pondering.
I pass the little Episcopal church, the Catholic chapel, the nursing home, and the rowing club before coming to the parking lot near the end of Park Point. The lot isn’t the true end of Minnesota Avenue: you can drive a bit further, into Sky Harbor Airport, but I have no reason to go there. So I turn into the cul-de-sac (the program I am using hates this word, with or without the hyphens) near the boat landing, find a spot (I have absolute freedom of choice as it seems no one else is out pondering today), park the Pacifica, turn off the ignition, and listen to Low.
What does this place sound like?
I turn off the music. A nearby sandbar is crammed with herring gulls: Their high pitched calls (likely love songs of the birded kind) pierce the still, spring air. The ice is completely gone from the harbor. Nothing moves on the water. Across the bay, on the Wisconsin side, I hear locomotives pulling rolling stock over tracks and the occasional train whistle.
This exercise, my searching for a place to ponder between the hustle and bustle of the courtroom and the vigor of a university class, doesn’t come easily to me.
Hell, I’m up at 4:30am typing this piece because I’m not the sort of person to sit idle, to simply think.
But I am learning. After fifty-six years of living, I am learning that a man needs to do more than simply act. He needs to think. He needs to ponder.
I think no great thoughts while I listen to the gulls. I endure no epiphanies or moments of inspiration from the heavens during my few minutes of contemplation on the shore of the river that separates two northern towns. I simply ponder. And that seems to be enough.
Peace.
Mark
