A dark ribbon of water flows through the Penokees.
Her tannin stained waters look like black coffee.
The Bad River grinds a path through the hills.
She digs in her heels at Copper Falls.
Her "whitewater" is a creamy beige.
Tyler Forks Creek trips down the granite staircase it has polished forever.
The black water burbles in the sinks and tears at cedar roots.
Wood frogs lurk in pools near the bank.
The slippery-eared fellow pays no mind to the rush and hiss.
Here in the shallows, he feeds where the blackness fades.
The Creek takes a hard left turn.
She wears a creaming mane as she empties herself into her Bad River mother.
The Bad River punctures granite with gravity and persistence.
She runs purple to deep,dark brown to obsidian black.
She slides like shimmering porter to the big lake, gathering her daughters.
They slow into oxbows and swell the wild rice.
She sheds her black mantle in the sweet stinking muck of the sloughs.
The dark water clears, melting into the light of the big lake.
Governor Scott Walker and his toadies are planning destroy all this with an open-pit iron ore mine.
Don't destroy this, don't poison this.
Learn more: Citizens Concerned about the proposed Penokee Mine (facebook link).
United In Defense of The Water
The OLB is on this!
Hat tip to our brother in the struggle
noise of rain for this awesome video by Dusan Harminc:
No Mining Bill from Overpass Light Brigade on Vimeo.