scenes from duluth: great lakes aquarium

When Chattanooga built the largest freshwater aquarium, I remember, as a kid, feeling disappointed: we get a giant aquarium of gray fish? Fantastic. Of course, our first field trip there was a constant jaw-drop, and when we went back to my childhood stomping grounds, we brought our daughter, who was only a year and a half at the time, and she splashed and explored with the same glee I felt as a twelve-year-old. The same glee I feel as a thirty-something-year-old.

As someone who is now interested in utilizing the public educational offerings, and as someone who is thrilled to learn at any rate, I've learned not to disparage. What we are given in these realms is such an absolute and astounding gift. And when those who run these places do it with great care and purpose, we are fortunate to receive those messages, gray fish or not.

And, ultimately, it's the gray fish, the trout with their faint pink streak, the skunk and its surprising softness, the fish from the lakes--the ordinary, everyday creatures who live their lives along with ours on this strange an beautiful planet--that fascinate me the most. This is where I live, and I love it here. Only when I've teasingly imagined myself elsewhere have I known that the longing I would have for Minnesota would eclipse the great mourning I experienced when we moved from Tennessee, which was devastating for our family at the time. I remember plotting fantastical and devious ways to trick our parents into getting us back.

Now, of course, because this is where I am and what I am doing, I have all kinds of gratitude for my journey. But I've recognized it fully as a journey, which is why I'm interested, so much, in rooting the manuscript I'm working on in the apocalypse, as opposed to post. I want the characters of this book to have to face not only their personal demons but also the physical ones as well--this is climate change, this is what we have wrought, and this is what we're going to do to not only survive ourselves, but also here are our efforts to repair the damages.

I go to places like this with my children when I can because I want them to think about these things too, and ultimately, I want to foster the already deep sense of gratitude they have for the lives they have, and the lives surrounding them.