Vessel Of Voices’ Weblog

This article is presented in three parts. Part 1 explores how Justine Kerfoot’s pioneering spirit and living close to the land she loved offer us a compass for the twenty-first century.

A Woman of the Boundary Waters

To change the direction of one’s life takes more than courage and a lot less thinking than we think.

Through a brief glimpse into the life of Justine Kerfoot (1906- 2001) we tap into our own capacity and hunger to live more fully, to use our bodies and minds more constructively and courageously, and finally, to know the earth that is our home and know that we are an integral part of the fabric of all life.

Kerfoot spoke her mind and lived close to the bone of her values. She did what mattered most to her. Justine Spunner Kerfoot lived in northern Minnesota off the Gunflint Trail for her entire adult life.

She was known as ‘Lady of the Gunflint Trail’, respected by both those of her own heritage and Native Americans in the region. She loved the land she lived on; as a steward of land and waters, she became involved in local politics and environmental issues. As owner and operator of the Gunflint Lodge for 51 years her daily life demanded mental focus, creative problem- solving, and physical strength beyond what most of us in metropolitan areas now can begin to fathom. As a local newspaper columnist she earned great respect for her eloquent, detailed writing of what life was like on the
shores of the boundary waters through harsh, brutal winters and the juxta- position between old, more primitive ways of living and the introduction of modern conveniences such as electricity and modern plumbing.

Background
Justine Kerfoot graduated from Northwestern University in 1927 with a major in zoology and minors in philosophy and chemistry. She had planned to continue on in medical school until she set foot in the boundary waters in Minnesota, just south of the Canadian border. After graduation she took a trip to meet her mother in a wilderness area called the Gunflint Trail in northern Minnesota. In her own words,

• “An infinitesimal speck in the cosmos, I stood on the shore of Gunflint
  Lake beneath a great white pine-matriarch of a fast-vanishing tribe.
  And I knew I was home. I was twenty-one. The year was 1927.”

A clear sense of place
Where and how do we feel the kind of clarity Justine Kerfoot felt? Kerfoot describes her experience of knowing as an occurrence, not in the library, but in nature.

Something different happens to us when we spend time in nature.

Sounds in nature re-connect us to source. Natural sounds reconnect us to our own heartbeat. Every living creature has a heart. Chirping of crickets , the brr-rrr-ump of frogs, the swoosh of the wings of a seagull or the harsh caw-caw-cawing of a crow . . . now become aware of any sensations or associations you may have in read this.

Now, let’s switch to the constant whirring and buzzing of commerce and industry . . . the low, constant buzz of a refrigerator, cell phone bells, bongs, and dings, the roar of a leaf blower, pound-pound-pound- ing of a jack hammer ~ all of these act as a stimulant, an irritant or as an interruption, often putting us on edge or fatiguing us. The fact is we become habituated to noise and, thus, are not aware of its deleterious

effects upon our bodies and psyches (see Mary Lynn Kittelson’s Sounding the Soul for further reading).

No wonder there are countless recordings of bird songs, whale songs,ocean waves, the wind, and the rains available now. Sales continue to soar. We are desperate to re-connect . . . we are starving for the ‘real world’.

Kerfoot, along with other residents of the Gunflint Trail, lived amongst a symphony of nature sounds that we now pipe into our consulting rooms or play at night to drown out incessant low rumbling or whirring of traffic.
Imagine waking up to a songbird singing from a nearby tree and a gentle rustling of leaves in an early morning breeze. Imagine if all noise were a song to be sung.

When I lived in Minnesota in 1990’s I knew a woman who wired a microphone to a bird feeder hanging from a tree where winter birds fed. She positioned a speaker inside her kitchen window. As she chopped carrots and juiced her vegies bird songs floated through her kitchen on those sub-zero winter days. Vibrations of song filled her glass, not news of a world gone wrong.

Let’s speculate further on that moment of clarity on the shore of Gunflint Lake ~ the area was a wilderness, thus no sound of freeways, not even factories or any industry beyond lumbering and fishing. No billboards intruded upon her visual field nor infringed upon her consciousness. She was standing on the earth, not pavement. Her ears may have been covered by a cap or earmuffs, but certainly not earphones in 1927!
Electricity and telephone wires did not exist in the far reaches of the north yet. (Later, Justine was instrumental in the establishment of the first electricity and first telephone service in the area.) On a sensory level, one stood free from the effects of these ‘modern
conveniences’. How differently might one ‘perceive’ the surrounding world with only the sound and feel of the wind, the rain, and the howling of wolves in the distance?

Stay tuned, in the next blog we’ll discuss tips for reconnecting with the natural world.