Bogged Down?

(Sept, End of Summer)

After many years of wanting to learn how to harvest wild rice, I finally got my chance. Jeff and I made our way to a lake north of LCO and set out into the rice beds. I was amazed to look at the lake covered in tall grass. More rice than open water. I had made my own pole the night before and used it to push our canoe back and forth through the rice while Jeff knocked rice into the canoe. It was my first start as a rookie. The first hour or two, I was a little slow trying to figure out what was good rice and where to steer. In the middle of the Lake was a beautiful thick length of rice. I pushed toward it only to find it was a bog and now I understand what it means to be bogged down. A friend yelled over to us that we were in a bog and told us how to get around it. Our canoe floated just deep enough to be hung up in the reeds and muck. When I used my pole to push and steer, the pole sank 6 - 8 feet into the muck. Pushing got me nowhere and pulling the pole out of the muck just sucked us further into the bog. Rookie. Jeff was very patient. Even while struggling through, we were able to gather rice. The lake had been opened up the day before by the rice chief so we were really trying to find what was left. The rice had been hit hard because it was the very beginning of the season. Everybody is going to the same lakes. Other people were in the rice beds, friends and acquaintances from around the res. What a peaceful afternoon moving through tall grass watching other canoes slowly gliding through the beds.

We made our way slowly around the bog and passed through some well harvested beds. I was thinking of how much work this was to make rice, on top of all the work, I was having to learn to stand in the canoe and balance while pushing us along with a 14 foot pole. My thoughts went to Peter. He and his partners had been fishing one night, all night long. Casting out the net. Drawing in the net. Moving around the lake. They had not caught a fish. In the morning, Jesus borrowed Peter's boat to speak to the crowd gathering on the shore. After addressing them he said to Peter go out to the deep and put out your nets. Peter says come on we've been doing this all night, we are tired, we are through for the day, we have come up empty, but OK because you said, I will. The nets began to fill, the boats began to sink. They had fish.

I envisioned a sinking canoe of rice. We got ourselves around the bog and began to work back and forth across the lake. Slowly the rice fell and began to cover the bottom of the canoe. As the sun rose higher in the sky and became hot the rice fell even faster. We found some untouched areas. We followed the birds who eat the rice and started to fill the canoe.

We did not get as much rice in the end as we had hoped, but I was amazed at how God provides so simply and so profoundly. I takes effort, but harvest is inevitable.