Minn of the Mississippi: Chapter 1

Minn of the Mississippi by Holling Clancy Holling

Chapter 1: Land of Ancient Waters

A crow sits perched on a pine tree in the rain, waiting for the wetness to be over. Little does it know the history of the movement of water in the locale of this very pine tree over the past millions of years. Long ago, many years of wind and water eroded granite and laid a bed of soil here. Heat stirred up the rocks and folded the layers in places. The path of the water changed many times. After much wetness, there came a time of great cold, and glaciers pushed their way across this land, crushing and grinding the rocks. The cold could not last forever, and then the glacier melted, leaving boulders and new lakes.

The crow notices that the pouring rain has ended. He tries his wings and they provide escape into the sky. He soars over water and sees a dead pickerel on a rock, a good meal. He begins in on it, seeing a pair of reptile eyes poking up out from under a lily pad nearby. A flock of crows nearby call out and our crow exuberantly replies that there is enough dinner for all. But meanwhile, the nearby turtle has stolen away the crow's dinner, and slipped under water for her feast.

The crow and his mate have made a rickety looking nest at the top of a pine tree and laid their five eggs there, safe and sound despite how precarious the nest looks. These eggs must be cared for constantly and sheltered from the cold and rain. But the turtle has a different plan. She digs a hole in the sand and deposits thirty eggs, covers them up, and wanders away, never to see her children. But that is okay, the warmth of the earth and the sun take over and nurture the turtle eggs towards life. Turtle eggs start out about the size of a ping pong ball, and are made of the yoke, the seed, and the white or albumen. One small cell of the seed swells and multiplies into two, and then those two divide, and again and again, so that before we know it, a living thing is becoming. The embryo goes through stages of looking like a worm, a fish, and other creatures, but ends up looking like what it really is, a snapping turtle. It is as though there is a pattern that is built into it, so that it cannot help becoming who it is.