The 1847 Dutch settlers

settled in a swamp

they didn’t know

was just so

till the spring when

there was a big melt

of snow.

So they chopped and

sawed and cut

all the trees

and drained the swamp

after the big freeze.

They dug a channel

and sent those logs

flying into the breeze.

They farmed the land

and brought prosperity

to that hardworking,

immigrant

community,

but over the years, the

fertilizer and run off

polluted the lake

name Black

and the citizens

a century

and a half later

didn’t know

if they would

get their

lake back

from farmland

spill and phosphorus

and wondered, “What will

happen to us?”

Well, some really smart

academic folk said,

“This is not a joke; if you

want to make your

lake pristine,

you have to create some

watersheds to

make that water clean.”

So, believe it or not, as if

by God’s grace,

the country club of the old,

blue-nosed

Dutch went belly up

and it was just the right

place.

That low, lying land

became a water shed

to hold back all

the pollutants of dread

and clean water started to

come back as it was

in the good, old days

before the Dutch displaced

the Ottawas.