The Santee Shrine

My time at water’s edge has taught me a few things that I carry for certain in my heart: There is life, love, and peace by the waysides of water. Whether we are mariners, farmers or fishermen, we are drawn there by something older than ourselves, older than civilization, something that stirs in the DNA of our cells like the very moon-driven currents of the deep. For every human soul there should exist a place on the water, if not in latitude and longitude, in spirit, in memory, or in the land of dreams.

Santee. I love that word. Its Native American roots flow across your lips like your own native tongue. In the Siouan language it means “People of the River.” To me, it means waking up at the birth of dawn, stepping through the warming aromas of coffee and bacon and into a cool, misty morning that clings to your skin like velvet. It’s twenty steps past lawn chairs and carelessly scattered life jackets through cropped, dewy grass to water’s edge. You step onto the smooth planks of the floating dock, shivering a little, the smell of fish and lake in your nostrils, as the layered mist slowly detaches its veil from the rippled lake surface to reveal ducks floating in formation, osprey and egrets skirting just above the waves in search of breakfast. Somewhere, something croaks, and you wonder if it’s a bullfrog or a bull gator. You shiver again.

You drop a wrapped biscuit into the bottom of the canoe and shove off. Soon, maybe, if you are living right and hold your mouth just right for luck, a bluegill bream or two will find themselves flapping between your feet, their scales glistening in a blue-diamond blaze of bittersweet beauty. You never forget the glorious moment you pull in a bluegill or a redbreast. Perhaps that’s why God made them so colorful, just for the memory banks of His children. So they will be hooked forever. So they will return to the waters of their youth.

The sun begins to burn and the fish stop biting. You paddle hard to the dock then dive headfirst from the canoe, the water shocking you with its sudden coolness on your sun-kissed skin. You emerge in a spray of droplets and laughter, ready for a nap in the hammock.

That’s Santee.