By Carrie La Seur,
Legal Director —
The late afternoon sun, hours from sunset as the days stretch out, promises the first true warmth of spring. It’s 5 p.m. on April 25, 2025, and I nestle into the snug seat of my red, white, and blue Jackson river kayak. The Alma impoundment, usually a green, unyielding sea of muck in summer, offers a fleeting invitation. Lifejacket snug, helmet and camera perched atop, and the essential kayaking apron stretched across my lap as a shield against biological threats, I dip my bright blue paddle into the Pine River of central Michigan. It comes up green with algae.
A particular kind of peace resides in the rhythm of a paddle stroke, a meditative forward motion that, for a time, quiets the clamor of the world. Even on the Pine, burdened by notoriety, this truth holds. The current is barely a whisper against my hull. Every upstream stroke means the same effort upon return. I push off from the Alma boat launch under a large sign proclaiming public health warnings. People, by and large, heed these warnings, prudently keeping their distance, even on this beckoning, gentle evening.
My journey begins past the familiar architecture of Alma’s riverfront: the water treatment plant, backyards sloping gently to the water, the green carpet of the Pine River Country Club golf course across from wooded wetlands, frozen a month or so ago, now already choked with algae. The bridge I glide under is Luce Road, the address of feedlots a few miles north with as many as 10,000 beef cattle. Then there are more houses, here and there someone reading in a hammock, watching from a lawn chair. The soft spring air carries a familiar symphony: fierce, trilling red-winged blackbirds, questioning song sparrows, the insistent whistle of the northern cardinal. Higher up, Canada geese honk in their migration, white-throated sparrows call from the treetops. Along the banks, the murmuring coo of the mourning dove calms my mind.
With an Insta360 camera strapped to the top of her helmet, Carrie floats down the Pine River, documenting the algae seen floating on the top of water. Explore the river together and see the Pine River yourself.
As I paddle further, the suburban landscape gradually yields to wooded country. Here, the river begins to thread more intimately through the trees, ribbons of water weaving through the woods. In these stretches, where the human presence is less overt, the river’s deeper, sadder truth becomes unavoidable. Even in April, in every eddy the water wears a vivid, almost neon, film of bright green algae. The middle of the flow carries brown chunks of who-knows-what, organic and unsettling, impossible to avoid as my paddle slices through them and comes up paintballed in brown goo. Locals have warned me not to come in contact with this water, but I have a stubborn habit of seeking solace in nature. Now, miles from my car and acutely aware that the water splashing from my paddle teems with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, I’m grateful for the apron. I wish I’d brought hand sanitizer.
TOP: The view of Carrie’s kayak of the Pine River during the paddle. Above: Chunks of green algae float down the the Pine River.
Occasionally, a fish jumps, a fleeting silver arc, silent testament to life persisting. Drain outlets jut out, emptying the flat land of an unseen, overwhelming nutrient load. A few solitary, patient figures fish from small boats near the shore, casting lines into waters that carry E. coli right down into the tissues of the fish, according to a recent study. The fishermen, stubborn like me, maybe dependent on the river for food, are a stark visual parable of a system in profound crisis.
This watershed is too small, too slow, to process the waste of tens of thousands of animals confined on factory farms, the insidious seep of unregulated septic systems, the chemical fertilizers that leach from fields.
Some tributaries of the Pine, I know, are completely biologically dead, their E. coli levels many times higher than the maximum before a beach is declared unsafe for swimming. Yet, the evening is peaceful. The Pine abides.
In these quiet moments, pushing against minimal current, listening to birds whose voices I know, feeling the deceptive warmth of the early spring, I can almost hear Wendell Berry’s voice. He often speaks of the “genius of the place,” how a landscape holds within it a lifetime of lessons, for those who pay attention. This river is a lesson in ecological fragility, a testament to what happens when we cease to listen, and prioritize convenient, cheap waste disposal over the wisdom of generations. A whole lifetime isn’t enough to learn everything about how a single, complex ecosystem works, yet here, on the Pine, a few hours offer a tragically clear primer on how one can be brought to its knees. The wonder remains, a quiet reverence for the life that stubbornly clings on, even as the absurdity and grossness of its contamination trigger moments of pure disgust. It’s a beauty marred, a peace burdened, a lesson both profound and profoundly sad, delivered by the river itself.
