To Be Marquette - Northern Magazine

By Sharon Dilworth '81 BA

I think it was then that I began to think of Marquette as a verb—to be Marquette—was to be rid of the person I had been and to embrace someone completely different. Up there, everything seemed possible. In Marquette, it was possible to live that close to the natural world—to live that close to beauty.

"THE YOUNG," Dr. Robinson lectured us the first week of classes, "have never been good at heeding advice." It wasn't our fault. It was our age—an age of rebellion—a time to question authority, and we shouldn't resist the urge to do exactly the opposite of what we're told. But occasionally we should make an exception and listen.

This was one of those times.

"You're all from Michigan. You've grown up around water. You've been on lakes. You're not afraid of what you know. But beware. Lake Superior is different. It's beautiful. Like nowhere else in the world. But it's also dangerous. Life sometimes presents like that. Beauty and danger at once."

He was getting abstract and could tell that he was losing us. To prove his point, he explained about the freighter that had sunk the previous November. The ballad by Gordon Lightfoot wasn't out yet, and it was the first some of us had heard about it.

"It was a massive ship carrying tons of iron ore, traveling from Wisconsin to Lake Erie. It sank in a hurricane-strength winter storm. All twenty-nine men on board drowned. Some were your age." His voice cracked, and we sat forward. "Don't be foolish. Don't be arrogant. Superior is colder and deeper and more destructive than any of the other Great Lakes." The past summer, he told us, he was on the beach near Munising and found a bottle with a note inside. He hoped it was a message from the ship, some sort of communication sent out before it sank, but it was a telephone number. Random—no name, but a 906 area code, which was anywhere in the Upper Peninsula, and he just thought it was somehow connected to the ship. He called it every once in a while, but no one answered. He wrote the number on the board, for no apparent reason.

And for no reason that I knew at the time, I copied it into my notebook. I recorded most everything Dr. Robinson said that first semester.

I called the number a few times. No one picked up, and I had no idea what I would have said if they had. It was a message in a bottle. It might have been vital—a real need to communicate something important to someone else. Maybe I would have just listened.

But no one ever answered.

Dr. Robinson said we were going to have to become activists. ''As in, take action. You, who have decided this world is worth fighting for." He drew the planet on the blackboard and then wrote SAVE ME next to it. "Beauty and danger," he said. "The world was beautiful. What we are doing to the planet is dangerous. We are in peril, without even being aware of how precarious everything is." But we could help. It was up to us to change things. To make the world a different place.

"It would be great if we could accomplish things by just sitting around bitching about them. But in the end, talk means nothing if there's no action behind it. In fact, talking about it is probably the most wasteful thing you can do. It shows you know there's a problem and you're not doing anything about it."

He advised us to make emergency packs and to keep them handy. "In case you're arrested. And if you take this seriously, you will be arrested.

Rule # I—Wear comfortable shoes. You never know when you're going to have to run from the law.

Rule # 2—Carry your ID and a stack of dimes for phone calls.

Rule # 3—Prepare a baggie of crackers or gorp (granola, oats, raisins, peanuts). You never know how long you'll be in jail. Bring extra. It's good to make friends in jail.

Rule # 4—Memorize the phone number of a friend or family member who has a car or who can get in touch with someone who does. You will need them if you're released from jail at midnight and the buses are no longer running."

It felt important—a new code.

It felt like a rallying cry, and I was all for it. I had finally found my purpose. I was going to save the planet from unnecessary destruction.

He was speaking my language. I had been looking for a way to save the world from a premature ending since the sixth grade when my teacher Mrs. Jones told us about overpopulation, acting as if it was our fault. She warned us that we would most likely not make it to the millennium. I counted the years; I wouldn't even beforty. It didn't sound like enough life.

We made paper globes and hung them over our desks. She flicked at them when she walked around the room talking about doom and destruction. "Face masks will become necessary very soon. The air will be so polluted, and no one will be able to breathe." She chewed on a stick that she kept behind her ear. She said it freshened her breath naturally—but it didn't work. "The parks and lakes you love so much will be gone soon. Too many people needing too much drinking water." We asked what we could do, and she said, "Nothing. I'm old. Chances are, I'll be dead. It will be your problem."

I was out-of-my-mind scared. I didn't know what to do but walked around with my stomach in knots of anxiety, dreading the day when the world would suddenly turn dark, the streets would become too crowded, and I wouldn't be able to ride my bike. No one could help, not my mother or my father. No one. I might have understood that she was a fanatic, a real nutjob, but her predictions scared me into a dull submission. She took away my hope.

One of the kids in the class told his parents that we talked about the end of the world almost every day, forgoing science and math. We got a new teacher halfway through the year. She was young and bubbly and kept stickers in her top drawer. "I know you're not kindergartners, but I like a reward for a job well done." She had an endless supply—ladybugs, flowers, fish, turtles, and baby chicks hatching from cracked eggs.

Stickers were not going to help the population explosion. 

I never believed Mrs. Jones. There had to be something we could do. I vowed then to be responsible. I would do something to change the world, even if no one else would help.

Dr. Robinson admitted that he was so worried about overpopulation that he sometimes felt relief when there was a natural disaster. "Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes. It's not right, but I worry so much about Mother Earth. I don't think she can support many more of us."

It was good to hear him say that. I never told anyone that I did the same thing.

Dr. Robinson saw me smiling. "Do I have a counting comrade in the class?"

I gave a short nod. It wasn't nice, but it's what I did when I saw a headline of a disaster around the globe. I never told anyone because it was ghoulish. Yet the higher the number, the more I thought, Well, at least it's better for the Earth.

The others in the class were incensed: "That's sick!" Which is probably why I never shared my reaction to mass death. Dr. Robinson agreed with all the criticism without any apologies. "You're right. You're right. Welcome to the world of humans. We're not perfect. None of us." I liked how he turned things around. He made it seem like we should be glad we had faults. He validated these things, no matter how extreme.

THE BONFIRE was at Shiras Park, on Lake Superior and not far from campus. I was the first one there, but l didn't want to be. Being early made me look desperate or friendless, which I might have been, but there was no reason to advertise that fact. I walked down the beach, halfway to the break wall in the upper harbor up near Presque Isle.

The lake was a surprise. I had not been expecting that. I mean, I knew it was there. I had grown up in Michigan. 

I knew the Great Lakes. But Superior was like nothing else I had ever seen. Like nothing else I had ever known—deep, deep blue in the late autumn light; vast, the end never in sight; and the promise of the cold that was to come, that at that time of year felt possible. I liked being near it.

It was September. I was in Marquette—in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, an eight-hour drive from my hometown of Royal Oak, outside Detroit. It was as far away from home as I could get and still pay in-state tuition.

I saw some figures on the shore, then the start of the bonfire. I walked back. The light was gone; it was dark now. The guys were all there. The party had started. Most everyone was wandering the beach looking for firewood and kindling. I joined in, glad to be doing something.

Dr. Robinson was the last to arrive. The bonfire crackled; the birch wood was young and wet. Sparks shot into the night sky, then burned out as they fell.

My favorite show when I was a kid was Lost in Space. It was about a family traveling the Milky Way, landing on strange planets, encountering all kinds of dangerous elements in the galaxy. They never made it back to Earth in the whole time I watched it. It used to depress me. I didn't realize that if they did, the show would end, and later the show was canceled while they were still out in space. The family's name was Robinson. The father was a doctor.

I couldn't help but think of the show when the professor introduced himself in class the first day. Dr. Robinson, I wanted to say, You're home! You finally made it back to Earth. I've been so worried all these years. 

Dr. Robinson refused the beer the guys o. ered him. "Got that covered," he said. He had a flask in his shirt pocket, a thick flannel that they all wore like jackets. "But what about Molly?"

Everyone turned to look at me. I got shy and concentrated on watching the embers. Like Tinkerbell dancing around and above the flames. I wasn't sure what he wanted from me or why he had said my name. Except for the three nursing students who were taking it to fulfill their breadth requirement, I was the only girl in the class and usually felt out of place.

“I’m sure Molly would like something to drink," Dr. Robinson told the guys.

Finley was standing next to me. Dennis Finley, but everyone called him Finley, as if he didn't have a first name. He touched my arm. "Do you want something?"

"Okay," I said.

I had brought a bag of pretzels but nothing to drink. I didn't know how a party like that worked. Back in high school, everyone brought their own stuff for the night, but I didn't want to carry a six-pack to the beach while I was alone and without a car. So I thought I would just skip the drinking. But I was just as glad to have something to drink. Like everyone, I was better socially when buzzed.

Finley moved away from the fire and brought back something in a plastic cup. It was sweet smelling, something I had never tasted before.

"Southern Comfort," Finley said

"It's good," I said before I even tasted it. I was being weird. I told myself to take it easy. "Thanks," I said. There, that sounded normal.

The cup was full, and I took a big drink, which was just as stupid, as it burned the back of my throat when I swallowed. took several deep breaths to keep myself from coughing it back up.

I didn't know what to do, how to act, or what to say to anyone. I didn't really know any of the guys, but I wanted to. I thought they were so interesting. They were cool. Nature boys. Someone had called them that at the bookstore one day. They were so into the class, so into the outdoors, into nature, the woods, the lake. Like modern-day Daniel Boones, without the coonskin caps. 

I stood and took sips of my drink. Finley was tending the fire, so I crouched beside him and pretended like I was helping. He had it under control. It was blazing. I handed him some kindling, and he tossed it on top.

The nursing students weren't at the party. They had early morning rotations at the hospital the next day, and they didn't want to risk hangovers. Two of them were named Sue, and Dr. Robinson called them Sue 1 and Sue 2, like from The Cat in the Hat—Thing l and Thing 2. He could never remember the third girl's name and sometimes called her Sue 3. She told him that was rude, so he stopped calling her anything. I noticed things like that.

I stood up and took some more sips of my drink. It was helping. I no longer felt like everyone was looking at me.

Dr. Robinson was talking in his lecture voice, the way he spoke to us in class. Loud, with long dramatic pauses, like an actor on stage but without the hand gestures. The emphasis was on the first words of each sentence. "The males are very particular. Mating for them is a careful dance," he said. I was confused, having missed some of what he had been saying. I thought for a moment he was talking about giraffes. But that couldn't be right. But it was—he was talking about giraffes.

"The male approaches a female once he sees something he likes. He rubs her back, caressing her until she urinates. And then he drinks her pee. With this mouthful, he makes his decision. To mate or not to mate."

He got the reaction he wanted. The guys were laughing. No more party awkwardness. He grinned, tipped his flask to his mouth, and drank. 

The guys seemed like good friends, as if they had known each other for years instead of just a few weeks. The second week of class they started calling themselves the Crusoes, like from Robinson Crusoe, the novel by Daniel Defoe. It didn't really make sense—it was the character's name in the book, not a band of guys trying to survive in the wilderness, but that's how they saw themselves.

They loved their nickname. They were modern-day castaways. I don't know if any of them had read the book. I had. It was dead boring.

Someone had told Dr. Robinson about the name. "Wonderful," he had said. He thought a group with a purpose was a great idea. "The revolution needs numbers. The individual will have a Sisyphean struggle. It's always good to have more help pushing that rock up the hill."

I didn't think I was included in their Crusoe club, but I wanted to be.

I didn't remember there being any women on the island, but that couldn't have been right. They were probably just left out of the story. I didn't really know what the club was for—did they have secret handshakes and passcodes to enter their clubhouse? I hoped so. That's why I wanted in. I wanted to belong to something.

I drank more Southern Comfort. It burned less going down this time.

"Which brings us to the panda. For the giant panda, mating is what you might call a very slow dance. Frustrating, I'd imagine, mostly because the sexual interest of the female panda lasts, on average, seventy-two hours per year. You heard that right. Seventy-two hours per year. Not like you all, seventy-two hours per day. So it's all very diddicult to keep your species going with the odds stacked up against you like that."

When everyone stopped laughing, Dr. Robinson looked over at me. He did that sometimes in class too—called me out, as if my opinion would be different than everyone else's. "What do you have to say to that, Molly?"

The whiskey was warm in my throat, giving me a strange sense of courage. "I say good for the panda."

The fire cracked. Everyone was silent, then some of the guys began to boo. Dr. Robinson held up his flask. "No, no. Careful, boys. There is power in solidarity. Empathy is a strong emotion. Watchout for that, and know what you're up  against."

The wind gusted, and the fire dimmed under the weight of the blowing sand. The guys moved quickly, fanning it back to life.

"Well, I'm off, gentlemen. And Molly, of course," Dr. Robinson said. I’ll leave you all to reach your own conclusions on this wildly and endlessly fascinating subject."

We didn't want him to leave. We wanted to keep him there, but he said it was time. He tossed the sticks at his feet onto the fire, a burst of light. "Don't stop asking your questions. There are so many things we need to know."

Then he left. I didn't know it at the time, but that would become his charge for us. Always this advice, assuring us that there was nothing wrong in not knowing things.

Not much later, the party broke up.

I walked back to campus with one of the guys—one of the Crusoes named Shane Lebarre. Being with him felt like the icing on the cake of a perfect night.

That was a mistake.

I made a lot of them that year.