Next Full Moon Walk Monday, May 19, 2008
Gather at 7 PM
Greenman Plant Walk Around the Coldwater Area
We will walk up and down the Mississippi gorge with Henry Fieldseth,
founding soul of the Friends School Plant Sale. It is the largest plant sale in Minnesota and specializes in native woodland and prairie plants. Henry even loves "weeds."
– Traditional group howl! –
May's moon is called the planting or flower moon
in various traditions.
Sunset 8:40 PM – Moonrise 8:55 PM
• Always FREE and Open to the Public •
Join FRIENDS Every Friday at 2 PM Rain... Snow... or Sun!
Gather informally at the Coldwater Spring
– every Friday afternoon from 2 - 3 pm.
Whether you come for the beauty, for the rich history, or for spiritual rest and renewal, enjoy an hour at the Spring.
Learn more about the Birthplace of Minnesota, and enjoy the beauty and peace of 10,000 year-old Coldwater Spring. Need directions to Coldwater? MAP - click here
Friends of Coldwater Green Museum initiative...
A Land Use Vision for Coldwater Park
Coldwater Spring has been flowing for 10,000 years, experts say, even under the last glacier. The 27 acre Coldwater campus is located atop the Mississippi River gorge, between Minnehaha Regional Park and Fort Snelling State Park, just above the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. Coldwater furnished water to Fort Snelling for a century and still flows at about 100,000 gallons a day.
Coldwater is the Birthplace of Minnesota, where the soldiers who built Fort Snelling lived (1820-3) and where a civilian community developed to service the fort. Those settlers founded Pig's Eye (later St. Paul), St. Anthony, Minneapolis and Bloomington, setting the stage for Minnesota statehood in 1858.
Before European immigration into what is now Minnesota, the 2.5-mile stretch from Minnehaha Falls—to Coldwater—to the confluence of rivers, was a traditional gathering place for upper Mississippi tribes. Eddie Benton Benais, Grand Chief of the Mdewiwin (Medicine) Society, Anishinabe spiritual elder from Lac Courte Oreilles, Wisconsin, gave court-ordered testimony (3/19/99) about the cultural significance of the Coldwater area:
My grandfather who died in 1942...many times he retold how we traveled, how he and his family, he as a small boy traveled by foot, by horse, by canoe to this great place to where there would be these great religious, spiritual events. And that they always camped between the falls and the sacred water place [the spring]... We know that the falls which came to be known as Minnehaha Falls, was a sacred place, a neutral place, a place for many nations to come... And that the spring from which the sacred water should be drawn was not very far...a spring that all nations used to draw the sacred water for the ceremony...How we take care of the water is how it will take care of us... More on the Initiative - click here
Coldwater and the Mississippi River Gorge by Susu Jeffrey and Alan Olson
April 2007
The Mississippi River gorge is the only true river gorge on the entire 2,350-mile length of the river. The gorge runs between the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, northward to the Falls of St. Anthony and is 1,273-feet deep according to a sign in Minnehaha Park. But it's invisible to us, filled with glacial debris and under water because dams keep the river level artificially high enough for barge traffic—9-feet deep in the shipping channel.
The old stories of being able to walk across the Mississippi meant that in low water periods, people could cross the rocky river course atop 1,273 feet of rocks deposited by the glacial melt about 10,000-years ago. The rocks that fill the gorge were brought south by glaciers that dropped their loads in the melt outwash. The glaciers ground up and pushed granite rock from the Canadian shield in (what is now) northern Minnesota southward, mixed with any other bedrock the ice mountain could scour.
A truck load of Mississippi River bottom pebbles, from dredging to keep the barge lane clear, was dumped in a friend's yard for their rock circle. The rocks are free, truck delivery is the only charge. In their circle are the tumbled remains of the earth history of this area: black granite, red stones rich in iron, white-ish limestone, milky quartz, a few pieces of sandstone, an occasional agate, and many composites. Each small stone is as individual as a person...
(continued - click here)
Take a Virtual Tour of Coldwater
A Sacred Place
A video by Sid Pranke and featuring Friends of Coldwater founder Susu Jeffrey.
Coldwater Journal is a record of personal observations and reflections from visits to the Coldwater campus.
Please feel free to submit your thoughts and reflections about Coldwater for posting here on the FRIENDS site via email.
: : :
Monday, 4.05.08
Common Carp are Cuddling at Coldwater
(Coldwater) What would be the number of invasive carp eggs swept down Coldwater Creek into the Mississippi River? There must be about 20 carp-one has got to be a 12-pounder.
It looks like the bullheads and goldfish are gone, they were also illegally dumped into Coldwater reservoir.
US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) contract groundskeepers pushed all the labyrinth rocks into the erosion gully at the top of the hill behind and above the spring. What began as a dimple in the land has become an outwash channel silting up the reservoir. Every spring snow melt, every big rain event, water pours off the huge warehouse roof and down the gully.
FWS is responsible for the Coldwater campus however no landscape maintenance has been done on their watch. Ten years of exotic invasive buckthorn and garlic mustard growth has killed out native plants. The indigenous vegetation had extensive root systems that held the soil.
Five strangers wandered down to Coldwater this afternoon-this bold blue 70-degree spring day. There was a former Texan whose 6- and 7-year-old boys so enjoyed their first winter that each boy wore out two pairs of snow pants, a dad with his young daughter and son walked through, and then two older gents in work clothes with questions about the plaque that forgot to mention 9,000-years of Native American history.
-S.J.
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Friday, 4.25.08
Spring Green
(Coldwater) Coldwater is intensely green today, so green I almost squint. The labyrinth lawn and the great willow are neon spring green. Green is the color of the heart chakra and the color of money in America. There are 248 words in American-English for money.
Coldwater is the last, the one and only, natural spring still flowing in Hennepin County.
The future of Coldwater— will it be part of a national park?
By Susu Jeffrey
The future of Coldwater Spring, currently flowing at about 90,000 gallons a day, is in the hands of the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI). Soon, the DOI will announce what public entity will “own” this 10,000-year-old spring. And whoever “owns” it could directly impact the future of the spring.
When Hwy. 55 was rerouted, the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) promised “no adverse impact” to Coldwater Spring, which is losing more than 27,500 gallons daily since construction ended, according to MnDOT’s own measurements. In a huge bureaucracy, with multiple spokespeople, no one is accountable.
(continued - click here)
Coldwater History
Coldwater is a 10,000-year-old spring that flowed at a pre Highway 55 construction rate of 100,000-144,000 gallons a day.
In addition to being a living geological museum, Coldwater was a traditional gathering place for Native American tribes of the upper Mississippi that used spring water for specific ceremonies requiring sacred water in a sacred landscape.
The powerful Dakota god of waters and the underworld is said to dwell at Coldwater Spring.
Coldwater is also the birthplace of Minnesota, where the soldiers lived who built Fort Snelling and site of the pioneer settlement whose citizens founded St. Paul and Minneapolis. Coldwater furnished water to Fort Snelling for 100 years... (continued - click here >>)
How we treat the water is how the water will treat us. –Eddie Benton Benais, Anishinabe Spiritual elder : : : Friends of Coldwater A Minnesota Nonprofit Educational Corporation
