As human beings we both pollute and are ourselves polluted. We defile and are ourselves defiled. We have microplastics in our bloodstreams and our brains, forever chemicals in our livers. The environment is not separate from us. As we poison nature, we poison ourselves. We are all guilty and, increasingly, we will all get cancer. Or at least half of us will. That is our sentence.

Are the above images beautiful? I think so. Certainly, they are interesting. The brown lines remind me of wet skeins of hair on the pale, necrotic back of a naked witch. Halloween was yesterday, and that is a carnal Halloween metaphor. But the brown lines are not chocolate. Nor are they the froth of a pumpkin-spiced latte. These are images of human sewage floating on the shore of the Mississippi River near a large storm drain. I took the photos on a recent hike with my sons. I was very careful not to drop my phone. Soon enough we will luck into some rain that will wash this fecal effluence all thankfully away. It ain’t no trout stream and it ain’t for swimming. Yet I love this river all the same.

No season inspires more purple prose than autumn, but I can think of nothing more banal than describing the rapturous beauty of red and yellow foliage against the backdrop of a cerulean sky. I prefer to find beauty in ugliness, for no other reason than it seems more original.

These photos come from a place that is very special to me emotionally. It is a spot I have often fished with my sons. A few years back in spring when the water was high, I hooked the largest walleye of my life from this storm drain. It must have been well over 30 inches. The trophy fish got off just as I attempted to net it. Perhaps if I had trusted my son with the net and kept both hands on my rod, I would have caught that big walleye. I’ll never know. While that moment did not make for the great picture I was hoping for as I battled the fish in the strong current, it did make for a cherished memory. For both of us.

Well, I’ve left you with something to think about the next time you flush. There are cracks in the labyrinth of pipes under Minneapolis and this is where some of it winds up. Shit happens, as the saying goes. I’ll leave you with some graffiti pictures from the storm drain I took as well that day. Thanks for checking out my blog.