Memory and History in William Least Heat-Moon’s “By the Big Sea Water”

Memory is contrasted against history in William Least Heat-Moon's "By the Big Sea Water." Propelled by the memory of his first taste, Heat-Moon embarks on a quest for the increasingly evasive cisco. Linking the fish to its home in Lake Superior, the essay patently promotes awareness for its rapid declination. Yet, the text is continually driven by a dominant recollection, in which he associates both the cisco fish and Lake Superior to a sort of timelessness. Paradoxically, Heat-Moon acknowledges the historical deterioration of nature while finding hope in his personal experiences. The cisco fish and Lake Superior of his memory are representative of more than a mere connection to nature. In spite of the seemingly inevitable doom of reality, memory serves to create the irrational belief in a future.

Heat-Moon does not regard the original as wholly natural, but rather comes to embrace anything reminiscent of his own personal memory. Generally negative diction and images become positive when they are linked to his remembrance. His first taste of cisco takes place in a "decrepit café" (104), and he later seeks out those things which are "fading" (105) and "beat-up" (107). When he comes across Betty Kendell's tavern, it is a
"worn sign" that "promis[es] smoked fish," and he describes the bar "abundant with reds… hanging with baseball caps and dozens of representations of Betty Boop" (107). It is ironic that this "airless and dark bar" (107) becomes the place in which he finally discovers the elusive cisco, when the "splendid lacustrine scenery" is "modulated by sky and proximity to shore" (104). His diction is starkly different as he describes the lake, his phrases much more complex, as it "might have been decocted from gemstones" and "liquid chalcedony vibrating from the thump of a surf" (104). The text clearly seeks to create beauty through imagery, as "here [there is] flowing sapphire, there aquamarine; at night there would be black opal," as opposed to the reds of Betty Kendell's bar (104). Yet, the lake is "relinquishing its… origins" (104), while her tavern is "redolent of years" past (107). Heat-Moon comes to rely not on nature, which is in fact losing its battle, but on those decrepit smokeries clinging to the past. The historical declination of the cisco is wholly separate from his faded memories and what they have come to represent in his mind.

The text clearly distinguishes between memory and history, in spite of overlaps of moments in time. Memory is fact a piece of history, colored by personal recollection. Heat-Moon begins his story with a broad historical context as it takes place "in the summer of 1949," but shifts the timeline towards his own life by the next sentence as it is now "the July before [his father's] crash" (102). The lake of his memory is distinctly different from that of reality, and it is "cold even in midsummer" (102). Yet, in his present life, he "suspect[s] that [his] quest would have gone better had [he] arrived in the autumn (107). There is a clear paradoxical element to his obsession with this cisco fish,which is originally regarded by the locals as commonplace. Betty Kendell's late husband Smokey ate them until "you would have thought they were popcorn" (108), and Tom Eckel regards "catch[ing] a cisco" (106) akin to "catch[ing] a cold" (106). In Heat-Moon's memory however, it is "unknown fare," described as "exotic" even in his disappointment when it is "not a beast, but a fish" (103). It is ironic when this seemingly abundant fish actually becomes a rarity, "near[ing] scarcity" (108). Even in this, however, Heat-Moon manages to discover "a hotbed of smokeries" (108). In his quest, the text is hyperbolic, as he is "like a fellow whose inamorata slyly eludes him" (107), aligning the cisco fish with a beloved woman. Heat-Moon acknowledges this historical "impending cisco deprivation" (108), but the cisco of his memory is not just this fish, but a symbol for the "intimidating mysteriousness" (102). It is linked to "a father freed from a steering wheel" (108) of "a large black machine actually more like a hearse" (102). Heat-Moon's memory is not reality, and thus becomes the inspiration for the future, in his inability to truly accept their declination.

History is rational, and impending doom is seemingly inevitable, yet, it is not always right. The text both opens and closes referencing the near death experience of Heat-Moon's father, an event that does not quite fit into the story of an increasingly elusive cisco population. While there is a clear bias against "overharvesting, pollution and the spread of foreigners like lampreys and alewives" that contribute in decimating the ciscos, a tone of pessimism is absent in his memory (107). Instead of focusing on the negative aspects of his father's accident, the image is of "a smiling father freed from the steering wheel" (108). Similarly, although his almost failed quest is hyperbolized by his "crestfallen expression" (105) and "sad news" (106), his near disappointment becomes almost entertaining. His tone abruptly shifts when he mentions the "historical, about what had been" (106), and ends his second section devoted to the Lake's physical history on a note of despair, as "once, its waterline was almost twice its present height above sea level" (105). The text tends to favor memories above historical context, and while Russ Kendell "knew the whole cisco story through the whole of the twentieth century," it is his recollection of a cow enjoying his ciscos through which this story is told (108). Although history is reality, Heat-Moon does not rely wholly on this rational sense of "impending cisco deprivation" (108). Dominating this sense is an image of hope, contained in his memory.

Memory is a moment of history through the eyes of an individual, skewed by his or her own person recollections. Unlike history, memory is not reality, in spite of real events that become the inspirations for these remembrances. Heat-Moon's quest for cisco is more than an attempt to recall the taste or texture of the fish, but rather depends on what the fish, and in essence its home Lake Superior, have come to represent in his memory. Historically, the tone is pessimistic, as the rapidly declining number of cisco points towards a fairly inevitable doom. Realistically and rationally, it is not possible for the cisco to reemerge in its abundance of the past. Yet, Heat-Moon's memory irrationally links his father's miracle accident and his first taste of cisco. Just as the decrepit café becomes a symbol for all that is representative of years past and the original, ciscos are a symbol of hope. Although Heat-Moon acknowledges the historical aspect of the Lake and the decimated ciscos, his memory continues to dominate reality. Memory becomes necessary to create any sense of optimism for the future, overriding the stark realism of historical facts.