The Visit

The Boy has visitors: two girls from the far end of the lake. They paddle nestled together in the kayak, feet up on the gunwales, or dipping into the cool water over the side of the craft, casual as you please. Taking their time.

They'll most likely stay for dinner. If it gets late enough, the night, camped out by the fire ring and telling stories amongst the three.

The Return of Warmth

The Search

“To see a hillside white with dogwood bloom is to know a particular ecstasy of beauty, but to walk the gray Winter woods and find the buds which will resurrect that beauty in another May is to partake of continuity.”

-Hal Borland

Frozen

Winter here is long. The lake is frozen. Tracks of animals in the snow.

Stay close to me.

Wait.

The Miner

I am a Miner. A Prospector.

There is treasure here. I am standing on an immense hill of sawdust, left here over a hundred years ago by lumber men. Then the land was naked and scarred. Not far from here men scrapped copper from deep inside the Earth for a dollar a day, and other, armed men guarded the camps against restlessness and violence.

The Earth has healed since then and now before me is the trail, which stretches across the land for 4600 miles. Here I seek out emerald and sapphire and skies of opal...

Gold that spills abundantly down the rock face...

...and liquid silver that laps gently at my feet at sunset...

At the water's edge, I search for something more. Rough agates, the world's oldest, formed here a billion years ago when gas pockets in cooling lava filled in with minerals in layers and swirls. Seen when dry, they appear to be ordinary stones. but when wet, they reveal their true colors and luminous, mineral beauty.

One large agate broke off from its basalt matrix and tumbled through endless oceans of time to land in my small hand. Others were found at my feet at the mouth of a river, resembling two small hearts.

Yet another emerges from waist-deep, ice-cold water of purest blue and looks like a Death's head from a Medieval painting.

I am a lonely miner of things I never wish to sell.

Warm Yourself

The wind is coming off the lake tonight. The entire Milky Way stretches across the sky, crystal white on black.

Come sit by the fire. I have a good whiskey to offer - a small flame at the back of the throat. You don't mind sharing from this silver flask, do you?

Sweep

Time to spruce up the Cabin.

Grab a broom and sweep the pine needles from the front step and pathway. Round up the usual winter squatters... gently, please...

... and encourage them to find their summer quarters eleswhere.

Offer a little tobacco to the Laughing Manitou - the spirit which watches over the place.

Summer has begun...

Promise

I was inspired by a correspondent to post this picture of a young Ernest Hemingway fishing in Walloon Lake in 1904. (Credit: Photograph in the Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.)

Interpret it, if you please, as a promise of the summer to come.

Winter Signature

Dream Catcher

Country Matters

The Cabin

By "Loon Feather", Ojibwe artist.

Your Lady

This is your Lady's lace cuff...

This is your Lady's golden hair...

These are your Lady's naked thighs...

This is your Lady's perfect cunny...

And this is your throne beside the River...

Night Time is the Write Time

The rain ends at last and the moon rises over the lake.

Animals move around outside the Cabin with small rustlings of the underbrush. searching for panfish drippings near our campfire. The Dog lifts his head from his favorite rug and notes their scent on the breeze which comes to him from under the door, but he does not make a sound.

Make a space for yourself at the old kitchen table. Write, or draw, your thoughts by the light of a battered Coleman lantern.

Then sleep deeply. Tomorrow we'll go on a new adventure.

The Rain

It's raining. Too wet to do much of anything outdoors.

That's fine. It'll give me time to catch up with my washing.

You can sit by the woodstove and read, if you like...

Or else let the Boy challenge you to a game of checkers. Be warned: He beats me every time.

Written in Stone

Summerboys

"Ruling a great nation is like cooking a small fish."
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

The View From My Canoe, Too

The View From My Canoe

“On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
Westward by the Big-Sea-Water,
Came unto the rocky headlands,
To the Pictured Rocks of sandstone,
Looking over lake and landscape…”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tiny Dancer

Love Embrace

The Tell-Tale Heart

Her thirst drove her down to the water's edge very early this morning. Later I found the traces of her passing in the form of multiple small hearts.

She is a yearling doe. I don't even need to see her to know it. The outline of her step tells me everything.

The Mirror

And Vie said, "Let there be Life..."

And there was Life...

And there was Life...

And there was Life...

And there was Life...

And there was Life...

And there was Life...

And there was Life...

Prayer

Ojibway Prayer

Oh Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the winds
And whose breath gives life to everyone,
Hear me.

I come to you as one of your many children;
I am weak .... I am small ... I need your wisdom
and your strength.

Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever
behold the red and purple sunsets
Make my hands respect the things you have made.
And make my ears sharp so I may hear your voice.

Make me wise, so that I may understand what you
have taught my people and
The lessons you have hidden in each leaf
and each rock.

I ask for wisdom and strength
Not to be superior to my brothers, but to be able
to fight my greatest enemy, myself.
Make me ever ready to come before you with
clean hands and a straight eye.
So as life fades away as a fading sunset.
My spirit may come to you without shame.

-Author Unknown

The Calling

"Everyone paddled to get around.... It was so quiet...(that) when the loons called the water would vibrate."

Madeline Theriault ( Ka Kita Wa Pa No Kwe) born 1908, speaking of life on Bear Island in Temagami Lake, Ontario, Canada. Excerpt from the book, "Molly Spotted Elk: A Penobscot in Paris" by Bunny McBride.

The Red Canoe

Follow Me...

I have a place I like to go. It is deep in the forest. You can follow me. I have something to show you. Something very special.

Across this bridge...


Down the hill and across this small stream. Watch your step! It is quite slippery. But feel how cool it is here...


Past the embrace of giants...


And into the ancient hemlock forest...


This is a wintering place for deer. As the snows become deep, the deer gather here from all around. Here it remains warmer and more sheltered. But there is something else. Something much more rare. Can you see it? There. Among the ferns below us.

Let's take a closer look...


Ne pas déranger, s’il vous plaît ! These tiny, plump ballerina shoes are a very rare type of wild orchid. Fragile and fleeting, they are known as Showy Pink Lady Slippers, or Moccasin-Flowers. Take pictures, but do not pick them, or attempt to transplant them. Tell no one where they are.

Promise me! It will be our secret...


"I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
William Butler Yeats

C'est La Vie

I have been to a beautiful place…

I have never been there before, but I saw myself everywhere.

In the branching of a birch tree


In the bed of a river


In a stone on the beach


Or the pattern of a feather

(Flight of geese against the sky)


In the meeting of sand


And of water


In the meanderings of bark beetles


And the footprints of a bird


In the shape of a howl


And the wings of a butterfly.


I have always been here.

You will meet me everywhere.

C’est La Vie.

The One Who Walks Alone

No, it is only a young, male bear. "Oshkinabek", if my Ojibway dictionary serves me correctly. Or else the manitou has shape-shifted. (They are well known to favor the Bear form.) This one stood upright, exactly like a man, sniffed the air in our direction, then hurried off into the woods. He studied us from there before disappearing completely.

one... two... three... materialize!

Ah... I see the manitou. There, behind the birch tree...