Saturday, July 03, 2010
Monday, June 15, 2009
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.
Friday, June 05, 2009
Monday, March 02, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Friday, December 05, 2008
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.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Saturday, June 07, 2008
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...
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
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.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Friday, January 04, 2008
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Saturday, September 01, 2007
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.
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.