September is a rich month for the journaler. One wonders why that is so. Maybe it is the inner resistance I feel to the slipping away of the summer. Maybe I simply recall its warmth and freedom, while the town routine tightens its grip. Whatever the reason, the effect of September on the journal writer is to bring back with joy the vivid presence of the wild places.
1989
I have an opportunity to reflect on the gifts that come to body, soul and spirit from time spent on the doorstep of the wild places. Sig Olson has reminded me that wild places are not a luxury, but a necessity to human well being.
As long as I can remember, I have been in the woods. That is where we played as children on the banks of Raccoon Creek. We ventured to the great Opossum Mound (locally called Alligator Mound). It was the best entertainment available, full of discovery. Although I complained bitterly about the long trek to school and back, I now recognize that it made me an amateur naturalist. It was better than television, then, as it probably remains.
Dr. Robert Alrutz of the biology department at Dennison University sponsored and guided the so called biology club. It was the first place nature captured my imagination. There, I met the protozoan and the salamander, the moss and the fern, the minnow and the crawdad. After school, I began on a journey of woods-loving that is as alive for me today as it was back then.
Slowly, I came to unserstand myself as one allied with the doings in the outdoors. Each excursion brimmed with a sense of adventure over the next hill, around the next corner.
While visiting Scandinavia, I came to see the variety in nature so different from the forests of oak and maple of my childhood. There were the birch, popple and jack pine forests I saw for the first time. There were the granite slopes so characteristic of the sub arctic north. Some eight years later, my friend Phil Campbell took me to the same flora in northern Minnesota. It was love at first sight. It wasn't about the fishing, although it was fabulous. Nor was I seduced by the glimpses of wildlife. But it was the land itself that spoke to me. It was at once stark, even barren, and yet verdant in its own way. The lichen covered rocks became holy places.
"In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord," is not simply the adaption of the visions of prophets, it is a statement of the joy of being in the thick of it. The wilds are a place of getting ready, of endless possibility. The land and the lakes keep me grounded in their truth. I can set a spiritual compass amid the scent of pine needles and fungi in a way I could never do elsewhere.
And always, there is the quest. There is the bodily challenge, what I have come to call my annual physical exam. There one tests one's limits and stretches to thrive on hard places. It gives a new flexibility and a renewed confidence. There is communion in the quest. One can find moments of sublime harmony with the landscape as to be transported. The chance encounter with a surprised animal in the wild is to recognize one's place as a visitor in this creation. A primitive "animal self" comes to the fore in the wilderness. It is a holy place. There are the relationships of fellow questers, some of the deepest of my experience. There one knows others deeply as one comes to know oneself deeply. There are no boundaries to the curious, the adventurous. The limits are of stamina, planning and supplies.
Incidents: Black bears in the blueberry patch on the bluff over the lake. Pictographs inscribed on rock walls centuries before. A swirl of Northern Pike feeding at the stream's outlet. A herd of deer visible from a lofty campsite. Canadian Jays stopping by for a conversation. Bald eagles soaring high over the trees. Wolves howling in the night. The call of the loons. An otter inspecting the passing canoe at close range. Beavers slapping their tails in a danger call.
Each of these are emblazoned in a deep inner place, the closest I come to having a tattoo. They are as today, nearly twenty years later, as they were when I first saw them. My soul is marked by them.
I have an opportunity to reflect on the gifts that come to body, soul and spirit from time spent on the doorstep of the wild places. Sig Olson has reminded me that wild places are not a luxury, but a necessity to human well being.
As long as I can remember, I have been in the woods. That is where we played as children on the banks of Raccoon Creek. We ventured to the great Opossum Mound (locally called Alligator Mound). It was the best entertainment available, full of discovery. Although I complained bitterly about the long trek to school and back, I now recognize that it made me an amateur naturalist. It was better than television, then, as it probably remains.
Dr. Robert Alrutz of the biology department at Dennison University sponsored and guided the so called biology club. It was the first place nature captured my imagination. There, I met the protozoan and the salamander, the moss and the fern, the minnow and the crawdad. After school, I began on a journey of woods-loving that is as alive for me today as it was back then.
Slowly, I came to unserstand myself as one allied with the doings in the outdoors. Each excursion brimmed with a sense of adventure over the next hill, around the next corner.
While visiting Scandinavia, I came to see the variety in nature so different from the forests of oak and maple of my childhood. There were the birch, popple and jack pine forests I saw for the first time. There were the granite slopes so characteristic of the sub arctic north. Some eight years later, my friend Phil Campbell took me to the same flora in northern Minnesota. It was love at first sight. It wasn't about the fishing, although it was fabulous. Nor was I seduced by the glimpses of wildlife. But it was the land itself that spoke to me. It was at once stark, even barren, and yet verdant in its own way. The lichen covered rocks became holy places.
"In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord," is not simply the adaption of the visions of prophets, it is a statement of the joy of being in the thick of it. The wilds are a place of getting ready, of endless possibility. The land and the lakes keep me grounded in their truth. I can set a spiritual compass amid the scent of pine needles and fungi in a way I could never do elsewhere.
And always, there is the quest. There is the bodily challenge, what I have come to call my annual physical exam. There one tests one's limits and stretches to thrive on hard places. It gives a new flexibility and a renewed confidence. There is communion in the quest. One can find moments of sublime harmony with the landscape as to be transported. The chance encounter with a surprised animal in the wild is to recognize one's place as a visitor in this creation. A primitive "animal self" comes to the fore in the wilderness. It is a holy place. There are the relationships of fellow questers, some of the deepest of my experience. There one knows others deeply as one comes to know oneself deeply. There are no boundaries to the curious, the adventurous. The limits are of stamina, planning and supplies.
Incidents: Black bears in the blueberry patch on the bluff over the lake. Pictographs inscribed on rock walls centuries before. A swirl of Northern Pike feeding at the stream's outlet. A herd of deer visible from a lofty campsite. Canadian Jays stopping by for a conversation. Bald eagles soaring high over the trees. Wolves howling in the night. The call of the loons. An otter inspecting the passing canoe at close range. Beavers slapping their tails in a danger call.
Each of these are emblazoned in a deep inner place, the closest I come to having a tattoo. They are as today, nearly twenty years later, as they were when I first saw them. My soul is marked by them.
1992
This day began as I saw seven of the island deer out grazing on Presque Isle. It was to be a wildlife day, part of a week of events in the wild places. On the Big Bay Road, a coyote pranced southbound at the rock cut at Sugar Loaf. Sporting a remarkably ratty and broomlike tail, he was as nervous as a prostitute in church. We were at once the object of his entire attention and of his feigned nonchalance. A red fox darted across the church parking lot, as I pulled in for an evening meeting. Sharon encountered a cougar in the wee hours of the morning, as she drove along the Seney stretch, 50 miles from home. All of this on top of a wolf sighting, of few days ago, just west of Ishpeming along the main road. The huge, low slung animal was trying to blend into the ditch.By some turn of chance the animal life became visible for just a moment. I have no doubt that these creatures surround us all the time. Sometimes, they show themselves. It is tonic for the imagination.
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