Thursday May 8, 2025 Solitude: A Walk Through The Woods

    Sometimes the draw to wet a paddle on Mikinaak Creek, is just too strong and I have to give in. Jackie videos from the house so I have a visual record of it for the beginning of a story -- and, I reckon, she has proof for herself that I was able to get across the creek under my own power should searchers be required, when I don't come home when I said I would; or upon not receiving a occasional text from me stating I'm "Still Alive;" or me not answering my phone when she called to verify that quite possibly something has disabled me so she should take appropriate action.

 

   Now given the fact I've gone across the creek and am gone from her sight for about an hour or so, and that there's no residences 'over there' for a good mile around; and yeah, there might be the three bears, or I could've  stumbled upon a pack of sinister gray wolves looking for an easy meal of 'old man' or I fell into a sinkhole of immeasurable depth -- or any catastrophe that may have befallen me, she's very apt to wonder what in the hell could I have been doing over there in the trees all this time?

 

   I've been taking pictures. And of course, she'll ask "Why?" And, however illogical it sounds (I mean around the clock illogical) I'll explain because they just catch my eye artistically, I can't help it. Hey, it's not like something she doesn't do too. She grew up as an artist herself, with a successful commercial artist father, and a artist grandmother who did many oil paintings, some of which by both, hang on our walls. But other than writing, I haven't done any visual artwork for nearly 40 years I've been reminded, through a book I've been reading: "The Artist's Journey: On Making Art & Being an Artist," by Kent Nerburn.

   In the spring of the year, when accents burst from the ground as so many florescent colors or as in the case of a stark woodland scene of crossed timbers plaintively standout as they do in the following images; or as wind-damaged beings that have crashed to the ground in a wild storm; I swear you can hear the noise it made just by sighting their debris can't you? 

   Then there are those trees that are returning wholly to the earth from whence they sprung; they gaze at their upright brethren and as they quietly implode a little piece at a time, and sigh.

   The strongest of those left, those giant-looking poplar trees, those bigger round than any commonly seen in pastures, or on roadsides -- oh, the stories they could tell. Some as late as last deer season, some back in 1974 when my friend Jeff Barker and I hand-planted 1500 or so white spruce among them and struck rocks so often it was unbelievable -- so was his swearing! I'm sure some of those tall poplar trees are a century old.

    So that's what I'm doing back there; looking for 'sheds,' (antlers that whitetail deer lose each year); taking hundreds of more pictures of the contrasts among the trees; procuring the solitude I work so hard to maintain here and seek its origins; and quite possibly praising all life there that allows me passage, presence and peace of mind.

   It's just what I do.