Last Week

I just taught my last class as a Wolf Ridge naturalist. Instead of reflecting on my last two years in my own words, I'm using excerpts of Sigurd Olson in his essay "The Singing Wilderness" and some of my favorite pictures from my time in the North Woods.

The singing wilderness has to do with the calling of the loons...

 and the great silences of a land lying northwest of Lake Superior. 

It is concerned with the simple joys...

the timelessness... 

and perspective found in a way of life that is close to the past. 

I have heard the singing in many places, but I seem to hear it best in the wilderness lake country of the Quetico-Superior. 

I have heard it on misty migration nights when the dark has been alive with the high calling of birds...

 and in rapids when the air has been full of their rushing thunder. 

I have caught it at dawn when the mists were moving out of the bays...

and on cold winter nights when stars seemed close enough to touch. 

But the music can even be heard in the soft guttering of an open fire or in the beat of rain on a tent...

 and sometimes not until long afterward when, like an echo out of the past, you know it was there in some quiet places or when you were doing some simple thing in the out-of-doors. 

I have discovered that I am not alone in my listening...

 that almost everyone is listening for something...

 and that the search for places where the singing may be heard goes on everywhere.