​Here in the North Country, there are wild horses out on Lake Superior today, what Sigurd Olson called the curling fog arising on days when the water is much warmer than the air.

 

It is an impressive sight. Gigantic ore boats

are ghost-ships moving through kettles

of steam bound for harbors

in Duluth or Thunder Bay.

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The night sky is dusted with stars that reach

beyond what is visible in the South. There,

the humidity and lights of cities brush the

heavens and tone down the piercing

magnitude of stars beyond stars, their light originating thousands of light-years away.

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There are many feet of snow up on the Gunflint Trail tonight. It catches on the elevation and dumps down on cabin-owners who winter there

at places on the Laurentian Divide. The talk in

town is whether they can make it in for a concert

or pottery class. It is hearty stuff.

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It is enlivening to live in a place where wild things

can still happen, where mettle is tested, where we are not domesticated. While we have all the conveniences here that make life enjoyable and easier, we face the elements on a different scale. 

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The snow-clad hills above our town are a testament to the interior where things

are written larger.

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Here is the country of the wolf, fox, moose, lynx.

Here is the land of the long silences that imbue

the BWCAW with only one aspect of its grandeur.

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In modern times we have lost this primal connection to the land, and with it, a sense

of humility about life. We form it, shape it,

design existence to our specifications.

 

Occasionally there is a rift in our comfort, with accidents on freeways, something placed

on-order, waiting in line or at a traffic light. 

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But to be genuinely humble, to feel small, is not

something in life we routinely experience. We put ourselves at the center.

 

This is a very different relationship with the world than those who have, for millennia, lived in concert with nature.

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Perhaps the closest we come to this is when a

blizzard sweeps down from Canada, and we are

caught on frozen highways. Hurricanes, tornados, floods, fires can do this. These are things we cannot control. We stand mute in their path.

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But to live each day with a sense of our smallness is what draws people to mountains, to ancient sites, to the divine.

 

Awe is more than appreciation. It is this feeling of our insignificance that puts us in the world, in our proper place. It is a willingness to bend before that which is far more transcendent. It is to cultivate mystery.

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Here we are reminded that we are but a small part of life. The wild horses continue to run with the waves. The brooding December clouds on the horizon will not move on until they are ready.

 

The banshee snowflakes in my headlights, moving

east on Highway 61, care little for a reason I went to town. 

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It is humbling for me to know I cannot outrun them.