21 August 2007, Day Two
West Caribou Island
There are ghosts at this shelter as well, but I am happier here than at Rock Harbor. Rock is a clash of worlds: lodge guests at $250 per day; yachts that cost more than the net worth of me plus my four closest friends; hikers just off the trail.
The fog settles and light dims. As the world quiets I realize that no one will be on this island tonight but me. There are no human sounds but mine. These are all the sounds I hear: the penetrating call of the loon and surf on the Superior beach. I can tell by the sound that the surf is calmer than at mid-day. I hear the scratch of the pen on this paper and the irregular clang of the bell buoy in Middle Island Passage. I hear the slow drip of water from the shelter roof onto the line of rock where the soil is worn and occasionally a pine cone falls on the roof. That is all. I could be the only person on the planet.
The brilliance of this trip is beginning to seep in. For 21 days I have escaped the clutches of civilization and its slave-master time. I've thrown out my planned itinerary. It served its purpose of allowing me the fantasy of being here when my body was still in Austin. Here my movement will be shaped by wind and wave, by rock and desire.
1 comment:
I don't think people who have never been to the island could understand this post. But I do...and it gives me little shivers in the pit of my stomach.
I love that moment when you're in your sleeping bag and you've peed and you're warm and so dead tired you can barely fall asleep and then you hear something like a loon call or a wolf howl. It's foreign because you usually go to sleep with the sound of the ice maker in your ears but also familiar because how could it not be? It is so deeply part of nature.
Post a Comment