A Tree Blooms from Rock

I’m back from canoeing in the Boundary Waters and our sesshin ended yesterday. Today I’m between worlds with my day job starting again soon. In this post I’ll write a little about the canoe trip and later will post more about seeking, experiencing, and expressing (see post below for more) after digesting these with the sesshin participants.

The above photo is from our canoeing trip. I saw this rock face from across the lake and steered us out of our route so that I could shoot it. “We paddled across a lake so you could take a picture of a rock?” asked my son. Well, yes….

The beauty of the BWCA’s lakes and trees and rocks and wild life is stunning. One morning after sunrise a pack of nearby-ish sounding wolves treated us to their howls for maybe fifteen minutes. Music to breakfast by.

Later that day on a portage we came across a family from Chicago who were on their first trip and seeming very inexperienced, asking us many questions (how to read the map, about bears and other dangers).

I assured them that the wolves that we heard were not something to worry about because there are no documented cases of wolves attacking humans.

“Maybe no one has lived to tell the story,” said the nervous father.

Another morning the kids slept while I got up just at sunrise, made some coffee, and sat on a rock overlooking the lake, watching the rising sun’s warmth create a thick mist on the lake, moving steadily my way.

I began to hear a faint sound of flapping wings from deep in the mist and then a bald eagle burst through the boundary of mist and clarity, cruising maybe 20 yards from my perch.

Amidst all this, the sense of closeness with my kids that comes from being intensely together and together doing something that is sometimes difficult (we took some big portages this year, including carrying Duluth packs, food barrel, and canoe the better part of a mile) is what lingers for me today.

Sometimes a tree blooms from rock.