Rick owns forty acres of wilderness located about fifty miles north of nowhere. Rick's wife is my wife's best friend, and we were invited to spend a few days with them in the home they rented for their summer vacation on the shore of Lake Superior.
The girls went off to art galleries and such one morning, and Rick took me to his land. I hadn't been there before. He bought his forty from the elderly grandson of an original settler some 25 years ago. It's hunting land. There isn't a cabin or electricity, or even a driveway. He just drives up a neighbor's drive, then onto his land as far as he can go until the land becomes swampy.
Then it's a long hike through thickets, poplar stands, oak and maple, and huge conifers. If you don't know the land, you'd be lost in one turn. Rick has been hunting and fishing here as long as he has owned the land. He knows it very well. I just followed him, and we both stopped every few minutes to pick the ticks off of our clothes and bodies.
Years ago Rick dragged some slab lumber, nails, a hammer and a saw to a high point on the land and built a bench. It rests in a small clearing above the Iron River
I sat on the bench for an hour while Rick walked the stream, casting for trout. Silence. The only sounds were the sound of the river cascading over small rocks, and a few birds. Silence, blessed silence.
I sat for an hour, clearing mind and heart. I can't describe what happened in that hour because I'm not sure I understand it, but I know this: I was a different person at the end of the hour than I was at the start. And the change is still with me.
More beneath the fold.
