When we visit the northern lakes, I always think about Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha”. Rufus recited the first lines to me here on this beach.

By the shore of Gitche Gumee,

By the shining Big-Sea-Water,

At the doorway of his wigwam,

In the pleasant Summer morning,

Hiawatha stood and waited.

We like to imagine what these shores looked like when Hiawatha looked across the waters, when wigwams, not beach houses, spotted the horizon. What animals would we see? What spirits would we feel rising from the shining depths? What forces of the forest have retreated from our reach? Can we ourselves retreat to such a place, away from modern practicality, where the sacred is not absent, but central?

~Joy