Feed Your Soul

Transport yourself into Awe

“Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme.

Awe is a sense for the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things.  It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine…to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.  What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.”

—Rabbi Abraham Heschel

Here’s a feast for your eyes:

Each year, my husband and I journey to a special place, a place called Isle Royale National Park.

Isle Royale is a 50-mile-long island in Lake Superior.  It’s the largest island in the largest fresh deep-water lake in the world.

It’s a six-hour crossing, from Houghton, Michigan, on a ferryboat called “The Ranger,” across Lake Superior.  That’s the way we usually get across. Sometimes, it’s a rough crossing, as the waves can kick up to ten feet. Sometimes, it’s calm, with 2 -3 feet waves, which are nothing. There’s another boat as well, and you can take the sea plane. People also take their own boats across, of course.

On the boat, the Ranger gives us a talk so that people are prepared for the island.  There are housekeeping cabins, a lodge, and a restaurant. People take their boats across and fish and fish and fish. The fishing is wonderful. Back packers hike the Greenstone Ridge, and regale their friends with stories they tell afterward – how many moose they saw, sometimes fox, sometimes hear the wolves howl, at night and of course, the “mournful” call of the loons. I put that word in quotes, as I’m placing my human sensibilities over what, for the loon, could be a call filled with joy.

If you think I’m trying to enroll you in going to Isle Royale, it wouldn’t be a bad idea. At the very least, you could enroll yourself in getting out of your house and into nature as often as possible.

Isle Royale is a place outside of time, and off the grid.  It’s a place that arouses awe, and wonder. You can visit lighthouses, hike the trails on the smaller islands, visit the wolf/moose researcher, fish, rent a boat, sightsee, take the sightseeing boat out past the north of the island to see the sunset over Canada, go to Hidden Lake, hike up the Hidden Lake trail to see Canada, and just “be with” the weather, the ever changing weather, where the storms sometimes shake the rafters and the lightening strikes light up the night sky. Sometimes, even, the Northern Lights come out to awaken the heart.

Hikers go there. Back packers go there. Kayakers go there. Poets go there.  Artists go there. People who want quiet, and beyond quiet, Silence, go there.

You can hike the entire length of the island on the Greenstone Ridge.  From certain places on the Ridge, you can see Canada, specifically Thunder Bay, off to the West. From Isle Royale, the Canadian Shore looks like a very long Sleeping Giant.  So we call the Thunder Bay configure island “The Sleeping Giant.” From the cabin you can see Flag Island.  We call it “The Dragon.” Why? Because it’s shaped like a dragon.

I’ve been going there since 1976, pretty much every summer. My husband’s grandmother (well, her father) bought an island there, as did several other families from the Midwest. They built a cabin, with the help of a nearby fisherman, Art Mattson. With no electricity, we pump the water straight out of the lake with the original hand pump. These days, we filter the water.  We use a propane stove, and bring in the propane via the National Park Boat, and use lanterns at night.  The fireplace warms the cabin. The “biffy” is aways away over a path with tree roots protruding from the ground. A flashlight, of course, is absolutely necessary for that little hike in the middle of the night! We share a boat with Don’s brothers and cousin.

Isle Royale became a national park in the 1930’s and each family was given a life lease to the then youngest living member of the family.  Our cabin is now designated on the National Historic Register as a cultural resource, as are the other camps, and the families work, in the spirit of partnership with the Park, to maintain the cabins, provide transportation to the Artist in Residence, and sink into life as it was in the thirties.

It's remote, pristine, and pure heaven.

Two years ago, the fires from Canada turned the lake copper and we couldn’t see from our island to the next.

Let’s just say, going to Isle Royale is ALWAYS an adventure.

The storms are wild. And come suddenly.  I mean, it is wilderness.  Sometimes you’re out hiking and just plain get wet.  Very wet. Sometimes you can hide in a cave or a shelter along the trail. Sometimes, you’re out on the lake when a storm hits. I’ve been out on the lake when our engine has failed.  It’s scary.  For those people who have been coming to Isle Royale since they were kids (like my husband and his brothers), they’ve had all sorts of adventures, and they have all sorts of stories.

I am wanting to give you a photographic treat in this post, as there is absolutely nothing like Isle Royale, on God’s green earth. I have traveled to many, many wonderful places and many of our national parks, and I love them all. This one is unusual – kind of very “other wordly.”  I feel like I am entering into a “land beyond time” when I take that six hour trip across Lake Superior in the boat each summer.

Teachings from nature are everywhere, if we but listen. Especially Impermanence, as the weather is ever-changing.  And, of course, the Silence outside becomes an opening into tapping the Silence inside.

May you enjoy this poem I wrote once upon a time at the island, and I am happy to read it to you so you have it auditorily, as well as the written word.  It’s called “Listen to the Island.”

Listen to the Island

Listen!

Your own deeper identity,
the bare threads of your Soul,
can embrace you here,
were you to listen.

Listen
to the loon’s soulful echo
of joyous connection
to All—that—Is,
to the magic music of the lake
as it laps and slaps over the rocky shore.

Listen
for the sun breaking free
of the trees in the morning.

Awaken to that other music,
the songs fully granted
from the never-ending
streams of the pure, one Note.

Only you, and the natural world.
Let your imagination take you
to your own wild,
inside,
where your heart can mend
and the mind can fly
free
like the eagle near
as she leaves her nest.

Leave that other life behind.

Listen inside.
Feed your Soul.
Do not
let your deeper Being
go away hungry.

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