Act I Chapter One: Nature Reprise (Thoughts and Observations)

The cold wind off the lake cuts right through my jacket, and I feel every year of my aging bones. Holding firm to my cane, I gaze upon the splendor of this region as if it was the last time. The circle of life and death constantly surrounds us but the reaper's shadow has been drawing so near I can feel his breath. So I draw in my own of the wild winds, as much as these dusty old lungs can manage, purifying my blood and soul.
I shuffle a little to warm my feet, as my eyes pan over the rocky storm-battered lakeshore. The whitecaps cut through the lake like a shark fin on the hunt for prey, until their hunt ends abruptly on the shoreline. The lake water recedes into the next wave, rising as high as it can manage, and then with its last roar, it puts all its energy into its death roll. The cycle is like a drowning man reaching out of the waters for the land, slamming his hand against the shore for grip, only to slip back into the depths. Over and over again the waves are rejected by the land. The dynamics are effortlessly simple but have captured my soul all these years.
I see a ship traversing the tumultuous waters, enduring the elements with ease. In my mind I picture Poseidon opening his mouth to unleash mighty gales with his breath to test these sailors as if they were the heroes of ancient myth. These heroes may fight beasts of their own but are most likely bringing taconite to eastern ports. Although, wherever we travel, our beasts travel.
The cry of gulls pierces through the winds and I watch one ride the invisible streams of air, looking for a place to rest. Down to my right, is some bigger rocks that the waves are crashing against, shooting white spray up into the air. All my senses dance in memories, flashing like someone speeding through a picture book.
I see younger versions of myself recklessly exploring over the rocks, climbing and jumping in youthful abandon. I am envious, for even now my heart yearns to run with innocent joy. My spirit might yet be soaring like these birds but my body has become more like the driftwood battered helplessly in the wash. I think of my Grandparents watching over me in spirit, I am far older now than they were when I spent a summer with them. I was foolish back then and I wonder what they might say to me now. I'm also reminded how much I miss them.
So much joy can be gained by looking back but regrets can overtake the mind. Positive and negative lives in all things, even joyous things. Warm memories can be followed by sorrows, as things lost to the past resurface. The lake isn't always this rough and stormy, perhaps it knows this will be the last time for me and it is filled with sorrow too. The mist hanging in the distance might be its tears forming in the Lake's eyes. It's nice to think we have a special connection to something, even though we are just another pebble floating in its gravity. These rocks and waters have been here for thousands of years, probably millions, we are only a passing glance of their lifetime. They will most likely survive the human race and see new days of transformations on Earth. It is only our need for validation that our lives meant something, but that can only spring from internal waters. If you respect everything around you, then it will be reciprocated. If you keep things to for yourself, no one will honor your name when you are gone. If you give over yourself and leave but a little for yourself, then pieces of you will live inside what you gave away, and you will live forever. If you help to preserve nature, then you are preserving yourself.
I hope the generations after me can experience these woods and waters as I have. If they can't, then I hope they find something that makes them as happy and joyous. We can't try to control the future and what the future will cherish. We can only pass on what we have learned without agendas to persuade, each generation must find its path. History has shown that change is constant. You can't stop the wave from reaching the shore, you may alter its course but it will find the path eventually. Those who try to stop it are like a wall of rigidity, but the wave will slam against it, again and again, eventually toppling the wall. We must yield to the wave of time. My Grandson waits in the warm car, as I told him I wanted a moment by myself. He'll be taking me back to the city soon enough, and at least I get this chance to say goodbye to these lands. I will be forever grateful for their medicine and healing. In these lands, I find a calming peace, a reconciliation of body and mind. If you will indulge me as my mind wonders as I stare at the mystic powers of this giant body of water. Perhaps they will grant me insights into myself even now, or fade as ramblings of an old woman. Lake Superior and the arrowhead region of Minnesota have been a constant place of refuge and it has changed a little but not as much as I have. These wrinkles covering my skin are like the waves on the water, both covering the surface while hiding the true power of what is beneath. My body is decaying and dying but my spirit is as alive as it ever was. The body was never more than a vessel for the spirit. For a time on this Earth, my spirit sailed in the material world but soon my spirit will part ways. The vessel of my body will remain to nourish and return to Earth, while my spirit will sail new waters in the undying lands.
I don't know if my spirit will continue, rise into the heavens or come back in a different form. When I pass, I hope my spirit will dwell over these lands for a time before the journey into the unknown. When we pass, does the attachment to self dissolve instantly, and such notions as memories dissolve with them? If the universe is a collective of shared energy, then maybe memories and experiences are shared by all. So in our time here we are just adding and expanding to that collective. Does a drop of water in the ocean remember its days apart from the vast expanse of water once it is returned? Is that drop just absorbed back into the collective waters along with its experiences? In the end, we don't need to solve the great mysteries, only embrace them.
There is a sort of baptism that happens when you grow up in the city and you get exposed to the true power of nature. Everyone is on their path, so this won't be true for all, but I think there is enough primate DNA in us all yet to connect with. For me, I became the proverbial butterfly emerging from her cocoon. Transformed and given wings to fly.
I am not speaking of long walks or day trips to a park. I am talking of a full emersion in the wild, with real consequences on the line. Getting on paths where it is truly nature vs yourself. Putting life and death on the table, and throwing caution to the wind. There are fewer places on the Earth left to try this but worth the effort.
If you grow up in the countryside then going to the city can release its power. Some people will always be drawn to the new and different, while others will shun it away. Each has its power but to me, the experiences that the city offers seemed to have shallow roots and the effect short-lived. You end up chasing the newest thing and trends. While the effect of nature cuts to deeper levels of our inheritance and reaches levels of spirituality. There is a good and bad in everything, and the point of view is subjective.
It is a spiritual journey, for heading into nature is like going to church. I get uplifted, renewed, and clarity of mind, all from simply disconnecting from the world. It isn't just society but disconnecting from myself and releasing myself from all of my emotions. Out on a hike or paddle, I can find freedom from attachment. I don't feel desires or wants, the self goes away and there is only the present moment. Anxiety and fears are attached to the self and its desires, but out there I only care about how the sunset is breath-taking or the sounds of rushing water. There is a brutal honesty in the truly wild places of the Earth. There is no one out here selling something to you or in competition for your affection. If you are out at sea or climbing a mountain, perils are knocking at your door every second of the journey. If you get careless and think you have gotten the better of her, she will quickly remind you of her power. In society, we seem constantly competing against each other. If you walk into a room, things just happen organically and we size each other up. You feel attractive until someone more attractive enters the room, and you suddenly feel insecure. We feel successful until someone recounts how everything they touch turns to gold. If you go to a spiritual place, there is someone who always knows more, does it better, and always seems to have it easier.
We need to let go of competition and embrace acceptance. It is the only way we will find security within ourselves. The only thing we will ever need to be the best at is ourselves. It took me until this moment to fully embrace that, so it will never be too late.
Appreciation for what you have will become clear to you, as you are happy for your meager scraps. There is a humbleness that reminds me of what the really important things are in life. Your priorities have a funny way of reordering, and things that seemed important are far from your mind.
All of our troubles will be waiting for us when we get back if only we can learn to take the peace of mind, and calmness with us into the chaotic rush of everyday life. Learning to let go of everything we fear losing, even ourselves, then it won't matter where we are.
I try to remind myself to always go back to zero. As an example, if you were putting something together that you ordered online and in the middle of assembly you realized something was fundamentally wrong, you have to start from zero again. In your life when things are wrong, clear everything off the table. It is the unlearning and unraveling, that helps you retrain your mind. So much of what is in our mind is cluttered with bad information that comes from hearsay and a myriad of other things. It gets hard to just untangle the noise once we are so far down a road, it's better to reset it back to zero. Then we you are relearning, the true things will come back even stronger and the rest will be cast aside until you re-tangle again. It is better to have your mind permanently on zero, always open. It allows the path to be revealed in its true form and not from a preformed notion. It is like a scientist who observes outcomes rather than participates in them.
Every lesson there needs to be learned can be found in the natural world. All of the things it doesn't cover I would argue are not things we need to hold so precious. You want to learn about humbleness, look to the stars and feel your insignificance. If you wish to learn about greed, you can look to the bees and see how they give themselves over to the hive, even if it means death. If you wish to learn patience, watch a spider waiting on its web. Nature moves in truth and not in falsehoods, for ego is absent. What of compassion? It indeed is the fittest of the fittest and there is little compassion in nature. To me this just shows our place in this world as humans, to be the stewards of compassion. Nature doesn't need us to know of war but it can learn from us how to make peace. So many of us are at war with ourselves that we need to be students of peace and compassion first.
They say you should live each day as if it were your last, and we all accept this to be true at the wrong moments. We let ourselves be distracted by the myriad of things in this world, losing the connection to the moment. I see so many people who are attached to their phones as if it were their new umbilical cord feeding them life. Meanwhile, the myriad of splendors passes them by for a second of gratification from the device's notifications beeps.
I wish I could claim some moral high ground but I've been as much a servant of technology as any other. I could blame society because it pushes us into corners until we can't function in the world without it. Your school won't send out letters, they'll just e-mail you. Your work will be conferenced virtually but only if you have the right App. You need to know the capital of Peru, and the answer is sitting inside your phone, all you have to do is a voice-activated internet search. Ultimately it is still a choice and I choose conveniences like any other of flesh and blood. We find new technologies and move the human race away from the mysteries of nature. We give scientific names to things and close in on their physical properties. Even in science, we know that we were created out of Earth and evolved into higher-functioning creatures, but it doesn't change the fact that we are not something separate from nature. We are rooted to the soil yet we sever that tie for instant gratification. Each time we dig a little deeper and tell ourselves it can't hurt to go just a little more. It's like jabbing a stake into your heart, if you give the stake just a slight tap it won't reach your heart right away, so it seems just fine to go farther. Until one day you finally pierce through your beating heart, stopping it dead, unable to revive it.
As time goes by it seems the generational skills that were past down are becoming obsolete. My grandmother would sow our torn clothes, cut our hair, can our own winter food stores, wash dishes by hand, hang clothes on a line, so many things that now are seen as quaint but hardly of much value. Each generation we go back was able to be more self-reliant than the next, of course in the modern world there isn't a need for these things. In many indigenous cultures, the younger generations have forgotten the old ways, and languages and cultures around the world are becoming endangered by globalization.
There are always at least two sides to everything and certainly, positive changes are being made by technology and globalization. There is also cause and effect, and I'm simply lamenting how the past must die to make room for the future. Some might say that is the way of nature, for the dead materials become the soil from which new life can rise.
I wasn't always so connected to nature, I was a confused and angry schoolgirl, who was wrapped up in self-pity. I was like a spool of yarn slowly unwinding and it took the wild woods of the Boundary Waters to get to the deeper layers. My Grandfather initiated me to the power of the primal woods in a sort of family rites-of-passage. I am but an old woman now and perhaps I seem to be preaching to the younger generations, but it is only my desire to pass on the gift that was given to me. So I hope in the future there will always be a place for people to turn off their devices, disconnect from the modern world and set themselves free into the wild. Go back and journey with your ancestors to the roots of the World Tree and remember your oneness to the power of the universe.
So here I stand once more, wanting to relive and recount my transformations of my youth. It may ease my passage and transition into the next stage of life. When I was young I had a mentor in my Grandfather, but now I am trying to be the mentor. By telling you my journey, you might guide your spirit to new waters.
Each transition in life is a chance for growth or regression. If we learn from our mistakes of the past and settle our emotional debts, then we grow like a hearty fruit tree, ready for the fruit to be plucked in due season. When we continue down the paths of old habits and cycles, we become a tree whose branches wither away, and in due season the harvest is meager. Can I take you back to my youth, and tell you of my journey with my Grandfather? To the place and time where the schoolgirl in me died and was reborn a woman. It is a great thing to die many deaths, for then you are constantly renewing. Will you allow me to recount my first days truly out in the wild? Before I leave back to the city, I can make time for you. Because I feel near my end it is only natural for my mind to go back to the beginning of my journey here.