NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JULY 2, 2004

Pieces of the wild world

continue to exist here. On my drive out to see Point Abbaye, a sandhill crane stands off at the edge of a meadow. A deer approaches the road across a field of mowed hay. A partridge squats at the edge of the road, in no hurry to move off. A hawk climbs from the road into its strength of trees. There is always water off through the trees; you know it, but you can't always see it.

At one place part-way out to the point I pull of the meager road and get out of the car, stand overlooking Keweenaw Bay and the Keweenaw Peninsula across the water from here. Out towards the open lake there is fog above the water. There is white chop on the surface. A recreational boat plies its way into the bay. I know it must be a big boat but the water makes it look small.

All this, here, overpowers everything. When you see just how beautiful the world is, all of a sudden it swallows you up and there is nothing left of you to send home. The place takes you and you're gone. All we can write are love letters or suicide notes.

Do you know how long you sit there watching the waves on the water? No. A moment or a hundred million years - it is all the same. The water rocks you again. There is no place you'd rather be.

Of course, eventually do you wake from this dream of watery eternity. You'll come back to yourself and do what you must; you're middle western and responsible.

From this point on, the road to the tip of the point gets smaller, narrower, less well-defined. Potholes full of water half-way across the road, or more. Someone has chain-sawed the downed trees out of the road, to make it passable.

Now I can see waves coming ashore against rock. The water is a lighter color, greener; the lake is shallower. Farther out, more - and more serious - white-caps. I get a glimpse of the Huron Islands.

At the end of the road I park the car and walk the trail out to the tip of the point. It is four-tenths of a mile from the car to the rock at the very tip of the point.

Waves splash water twelve feet back on the rocky tip. That water finds its way back to the lake. There is a dull roar, ebbing, flowing, the sound of a pleasure boat forcing its way out into the lake, headed toward the Huron Islands. The Hurons are small and tree-covered. Like swimmers sticking their bearded chins up out of the water, they are not much. For the moment, they are secure. For a few hundred thousand years, they might be secure. A few hundred thousand years is only a wink of God's eye. Even a quarter of eternity is not much consolation.

There is wind here, cold wind off the lake, the constant schurrr of waves, the tinkle of broken waves like shattered glass falling on rock. Grasses grow from the rock, here and there a flower does. Any moment all this shall evaporate. The lake seems eternal from this vantage point.

Then in a sudden instant a clunk of water against rock, a boom of it again like thunder. The fierce lake is just reminding me of its power. The sound like thunder rolling away, like a jet plane receding. Then here it comes again - the wax and wane of it; it comes and goes, comes and goes. You cannot possible stay to see how it all comes out. Even a quarter of eternity is not enough.

I look into the mossy green pools where water catches and stands. The backwater, so to speak. Alive with tadpoles. In this margin between water and rock, this is where live evolves. The world that will replace us will rise up from scum like this, from wigglers like these.

Out of the backwash of the universe comes the next wonder, whatever it will be.

Part-way back to the car, I hang my head and cry. I don't know why. I have touched something large, I know that. Have I overjuiced on God? Have I felt a tug of what it means to be part of the universe?

Have I just had a mystical experience?

Shall I never pass this way again?