I escaped the tent, though that might have been by their efforts to ignore
my early morning enthusiasm. But trust me when I say it was worth
getting up at dawn. The light just barely spilled into the valley, making
the frost glisten on the long wild grass. The fog from the water rose and
shimmered. I took a bit of a jaunt upstream to warm up a bit and pull
down our bear bag, but before I got there, I was entirely distracted by a
nearby beaver dam. The thing was massive, stretching at least a hundred
yards across the middle of the stream, although the stream only managed
to spill out at a meter-wide section in the middle. I rolled up my pants to
keep them somewhat dry and jumped the first pool of water. My boots
sank into the marsh as I approached the wall of gnawed lumber. Cold,
fresh water spilled over them and flooded my socks, but I pressed on.
As I heaved myself to the top of the pile-wall, it startled me how flat it
was beyond. Water pooled right up to the top of the dam and stretched
outward up to the tree line in the distance, forming a large, relatively
shallow lake. It looked like a vast, glassy plateau with sprigs sticking out
of it here and there. Finally my eyes fell upon a peculiar pile of trees
in the middle of the lake. I stood for a long while admiring the home.
What I wouldn’t have given to live in a place like that! How could anyone
believe they lived a fulfilled life without having seen the world in such
serenity? Without having cold stream water in their boots and dirty
hands? Without gnarly braids in their ha ir and a severe longing to be in
nature?
On my way back I saw fiery sparks of red here and there along
the banks. When I found that they were little wild cranberries, I smiled
to myself. I thought them to be an ode to the beaver and to the earth. I
gathered some for breakfast and then plopped a few into the stream as a
ceremonial farewell. The morning of poking about in solitary exploration
reminded me of our reading Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer. Krakauer
told the story of Chris McCandless, a sort of black sheep who, after
college, extracted himself from his life and home and hitchhiked west
and northward on his great Alaskan odyssey. During his travels, he was
often in complete disconnect with civilization and was truly finding
himself and embracing the wild. Not to say that I was completely on
my own, but it certainly felt that way in the quiet of the morning. I was
finally starting to understand the motives behind his escape from society.
His innate sense for more in life… my own yearning for some type
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