"Tahquamenon Falls"

At first it was pine tree steeples rising from banks of exquisite color. Trees were ablaze in the northern light and it felt like my being couldn't take it all in. Yet the further north I pushed, the more green began to needle the sky until finally, all the eye could take in was miles and miles of evergreen sea. This land, this place . . . it has the power to crush rib cages with its unmolested beauty. No billboards or street lights. No sidewalks or people our developments. Only the great exhale atop a ravaged country.

Sufan's Tahquamenon, Longfellow's Hiawatha. I see it now. I know it.

Hiking Tahquamenon, there is an adjustment required in breathing cypress air; there is a re- calibration of one's sense of place and autonomy. The falls annihilate you, but if for some reason they do not, the overlapping density of pine, cypress and birch will. In a few deep breaths, I remember every thing I have forgotten. I remember everything I have ever needed to know. Moose, elk, and black bear. I know now how to be alive.

The rain was an icy drizzle but in the heart of the forest, I didn't feel it much. I wanted to keep going but my body's limitations begged me for a wiser decisions. I also now know why people die in the forest or on the trail.

The spirit of Objibwe grows in these trees and earth and can tell you about the sunrise long before any of the world's wars or man's plot to rule. How old do you think I really am?