Wisps of airy white vapor float over restless waters. From behind a undulating green wall of spruce and cedar., the orange crescent of the rising sun makes its morning appearance haloed by diaphanous clouds bathed in iridescent light. The lingering echoes of a lone loon’s preternatural cry hang suspended in air and in time.

Behind me, a single sentinel spruce towers over the rest of the tiny sparsely-treed island, grey granite boulders tumbling into the shallows at its feet. Sitting half a dozen yards offshore, I lean over the gelid gunwale of the boat and dip my hand into the boreal waters of the lake, wanting to join my spirit to its spirit.

There will be time yet to pin a slimy and wriggling leech to the hook of my tungsten jig, time yet to cast my fluorocarbon line out over the cobalt waters, time yet to drag the baited pink and yellow lure slowly along the graveled bottom, ever alert for the slightest resistance, the subtlest change in line pressure, time yet to jerk the rod, set the hook, and experience once again, but always as if for the first time, the exhilarating rush of a dance with an exuberant walleye.

But now, I am subsumed in this moment, in this place, emptied of care and ego and desire, the boundaries between water and loon and rock and spruce and sun and cloud and me blurred and meaningless. And yet, in this hallowed place, sitting in a boat at Joel’s’ Hole on Dog Lake, I feel most assuredly, most authentically, most happily, myself.

Land of the silver birch
Home of the beaver
Where still the mighty moose
Wanders at will
Blue lake and rocky shore
I will return once more
Boom didi boom boom
Boom didi boom boom
Boom didi boom boom boom