Reflection from the Journey- Tom Tyler
“I
tried to hold for a little while the beauty before me, the sense of
floating color and the artistry of flame against the dark, knowing it
was part of the smells and sounds and rememberings of the past.”
I awake in the early morning and, still in limbo between asleep and alert, reach into my bedside cabinet drawer to find a pair of socks. About to slide them on before I step into the chill of a fall day, I am aware of a curious smell—smoky, musty, sweet. While the thick woolen socks are quite clean, they are undeniably the source of the scent. Not yet quite fully awake, I slip back into reverie, and recover the memory that had been triggered by the smell:
I am in another time and place, and find there a group of eight men
huddled in the dark around a growing fire, gathered under a makeshift
shelter in a steady rain. Birch logs feed the flames, wisps of smoke
rising into the wilderness sky.
A ceremonial bowl of smoldering
sage leaves is passed among the men, a pungent cleansing cloud
enfolding each in turn. Stretched above them is a single taut rope,
from which is suspended an assortment of wet gear. Among them, my
socks--three days drying and still not dry.
Coffee in hand, more awake now, I move to the family hearth, light a fire, and settle into the twilight. Taking a deep breath, my scented socks now trigger a smile. How could the smoke and sage have lingered in them so long (five weeks and several launderings later), unless their very essence had been changed by their wilderness cleansing? Something potent had been woven into their very fabric, and they were still holding it.
And so with me. My experience with my wilderness brothers has been woven into the fabric of my being, and I am still holding it. It is not easy to name or tease out from my other internal fibers, but it is there. I see the faces of these men in the reflected glow of the fire, and hear their voices as they pour their intentions into the flame. I hold a bit of each of them, and they hold me, as we explore together the deeper wilderness of the soul.
Perhaps the strongest voice is the one that has no words—the call of the wilderness itself. During the quieter moments of our journey, I read the Listening Point, and found in Sigurd Olson’s prose the poetry of that wilderness voice. I quote him above and still occasionally read him to remind me of our adventure together in the Boundary Waters. I’ve attached several photos taken from our time as voyageurs there, and have added excerpts of Olson’s writings that seem to fit the images. I offer them in greeting and gratitude to my wilderness brothers.
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