JULY 26, 2024 – Late yesterday—or rather, very early today; the hour was closing in on 1:00 a.m.—I was about to retire when the sound of the breeze off the lake drew me outside. Usually the wind abates with the approach of dusk, but the broad stationary front over this region has brought a deliciously warm, persistent breeze straight out of the south, sweeping white caps across the big inland sea and onto our shore. The south wind felt no need for rest after nightfall.
I ventured out to the dock to sit for a time and admire the stars, the wind, the waves and . . . the waning moon as it peeked around the shoreline pine to the east. The moonbeams surfed the incoming waves, which then shooshed and shushed as they splashed over the stony shore, ending their long cross-lake journey.
The moonlight was still bright enough to wash out much of the starlight that fills the nighttime sky when our single natural satellite is at lesser luminous phases. Enough stars shone, however, to call to mind what I’d read earlier in the evening: the “cool-down” of the grapefruit-size universe to a mere 18 to the ninth power (billion) degrees Fahrenheit less than a second after the Big Bang, allowing protons and neutrons to form; another minute for these particles to form hydrogen and helium nuclei; but 300,000 years passed before things cooled enough for those nuclei to attract electrons and form the first atoms; a billion years would have to elapse after the Big Bang before stars and galaxies formed; eight billion before our solar system came together . . . and so on. Also, I recalled our place in the stellar hierarchy: Earth—Solar System—Solar Interstellar Neighborhood—Milky Way—Local Group—Virgo Supercluster—Local Supercluster—Observable Universe; plus . . . the non-specific quantity of cosmic matter—”hundreds of billions of galaxies,” which practically speaking is infinity.
In contrast with the unfathomable was the light of the visible, the stars within a few light years of earth. They could be seen without the aid of a lens—or understanding of math and physics—and thus seemed real and reachable, at least by my less-than-fully evolved brain. My mind had developed enough, however, to inform me that if I didn’t then go to bed, I’d be sleeping well into the sun’s reappearance on the eastern horizon. Reluctantly, I said good night to the spirits of wind, waves and celestial works and repaired to the cabin. Beth had left the bedroom windows wide open. Mesmerized by the breeze pushing waves over the rocks, my thoughts soon became a piece of driftwood floating carefree along the shores of dreamland.
The foregoing experience, not at all uncommon up here at Grindstone Lake, remained fresh in my mind this morning while I hiked through the “tree garden.”
My course took me away from the shore and into the southeast “entrance” to the acreage where I’ve been cultivating red and white pine and a few balsam and hemlock. This season has been a boon for all vegetation in this neck of the woods but especially the trees to which I’ve dedicated countless hours, initially planting, then bud-capping each fall (to defend against browsing deer), then relieving of the bud-caps each spring, constantly inspecting and monitoring for disease, and regularly trimming to give saplings—all variety of trees—wider berth among the aggressive undergrowth.
Every time I enter the “tree garden,” I feel the same calming sentiments. I experience a close connection with earth, with nature and its beauty and mysteries; with a higher power, much in the way people feel closer to heaven when entering an edifice of religion.
At the base of the trailed named “Hilda’s Meander” in memory of my grandmother, I looked up and saw a bald eagle circling above. Letting the thermals do all the work, the raptor had no need to work its wings except to guide its upward spiral.
The display stopped me in my tracks. That’s the way of the eagles here. When I was a child, the bird was endangered and nowhere to be seen. In August 1970 I saw my first bald eagle flying over our shoreline. Now the lakeshore boasts two enormous eyries and a third nest on one of the islands. During the day, the eagles love to hang out in the bigger pine along our shore. Here, eagles are as commonplace as crows, yet still an eagle’s appearance halts all human activity and conversation, as someone shouts, “Look, an eagle!” or “There goes an eagle!”
Only when the bird slipped to another thermal and out of sight beyond a screen of trees did I continue on my way—up “Hilda’s Meander,” to “Ray Way,” a connecting trail named after my dad, the master arborist, to “Nor – way,” thus called because of all the Norway pine along the route. I then circled back on “Ragnar’s Way,” a reminder of my grandfather who purchased the land 85 years ago. Instead of an arrow pointing the way uphill, on grandpa’s trail sign are several quarter notes falling like dominoes toward the hairpin of a diminuendo.
Rejuvenated by my time in nature’s cathedral, I returned to the cabin and a slate of activities that would lead me through the day and well into the evening. This place is my easel as well as my refuge.
I closed out this latest rotation of the earth just as I had yesterday—by sitting on the dock, bug free in the breeze, listening to the waves washing over the shore. Gazing outward and upward over the lake, I marveled yet again at the stellar and lunar light that guards the night until the sun returns.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
