NOVEMBER 4, 2022 – I’m “a people person,” to be sure, but I also thrive in periodic seclusion from my fellow humans—as long as I’m surrounded by natural beauty, as I am here at the Red Cabin.
When the weather and legal work are accommodating, I spend the majority of daylight hours outside, always observing and admiring my surroundings. By habitual alertness, I’ve witnessed the rare events, the fleeting phenomena, and the long-term transformations that fill Creation’s studio. Every season has its attractions, but on balance, autumn is best.
Before the foliage falls, it’s spectacular, and after the leaves are gone, secrets of the undulating terrain are revealed. Today, while I was walking along a woodland trail, a grouse fluttered from its roost on my right, streaked in front of me, and at light-speed, threaded its way straight through the dense woods on my left. Because the leaves were down, I could keep my eye on the feathered missile all the way to a dead, lower stub-branch of a majestic white pine at least 100 feet away. Over the years I’ve encountered many ruffled grouse in the woods, but these birds are so quick and elusive, I’d never seen one fly such a long distance and to a terminus. The episode lasted maybe five seconds, but it’s taken me 68 years in these woods to observe such a memorable phenomenon.
Such is the reward for age, luck, and alertness.
Several hours ago, in the fading light at the close of an overcast day, I was about to seek warmth and a repast inside the cabin. No colorful sunset seemed to be in promise. Yet, as I approached the end of the shoreline path leading to the front of the cabin, I noticed a break in the clouds over the western horizon. I walked a few paces farther west along the shore, then a few more until I was a couple hundred feet down the shore. I happened upon some “photo ops,” then noticed the sky opening up. The earth rotated another degree or two, and Voila!—the cloud cover yielded to a divine arrangement of floating cotton. As the sun sank behind the trees along the western shore, nature’s day’s end color wheel began its slow, tantalizing turn.
The sun is the same sun as it’s always been, but its earthly stage is in constant motion, producing performances full of surprise. Here at the Red Cabin, with easy access to the lake and sky, sunrises and sunsets, I’m far more alert to these delightful shows than I am “at home.”
Moments ago, I sat down in a chair in the sitting area on the main floor of the Red Cabin. When by chance I looked up at a second story window, through it I saw the moon with a companion star, framed by the soft boughs of a towering pine. The scene was remarkable; an invitation by Creation, a call for me to put aside my writing and walk outside to witness the full, unrestricted view of the sun’s continuing performance, this time on the face of the moon.
Here in the Northwoods—far from the noise, the nonsense, the frenetic distractions of modern civilization—nature’s beauty, as regarded by human senses, reigns supreme.
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
