On the Edges of Things

The world is poetical, intrinsically: what it means is simply itself. Its significance is the enormous mystery of its existence and our awareness of its existence.

Aldous Huxley

On my first hike in Washington’s Pasayten Wilderness, I discovered the Hidden Lakes, well named, for they are not visible until the hiker reaches the shoreline of the first one, appropriately named First Hidden Lake. The next one is Middle Hidden Lake, and the final one Big Hidden Lake, which is about a mile in length. This lake became a yearly destination for me. Wherever I was headed in the Pasayten, I always found a way to spend a night or two camped next to its shore in a particularly beautiful campsite that, like the lake, was well hidden off the trail.

This is where I first encountered the magical bird that has appeared and reappeared in my life many times since. Their eerie call is hard to miss. On that first night I sat next to the lake and watched the loon as it passed in front of me, then returned to get a closer look, as if curious. It was not long before it had been joined by another adult with two chicks on its back, looking like the quintessential wilderness photo, a family of loons spending the summer on an isolated mountain lake in the north country. The next morning they returned, their beautiful call waking me up from sleep as they swam back and forth in front of my campsite, as if waiting for me to come to the shore and greet them.

I returned to that lake many times and each year shared it with a family of loons. In the years that followed I began collecting photographs of the birds. A friend painted one for me, and it hung in my office above my desk. Glancing at it each day helped me to remember another world I lived in from time to time and the wildness I found there. It gave me peace on busy days. I bought a coffee table style book while waiting for a connecting flight at the Minneapolis airport. It took up a lot of room in my carry on bag and was too big to open up and read on the flight. People gave me CD’s of loon calls, a stuffed loon doll that made the beautiful call when it was squeezed, a quilted wall hanging, a collection of mugs, even a wine glass on which is etched the beautiful image of this magnificent bird. It seems like once the people close to me figured out I liked loons, then what to give Colleen for Christmas became an easy choice.

Most of these items are still in my home, though the doll no longer calls when it is squeezed. But the greatest gift of all came about a year ago when I bought a house on a hill above Curlew Lake north of the little town of Republic. There are plenty of curlews skittering along in the tall grass by the lake, but I never saw nor heard a loon here until just a few weeks ago, when I opened the window in my bedroom to allow the night air to cool the room. There it was, the mysterious call that was said by ancient people to instill madness.

I have heard that call now many times, and like Hamlet, “If this be madness, yet there is method in it.” I do not know what that method might be. I prefer not to analyze mystery. It just is. I only know that it is wild and that when I hear the call I remember something ancient within me, a place that lives on the edges of things where daylight slips softly into the night, that space between waking and dreaming. I like it there.