All so ache-worthy and yes, an exhale. Except this: “Outside, the constant ebb and flow of mosquitos." This is makes me itch just reading it - lol. (Mosquitos LOVE me.)
akin to the sort Mary Poppins pulls from her bottomless carpet bag for Jane, Michael & herself: “lime-juice cordial,” “strawberry ice,” & “Rum punch”
-your words are specially crafted potions that render just what’s needed in flavors that come alive on contact.
Common effects include: the slowing of breath and quickening of dreams; a re-anchoring to one’s inner fire; & sensory sparks that light pathways to portals of the past, present, & futures of possibilities.
Everything you described in this piece brought me back to my Gramma’s cottage in Angelica, a small cabin reached through traversing a pine-lined pebbled path, at the bottom of which rested a sputtering creek.
The sky, the water, the stars, the screen door noise, the bugs…
I’m not pulling directly from your gorgeous prose (on my phone) ;
but I can only say that I transported back there-
I heard the door bang shut after the squeak. And my skin - it felt my Mama dabbing Calamine lotion on my itchy bites, one after the next with soft white cotton balls.
I remembered shooting stars & salamanders and snapping turtles & stories by the fire.
My medicine was warm, wild, cinnamon wind, & earth nectar today. Thank you.
It's just astonishing, truly, to watch his nervous system downshift when we are there. We brought him right away the first week he was placed with Billie, back in Aug 2022, when he was only 20 months old and, because of his undiagnosed hearing loss, preverbal. We have been bringing him ever since. It is for sure his happy place!
This is magical. There’s something about the call of the loon for me too. It pulls at my insides. Maybe it brings me back to childhood and my time spent with family on a tiny lake in NH but the eerie, echoey sound that freaks my own kids out actually makes me feel settled and at peace.
I find it incredibly soothing as well. It is a haunting sort of call, but I don't find it distressing (though I know some do!). I find it ... I guess transporting. It's just so beautiful! We can hear them from our bed in our platform tent at night, because of course the canvas walls let all the sounds in all night, which is part of what I love about the tent!
love reading this Jeannine. Your description of cabin and its remoteness and its harsh surroundings was a great read.
"The wilderness is built for all of us. We just don’t always remember." so true, we came from nature, we are nature and nature is us.
"The wilderness certainly does have teeth, but it sings" ...no only does nature gives us wondrous moments of beauty but if exposed to it for a period of time also puts you in a state of gratitude.
after a years long-haul shoestring bicycle tour where I was consistently exposed to whatever the wild weather god put upon us, my body was tortured and scarred but it came out strong and resilient . when the tour ended I was in a state of pure gratitude for every comfort I experienced, hot shower was pure bliss, a warm cosy house was heaven,
but after a time back in the comfort zone, I yearned again to back out there in nature, to be with her again in all her glory knowing my body would stand up to her wilderness.
Everyone should take themselves out in the remoteness of nature for a period of time to let her harsh ways expose your weaknesses, reveal your strengths, and let her connect you to your true self.
This is so wise and beautiful, Jane. Also: Billie is about to do a 150-mile bike ride from MPLS to Duluth with a friend (Jon and I will have Z). It's not a super wild route, but it does cut through some very rural areas between here and the North Shore. They leave Friday morning! Send them luck and good weather (we already know it is going to be very hot ...)
That's marvellous, rock on Billie for doing a long bike ride, theres nothing like it 😁 here's sending out to Billie and friend, joy and fun times on the road and may they have strength and resilience mixed in with adventure and come back blissfully happy with wonderful stories to share
I’m sitting here with tears emerging from my eyes, trying to make tracks on my cheeks. Somehow this touched me so deeply and has me feeling like being outdoors in Nature so I can find myself again. Thank you for sharing this wonderful memory.
Jeannine, this is such a vivid description of the cabin, the lake, the boundary waters. I went there with you and recalled my times canoeing the boundary waters in Ontario - white water canoeing. With long portages. The wilderness, as you say, rewired me. While there was no soft landing, there were marvels that can't be experienced in the city. The Milky Way and it's wavering reflection in the still waters. The mosquitos and deer flies, did nothing to diminish these times on the water, where no one else was around. What a beautiful gift you welcomed into your life and the lives of your family
The cabin has been an adventure in so many ways. We bought it in 2020, height of pandemic, not knowing a thing about what we were getting into. I mean, we are nature lovers, but ... neither of us had done much camping, neither of us had ever been to the Boundary Waters, and neither of us had ever driven a boat. Suffice it to say, we're learning on the job!
Brave souls you are to treat yourselves to all this unknowing. I’ve never been to the US side of the boundary waters, and I assume that it is as beautiful as the Ontario side. When I went canoeing on the white water I’d never been canoeing, didn’t have a clue what was doing. I was in charged of 10 kids, the main job was to keep them safe and moving. I had my 13 year old son with me and he steered us through the rapids and we didn’t dump.
Amazing, Ray! In Canada it's called the Quetico, is that right? One of my writing students spends summers there. It sounds incredible. Might be even more wild than the U.S. side, but I am not sure. It's pretty wild over here, lol. And your white water adventure sounds outstanding and very daring. We have NOT done white water! Though we have been caught in some terrific rainstorms, with our tiny dog Frannie in the canoe, no less! Those storms sometimes just come up out of nowhere, it's crazy!
I've never been to Quetico. I was told by a longtime river traveller that Tamagami, particularly the Mississaugi River where we put in, was part of the Boundary Waters. The trip was a pilgrimage for the leader the trip, to the site where Grey Owl lived for a time. If you don't know of Gray Owl, he was a man from Scotland who assumed the identity of an Indigenous group, the Ojibway. He was one of the first wilderness conservationist and lectured widely about this during his lifetime. His true identify was only revealed after he died. The trip was also intended to be a rite of passage for my son who turned 13. I did the same for my two daughters when they were 13.
Beautiful capturing of your experience. I once spent a few days on a lake like that in Maine where we had to take a raft to a cabin on an island. Also love the Nicasio photo — that was where I first saw the Hale-Bopp comet in 1997, on a night with a lunar eclipse on one side of the sky and the comet taking up the whole other side of the sky. Though it wasn't as spectacular in San Francisco, it was prominent in the sky for a month; I could see it over the hills looking west from the roof of my apartment building in the Mission, and I missed it when it left.
Your writing completely transported me to your homecoming in the wilderness. Every sentence screamed of place. I cried when you wrote, "I think of a time when I cried quietly in a restroom stall because I couldn't remember what it felt like to belong. And now I am here, held by this indifferent, benevolent place that does not know my name and doesn't need need to."
How many times have I cried silently, estranged from my loved ones, when I am among others but still disconnected? I don't know if there is any one place, natural or otherwise, that I can truly belong to, except maybe the mossy grave of my parents who raised me. Only there will my joys and sorrows call me home, and all the memories of my childhood in Sudbury and my adulthood on Martha's Vineyard return to embrace me.
I have a lifetime of wonder-filled memories of my parents who raised me in a neighborhood packed with friends’ houses. My very best friend, Beanz, lived three houses away, across the street, with her older brother Steve, who used to keep us locked out of their house after school, much to our frustration. Steve was a bit of a prodigy, a musical genius, so Beanz and I were always made to tiptoe around while he played piano to his heart's content.
Beanz was the nicest person I knew. I fell in love with my best friend at a very young age. So I asked her to marry me. She broke my heart when she told me, “I can't; I have to marry a boy, so I'm marrying my dad.”
Lonelier than ever, I cried when rejected by Beanz. Seeing me cry gave Beanz pause, and sent a small waterfall down her face, which meant I couldn't even feel mad or hurt because she'd feel it too. And I couldn't hurt Beanz.
Then my mother rang our old-fashioned school bell at the base of our long driveway to call me home from wherever I was in our neighborhood for dinner. Beanz and I stalled by reciting the alphabet together and pretending not to hear, when my mom sussed me out from the Espinolas by dropping by for Constant Comment tea with Mrs. E.
That night after supper, I tried to marry my dad, too, but he told me that, even though he loved me very much, he was already married to Mommy. But we could instead make a “Whoolery Sandwich,” the world's smooshiest three-person hug.
Up until the week before my mom died, we could always call upon the practice of making a Whoolery Sandwich 🥪 to ward off all manner of crushing disappointment. We had each other, and solidarity was everything.
Until one morning when my mom fell down the stairs, drunk, in my childhood home, fractured her skull in three places, and never regained consciousness.
And. It. Was. All. My. Fault.
I had found and reunited with my birth family.
The day before, I had accidentally forgotten my dinner and Huntington Theater date with my mom to see a play performed by our favorite playwright, August Wilson. And I was the reason she had been drinking.
I had destroyed the Whoolery Sandwich.
But, I digress. Yes, so many fond memories. And thank you for the love and care you sent my way.
Wow! I can’t imagine a place you can’t drive to - fertile ground for the soul indeed.
I have just returned from visiting my son and family in Tasmania. They live between a lagoon and a beach, also magical but not so remote as your cabin! Great description - the reflected stars sound amazing. Thankyou 🥰
All so ache-worthy and yes, an exhale. Except this: “Outside, the constant ebb and flow of mosquitos." This is makes me itch just reading it - lol. (Mosquitos LOVE me.)
"There is no soft landing here." Love this.
Your words are medicine;
akin to the sort Mary Poppins pulls from her bottomless carpet bag for Jane, Michael & herself: “lime-juice cordial,” “strawberry ice,” & “Rum punch”
-your words are specially crafted potions that render just what’s needed in flavors that come alive on contact.
Common effects include: the slowing of breath and quickening of dreams; a re-anchoring to one’s inner fire; & sensory sparks that light pathways to portals of the past, present, & futures of possibilities.
Everything you described in this piece brought me back to my Gramma’s cottage in Angelica, a small cabin reached through traversing a pine-lined pebbled path, at the bottom of which rested a sputtering creek.
The sky, the water, the stars, the screen door noise, the bugs…
I’m not pulling directly from your gorgeous prose (on my phone) ;
but I can only say that I transported back there-
I heard the door bang shut after the squeak. And my skin - it felt my Mama dabbing Calamine lotion on my itchy bites, one after the next with soft white cotton balls.
I remembered shooting stars & salamanders and snapping turtles & stories by the fire.
My medicine was warm, wild, cinnamon wind, & earth nectar today. Thank you.
As I read this, I found myself asking the same question as Z. Can we live here? Beautiful.
It's just astonishing, truly, to watch his nervous system downshift when we are there. We brought him right away the first week he was placed with Billie, back in Aug 2022, when he was only 20 months old and, because of his undiagnosed hearing loss, preverbal. We have been bringing him ever since. It is for sure his happy place!
What a wonderful gift to him and to you.❤️
This is magical. There’s something about the call of the loon for me too. It pulls at my insides. Maybe it brings me back to childhood and my time spent with family on a tiny lake in NH but the eerie, echoey sound that freaks my own kids out actually makes me feel settled and at peace.
I know the call of loons from a beloved lake near Wasilla Alaska. Haunting yet soothing is so true in my being.
I find it incredibly soothing as well. It is a haunting sort of call, but I don't find it distressing (though I know some do!). I find it ... I guess transporting. It's just so beautiful! We can hear them from our bed in our platform tent at night, because of course the canvas walls let all the sounds in all night, which is part of what I love about the tent!
I loved this essay Jeannine. I love the wild places too. 💚
Thank you so much, Kate!
Just beautiful.
Thank you, Anne xoxo
I love your posts about your cabin, thank you for taking us there.
May we all let the wild name us.
Thank you so much, Donna. And yes, let it be so, and so it is.
love reading this Jeannine. Your description of cabin and its remoteness and its harsh surroundings was a great read.
"The wilderness is built for all of us. We just don’t always remember." so true, we came from nature, we are nature and nature is us.
"The wilderness certainly does have teeth, but it sings" ...no only does nature gives us wondrous moments of beauty but if exposed to it for a period of time also puts you in a state of gratitude.
after a years long-haul shoestring bicycle tour where I was consistently exposed to whatever the wild weather god put upon us, my body was tortured and scarred but it came out strong and resilient . when the tour ended I was in a state of pure gratitude for every comfort I experienced, hot shower was pure bliss, a warm cosy house was heaven,
but after a time back in the comfort zone, I yearned again to back out there in nature, to be with her again in all her glory knowing my body would stand up to her wilderness.
Everyone should take themselves out in the remoteness of nature for a period of time to let her harsh ways expose your weaknesses, reveal your strengths, and let her connect you to your true self.
This is so wise and beautiful, Jane. Also: Billie is about to do a 150-mile bike ride from MPLS to Duluth with a friend (Jon and I will have Z). It's not a super wild route, but it does cut through some very rural areas between here and the North Shore. They leave Friday morning! Send them luck and good weather (we already know it is going to be very hot ...)
That's marvellous, rock on Billie for doing a long bike ride, theres nothing like it 😁 here's sending out to Billie and friend, joy and fun times on the road and may they have strength and resilience mixed in with adventure and come back blissfully happy with wonderful stories to share
I’m sitting here with tears emerging from my eyes, trying to make tracks on my cheeks. Somehow this touched me so deeply and has me feeling like being outdoors in Nature so I can find myself again. Thank you for sharing this wonderful memory.
Thank you for reading my work, Taru, and taking the time to share this. I am grateful. xo
What a special place! I live right near Nicasio reservoir, in the picture you sent!
Really? Oh that is so neat to hear! I was looking for a picture of "specular reflection" and that was the first one that came up!
Jeannine, this is such a vivid description of the cabin, the lake, the boundary waters. I went there with you and recalled my times canoeing the boundary waters in Ontario - white water canoeing. With long portages. The wilderness, as you say, rewired me. While there was no soft landing, there were marvels that can't be experienced in the city. The Milky Way and it's wavering reflection in the still waters. The mosquitos and deer flies, did nothing to diminish these times on the water, where no one else was around. What a beautiful gift you welcomed into your life and the lives of your family
The cabin has been an adventure in so many ways. We bought it in 2020, height of pandemic, not knowing a thing about what we were getting into. I mean, we are nature lovers, but ... neither of us had done much camping, neither of us had ever been to the Boundary Waters, and neither of us had ever driven a boat. Suffice it to say, we're learning on the job!
Brave souls you are to treat yourselves to all this unknowing. I’ve never been to the US side of the boundary waters, and I assume that it is as beautiful as the Ontario side. When I went canoeing on the white water I’d never been canoeing, didn’t have a clue what was doing. I was in charged of 10 kids, the main job was to keep them safe and moving. I had my 13 year old son with me and he steered us through the rapids and we didn’t dump.
Amazing, Ray! In Canada it's called the Quetico, is that right? One of my writing students spends summers there. It sounds incredible. Might be even more wild than the U.S. side, but I am not sure. It's pretty wild over here, lol. And your white water adventure sounds outstanding and very daring. We have NOT done white water! Though we have been caught in some terrific rainstorms, with our tiny dog Frannie in the canoe, no less! Those storms sometimes just come up out of nowhere, it's crazy!
I've never been to Quetico. I was told by a longtime river traveller that Tamagami, particularly the Mississaugi River where we put in, was part of the Boundary Waters. The trip was a pilgrimage for the leader the trip, to the site where Grey Owl lived for a time. If you don't know of Gray Owl, he was a man from Scotland who assumed the identity of an Indigenous group, the Ojibway. He was one of the first wilderness conservationist and lectured widely about this during his lifetime. His true identify was only revealed after he died. The trip was also intended to be a rite of passage for my son who turned 13. I did the same for my two daughters when they were 13.
Beautiful capturing of your experience. I once spent a few days on a lake like that in Maine where we had to take a raft to a cabin on an island. Also love the Nicasio photo — that was where I first saw the Hale-Bopp comet in 1997, on a night with a lunar eclipse on one side of the sky and the comet taking up the whole other side of the sky. Though it wasn't as spectacular in San Francisco, it was prominent in the sky for a month; I could see it over the hills looking west from the roof of my apartment building in the Mission, and I missed it when it left.
How amazing to see the comet!!
Jeannine,
Your writing completely transported me to your homecoming in the wilderness. Every sentence screamed of place. I cried when you wrote, "I think of a time when I cried quietly in a restroom stall because I couldn't remember what it felt like to belong. And now I am here, held by this indifferent, benevolent place that does not know my name and doesn't need need to."
How many times have I cried silently, estranged from my loved ones, when I am among others but still disconnected? I don't know if there is any one place, natural or otherwise, that I can truly belong to, except maybe the mossy grave of my parents who raised me. Only there will my joys and sorrows call me home, and all the memories of my childhood in Sudbury and my adulthood on Martha's Vineyard return to embrace me.
Priscilla, I am so glad that you have those memories. And, I am sorry for the estrangements. Sending so much love.
I have a lifetime of wonder-filled memories of my parents who raised me in a neighborhood packed with friends’ houses. My very best friend, Beanz, lived three houses away, across the street, with her older brother Steve, who used to keep us locked out of their house after school, much to our frustration. Steve was a bit of a prodigy, a musical genius, so Beanz and I were always made to tiptoe around while he played piano to his heart's content.
Beanz was the nicest person I knew. I fell in love with my best friend at a very young age. So I asked her to marry me. She broke my heart when she told me, “I can't; I have to marry a boy, so I'm marrying my dad.”
Lonelier than ever, I cried when rejected by Beanz. Seeing me cry gave Beanz pause, and sent a small waterfall down her face, which meant I couldn't even feel mad or hurt because she'd feel it too. And I couldn't hurt Beanz.
Then my mother rang our old-fashioned school bell at the base of our long driveway to call me home from wherever I was in our neighborhood for dinner. Beanz and I stalled by reciting the alphabet together and pretending not to hear, when my mom sussed me out from the Espinolas by dropping by for Constant Comment tea with Mrs. E.
That night after supper, I tried to marry my dad, too, but he told me that, even though he loved me very much, he was already married to Mommy. But we could instead make a “Whoolery Sandwich,” the world's smooshiest three-person hug.
Up until the week before my mom died, we could always call upon the practice of making a Whoolery Sandwich 🥪 to ward off all manner of crushing disappointment. We had each other, and solidarity was everything.
Until one morning when my mom fell down the stairs, drunk, in my childhood home, fractured her skull in three places, and never regained consciousness.
And. It. Was. All. My. Fault.
I had found and reunited with my birth family.
The day before, I had accidentally forgotten my dinner and Huntington Theater date with my mom to see a play performed by our favorite playwright, August Wilson. And I was the reason she had been drinking.
I had destroyed the Whoolery Sandwich.
But, I digress. Yes, so many fond memories. And thank you for the love and care you sent my way.
Wow! I can’t imagine a place you can’t drive to - fertile ground for the soul indeed.
I have just returned from visiting my son and family in Tasmania. They live between a lagoon and a beach, also magical but not so remote as your cabin! Great description - the reflected stars sound amazing. Thankyou 🥰
Sarah, it has been such an adventure!
Magical ✨
It is magical, in a very roll up your sleeves and work for it kind of way!