Thursday, December 09, 2004
There is a season…
It didn’t take long before I melted into the seat of my ’92 Voyager. After spending a couple of days paddling on Lake Superior, the late afternoon canvas of the North was a welcome massage to the aches left over from my weekend on the water. The rustic beauty of the region and its contrast with the bustling backcloth of home lead me to think of the early settlers whose lives have now been reduced to stone foundations and a few gray, weathered boards.
The rural landscape of Wisconsin is speckled with abandoned farmsteads. They are the battered remnants of bygone enterprise, and of families and lives that no longer exist – at least as they once did. The broken windows, collapsed frames and punctured roofs evoke a nostalgia that makes us wonder about the forces of nature and our own resolve. In a few more years, even those bits and pieces of the past will have slipped away. It made me question our ideas of permanence and to wonder if all industry isn’t futile.
Seeing those relics, and thinking about their storied past, left me feeling a little sad. But why wouldn’t it? The energy that goes into a life is abstract and intangible, born of our spirit, more than the earth. And when the earth reclaims what is hers… as she always does, we can feel defeated. Our sense of loss relates to the view that we’ve created; a view that often hides the true meaning of what and who we are.
We like to think of our lives in postcard images, the way fieldstone and timber give subject matter to a painting when they are used to represent a home. But the material aspects that surround us have their own ‘lives’ to lead. In the long view, walls and rafters make only a slight detour on our behalf. Soon enough, they return to their own destiny, leaving us with ours. If we are not much more than energy, then what matters… except how we use it in the space and time that we have?
Home in the driveway, my time on the water and the sense of freedom it always provides was beginning to fade. But then, as I lifted the kayak off the van, I remembered the paddle’s weight in my hands… I saw the trail of water dripping off the blade on the return stroke, and I felt the ripples going forth… That’s what I could count on. It’s the energy that we spend during our lives that is eternal, not the forms or the framework. Not an easy lesson, but in terms of the foundations of life, it’s the only one worth building upon.
