I've been holding these images on my desktop for sometime now.
Sometimes you have to distance yourself from something to see it's value.
My sister Emily and I went camping a while back last year.
(When I say a while back, I mean October.)
The plan was to drive up north- cell phones off. Do real camping by a real lake, make a real fire and sleep on real[ly] hard ground under the post meridian sky.
That sky that stole my words to describe it- that certain shade, pitch with a drop of navy ink. A plenum of black and blue stealing the breath required to form my inadequate nouns and adjectives. Descriptive words.
Grammar never could do Creation justice. The mumbles of my descriptions and the scratches and scribbles of my pen never could compare to a single groan in wait for the Day. I'll never forget that sky.
They say that camping is good for the soul. You know, spending a good night plastered to a hard ground somehow makes you more aware that you are on a planet spinning 6,000 miles an hour. I could almost feel the centrifugal force sticking me to the planet.Holding me there, in my sleeping bag, making certain I wouldn't float off into oblivion. It was remarkable.
While setting up camp on those stony shores of Lake Superior there was a certain song running through my head.
I sang it as we watched the birches move the golden token leaves against the reflected sky.
I sang it as we hiked along the paths and pitched (somewhat haphazardly) our little un-insulated tent in the midst of a big patch of glory that disguised its self as flat ground.
I sang the line again, skipping rocks across the rocking waves near Splitrock, half singing, half praying:
"I will lay my heart wide open"
I sang hushed, "like the surface of a lake
wide open like lake."
A post long past, enjoy.
"I will lay my heart wide open
like the surface of a lake
like the surface of a lake
wide open like a lake." -Sara Groves
"Go camping."
"But it's winter!"
"Go anyways."
Go camping by a lake.
