by Suez Jacobson
A long wait – almost 50 years – to learn
How deeply and completely
The wild magic of the Boundary Waters
Could burrow.
A self-identified mountain girl
Lost to still, flat black water
Contained by granite outcroppings
Layered in midnight green pines
Topped with iridescent spring birches.
In a place of pure stillness.
A quiet a city dweller doesn’t know
And a peak bagger doesn’t experience.
Savoring the indelible memory of
The night’s all-consuming darkness
Its lavish gift of stars,
The raucous cacophony of loons.
The fog and the suns
One in the sky
Another in the glassy flat water.
Silent contentment,
Gratitude,
Wild hope.
Suez, a member of the Board for Great Old Broads for Wilderness, is the executive producer and writer for the film "Wild Hope"—wildhopefilm.com. She is also professor emerita from Regis University in Denver.
I could feel the silence as I read this. It reminds me of a trip my family took to a national forest several years ago. We stopped the car, turned off the engine, and listened to complete silence. The beauty of it stays in my heart. We must protect it and share it with future generations.
And now local politicians of both parties who don't remember the Reserve Mining Fiasco are falling all over themselves to get a copper/nickel mine just upwind and downstream of this beautiful place. The prospective miner is a subsidiary of a Chilean megacorporation, so a convenient bankruptcy is likely to end any claims for harm done. Only the federal EPA seems to be looking at the long-term consequences.
What a lovely poem Suez. Thank you. I, too, felt I had to go there. At my age, fixed income, I don’t know if that I will ever get to see such a place. Still, what’s most important to me is that the Wilderness be there, whether or not I will ever get to see and enjoy it. That the Wilderness and its inhabitants be left alone. That the Wilderness Just Be.
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