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.
Editor's notes:
“Wilderness Experienced” is our shared stories and musings about recent experiences in our nation's Wildernesses. Stories focus on the virtues of Wilderness and/or challenges facing the National Wilderness Preservation System. We want to hear your story! Learn more and submit a story.
Commenting guidelines:
We encourage readers to engage the authors and other commenters through the comment feature. Please be respectful and thoughtful in your response, and focus your comments on the issues/experiences presented. Please refrain from personal attacks and harassment, using rude or disruptive language, providing misinformation, or promoting violence or illegal activities. We reserve the right to reject comments. Thank you for your cooperation and support.
Click here to read another Wilderness Experienced story. See what you can do to defend America's National Wilderness Preservation System here.
When you subscribe to the blog, we will send you an e-mail when there are new updates on the site so you wouldn't miss them.
Wilderness Watch
P.O. Box 9175
Missoula, MT 59807
P: 406-542-2048
E: wild@wildernesswatch.org
Minneapolis, MN Office
2833 43rd Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55406
P: 612-201-9266
Moscow, ID Office
P.O. Box 9765
Moscow, ID 83843
Comments 31
The BWCA should be added to Voyageurs National Park.
Love the poem. Makes me want to go explore the wilderness.
Please save, protect, enlarge our wilderness. So much has been ruined, compromised and attacked...
Guest - Iris Edinger
Many years ago I experienced the boundary waters and remember the trip fondly. The beautiful poem reminds me of that trip.
A beauty that will be seen, be felt , be understood by very few humans. Sad. I do not understand people anymore. Thanks for being a unique individual who can see truth and feel nature the way it should be felt and seen. You have no idea how very rare you are. Mildred Yarborough
Excellent poem!
Beautiful poetry & a a beautiful wild place.
A wonderful poem applauding a place that I love and have had the great pleasure of experiencing twice in my life.
The first time was as a 16-year-old Explorer Scout with my twin brother and five others. I learned that I was a very good navigator with a topographical map. An innovator, using my poncho as a sail so that we did not have to paddle at all a great distance one day in a high wind. And by putting my body in my kapok sleeping bag in the heat of those August nights and four stakes, strategically placed around my head so that my blanket could be draped over them to keep the hordes of mosquitoes off my face. And, as a tireless go-getter, started the fires and cooked the food we had after getting up way too early and paddling until noon when the others just fell out and slept while I cooked them food to eat.
Fifteen years later, when I was finished with my doctorate and had time before an upcoming teaching job, I paid for a trip with my twin 15-year-old brothers who did all of the hard work, because my paralysis at 20 left my hands and arms unable. Although it rained five of the seven days that we took the same course as my earlier hundred mile journey, those guys did yeoman work and still talk of the amazing northern pike at Lily Pad Lake.
As a writer of novels and poetry in my retirement, I think it's time that I need to write a poem about that lovely place where time stood still, you could drink from the water without concern, and everywhere wildlife was your friend, even the bears. The purity of that place is what lingers and what drives me to write my novels like, The Last Wanderer: Last Man on Earth and one that I'm currently writing about life in Germany circa 5300 BC, Tor: Last of the Thals. Grandson of the Iceman of the Alps.
Beautiful description?
this is beautiful and so welcome right now as i process grades for my grads as registrar at a high school in California
Have heard of the "great old broads" & I so respect & envy them! Beautiful poem - does say it all!