Temagami

Among the towering pines we walk,
Finding each other, finding ourselves.
We arrive on the cusp of fall,
Bright flares of red alight the forest around us.

We sit at water’s edge, where shield slopes to shore,
Our voices lapping like lake licking rock.
Wind rustles leaf and needle,
Paddles dip and thump the gunnel.

Together we travel, feeling small but united in the wide wild.
It speaks without words, we listen.
Mist rises from the lake, swirling around as if to secret us from the world.
Together we rise from the clouds, atop a granite ridge, looking upon the land below as if seeing it for the first time.

A cabin glows warm in cold September air,
A single point of light fallen from the sky.
We talk, surrounded by walls not hewn of wood, but of tales of the past;
Old stories and new, melding together in conversation and song.

A small lamp lights a room of smiling faces,
Cheerful melodies float between the trees.
Late into the night we dance,
Hand in hand, arm in arm.

Floorboards thump and laughter rises,
Caught in the rafters like woodsmoke.
Strumming strings, beating drums,
Endless reels and waltzes and ballads.

We talk, we travel, we sing, we dance.
We learn from the land, from each other.
We gain not only new knowledge, but old.
We arrive as a hundred individuals but leave as one.

We arrive with backpacks and leave with memories.
We don’t just  be, we belong, not just here, but together.
It will be but one short year until we return,
Under pine and star, by lake and shore, by path and canoe.