“GRAVEL PIT SKY”
She picked the flowers just days before—bright, wild things, placed gently into a bottle left behind by men who carved roads through the forest. She found it buried in the underbrush, a ghost of the logging days, thick with rust and memory.
That night, I carried it to the gravel pit, set it among the broken stone, and waited.
At first, the northern lights were nothing more than a soft breath—barely there, like something the sky was still deciding. But then, without warning, they opened up—ribbons and flame, dancing above the pine edge like a signal from another world.
“BONE & BLOSSOM”
Once, he moved like a ghost through spruce and shadow—antlers wide as winter’s reach, hooves carving silence into snow. He drank from black lakes, tore bark with ancient fury, and watched the northern lights flicker in his reflection. But something—hunger, ice, or the slow bleed of time—caught him in the quiet. The forest swallowed the end without fanfare.
Now his skull stands like a shrine, weathered and hollowed, crowned in blossoms that should not bloom in such a place. Death gave him a second form—stiffened wood, sunlit bone—watching still. This is the elegy of a life once wild, now rooted in decay, where even ruin remembers.
“The Keeper’s Light”
Once, this flame burned steady—its soft glow casting shadows across weathered hands and windowpanes. It sat by the sill every night, watching Clearwater Lake darken into mirror and mystery. Someone kept it lit. Someone waited beside it. Maybe a trapper. Maybe a widow. Maybe just a soul who couldn’t sleep without watching the water.
But now the lamp is empty. Its wick is cold. And yet—on this night of skyfire and silence—it feels as though the flame has moved skyward. The aurora dances where the smoke once curled. Light is still here, just no longer ours to tend.
The lake forgets nothing. The stars forget nothing. And maybe neither does the lamp.
“The Last Seat”
It faces west, just as it always has—toward the bay, the pines, and the slow hush of Clearwater Lake. The chair is empty now, but not forgotten. Once, it creaked beneath a man who knew this place by heart. He watched loons dive and clouds unravel. Counted stars. Nodded at passing moose like neighbors. Maybe he spoke to no one. Maybe he said everything without a word.
Now the sky burns green above the glassy water, and the rocking chair waits in silence. No hands grip its arms. No boots rest near its legs. But it holds memory in its curve—the kind of memory that flickers in starlight and lingers in wood grain.
He may be gone. But the wilderness he loved still shows up every night, just in case he returns to sit and watch the aurora one last time.
“Silhouette Three”
Cattails cut the sky—still and solemn against a curtain of drifting light. The aurora hums behind them, slow as breath, quiet as memory. These are not just plants. They are remnants of a time when the land was not just home, but provider.
For generations, the Anishinaabe gathered these reeds along the lakes—braiding mats for shelter, harvesting roots for food, stripping down fibers for bedding and insulation. Cattails were more than wild—they were wisdom, passed down from hand to hand, season to season.
And now, beneath a sky aflame with color, they stand again—witness to another night on the edge of history. Their silhouettes speak softly to the stars, remembering a world that never really vanished.
“Sihloette One”
Long before cameras, before pavement, before the forest hummed with power lines, they stood in this same clearing—boots damp with snowmelt, breath rising like smoke—as the sky unraveled above them. Pioneers of the Gunflint, wrapped in wool and wonder, watching the heavens ignite in silence. They didn’t have a word for aurora, but they knew what it meant: fire without flame, God’s own lanterns, spirits dancing between the pines.Tonight, nothing’s changed.
The same silhouettes rise around us—spruce and cedar carving out the stars. The sky blooms in crimson and gold, a celestial current pulling us back through time. We see what they saw. We stand where they stood. The light belongs to no one, yet it finds us all.
This is not just a photograph. It’s a shared breath across centuries. A reminder: the wilderness remembers.
“BOREAL SPIRITS”
This old Lund has known the weight of storms and the hush of perfect stillness. Its hull remembers every crossing—every fish
pulled, every storm outrun, every quiet dawn. Tonight, it waits in silence while
the sky burns green above it, a witness to both work and wonder.