Between the world with all of its offers, and slow mornings on the peat, the choice was always easy. I take Moose, the dog, for a short walk around the nearby wetland before I set up the camera, if at all. Usually, he romps about off leash when I am making images, oftentimes making interesting patterns in water (that I can possibly include in my image), or getting me curious about that flower he is sniffing. Being early in a “non- descript” wetland has its advantages of having no other bipeds to worry about. But no off leash running for him until his leg heals. After his walk, I put the leash around my ankle while I set up my tripod. Bad idea for sure! And yet, in all these weeks, he has not brought the tripod, and me, crashing down. 

On my right, the pink sky is giving way to blood orange. Soon the mist will turn to vapours of gold. The tamaracks will briefly adorn this gold, pretending it is Fall, while the temperatures very well indicate mid summer. The labradorite landscape to the left starts to catch hints of these yellows, here and there, with no apparent rhyme or reason, guided by the whims of the sun playing truant with the fog. Not so long ago, there was just one lilypad, the first of the season, floating under the watchful eyes of bygone pines as water- bugs frolic. And now there is a whole family. 

Edward Abbey said-  “….in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock. The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life-forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom.”

Things are a little different here, in boreal country, with a holistic bounty of flora and fauna. With a generous gift of light and water for every lilypad and black spruce, each stem of the bladderworts, the living organism grows out of the sphagnum with dignity and grace. The extreme mist of the wetlands is equaled by the extreme fellowship of boreal life-forms. Love flowers best in love.

I hear the splash of a beaver. Of course, Moose has heard it. I grab the leash and start walking away before he makes a dash towards the beaver. A short distance away, there is a lady slipper, blushing with the mirth of the pre-dawn pinks. What are the odds of seeing a lady slipper in my life? A narrow range of soil and climate nourishes them; even when I made a journey of ten thousand miles to this place, it wasn’t until my ninth year of exploring that I first heard of this orchid. I could never have hoped or planned my life to meet a lady slipper. I had hoped for “bigger and better things” with my life, and for a good part of my life, planned and pursued them. But I am glad the smaller, meaningful things never went away. Sure enough, it did require a nudge every now and then from a book’s wisdom, a poet’s word, a hiker’s fatigue, and whatever the thing that whiskey does. Now that I have met this lady slipper, and that this is an important meeting, mere hope and planning do not suffice anymore.  

Wendell Berry wrote- 

“Let us see that, without hope, we still are well. Let hopelessness

shrink us to our proper size.

Without it we are half as large

as yesterday, and the world

is twice as large. My small

place grows immense as I walk

upon it without hope.”

This wetland too, grows immense as I walk upon it without hope. As night turns to day on this sphagnum, I stand in silence before the venous pitcher plant. I learn about the flowering leatherleaf, I quiver with the budding lady slippers, I rejoice with the geese, I spin with the water-bugs by the daunting lily pads. Between the shallow shoreline and the point where the water suddenly gives away to depth, amidst the swirling galaxy of shy pine cones and the bold pollens, the pickerel weeds quivering in the sunlight- a mass of yellow and green in the blue expanse, a dispatch from Spring, that I am reading on this warm summer morning. I come close to all that is holy, and unholy, as the light, ever so lightly, fills me from horizon to horizon. 

I cannot stay here all day because there are lectures to be prepared, and assignments to be graded. I slowly walk back with Moose: he is dragging his feet while wagging his tail.While I know my day will be long, I know that I have enough sustenance. In the graveyard of my erstwhile hopes and dreams, I have gathered my meaning. 

And this is what I have gathered this spring and summer- three trilliums, a swallowtail on a foam flower, one lady slipper (because you should not have too much of a good thing), a pitcher flower and three grass pink orchestrating a ballad of bladderworts and sundews, a million black flies so that I learn to value them all, three dragonflies to give me a brief respite from the black flies, a clump of rose pogonias around a budding tamarack, thirteen blooming water lilies, and two more at the cusp of a bloom (because you can never have too much of a good thing), seven bog candles, and a path lined with goldenrods.