This past weekend, my son and I were able to cobble 4 days together to make the long haul up to the UP by the shores of frigid Lake Superior. My first concern after we drive the last half mile on the pitted dirt road is always: is the cabin still standing? Did it burn down, or had some drunken snowmobilers smashed through the back window to look for booze? Was it now filled with raccoons and mice and layers of crawling insects?
As we made the last turn, we could clearly see that everything was intact, as always. The cabins up there, mine included, are humble, after all, with few things to steal, and no one simply stumbles upon such places that are placed off any main road 20 miles from the nearest town. As for fire, the whole way up was wet and green, lush from a month of above average rains, and a forest fire would have been difficult to start without vast quantities of accelerants. No, everything was as it should be, and I finally backed up to the steps for the Great Unloading of more stuff than we would use or eat, then opened the door.
An unavoidable mistake, we would find instantly, as swarms of mosquitoes covered us like mangy fur. Rush to the cabin door! I said as I fumbled for my keys, and then saw with horror that as Jeff entered, he brought in at least 50 of the demons with him.
Such it would be for the entire stay, the devils sparse only along the big lake's shore, where the cold and the wind clipped their wings. The back woods up north are not the worst in the world, though, even though Jeff would swear they were. I had read of the old Eskimos and how they would huddle under skins with handfuls of wet wood, which they would ignite to create suffocating smudge fires, preferring a lack of oxygen and eventual emphysema to being sucked dry by the swarms. My friend Dave also told me of his graduate work in Labrador in summer, where they would pee in jars at night rather than go outside into the fog of mosquitoes. A drive into town told the same story - there, many were masked by netted hats, their hands covered by gloves and the rest covered by thick long pants and jackets, even as the temperature hit the upper seventies. Along the paths we would see frowning overnight hikers, suffering far more than they had thought before first stepping out, never believing that they would be so tortured. Aching backs, yes; being eaten alive, no. So bad that Jeff, while walking in his long coat and hood in the morning before I woke, would come across a large bear just a few yards from him. Neither flinched, both being more concerned with the mosquitoes than each other, like humans at war suddenly confronted with the common foe of an alien invasion.
Of course, Jeff had to make the observation that almost everyone does under such an onslaught - why did God invent the mosquito? If IT is a loving God ... and so on and so on. I could only answer with my typical abstractions - that the nature of this universe is such that each feeds off the other, nursed first through the energy of the sun through photosynthesis. That, this sun, is the purer of the cosmic force; we here in this world only a small slice of the totality. The mutual feeding is a conditional reflection of universal love, of the melding of all into the other and the desire and need of the other for the other. It is a physical expression of a metaphysical ideal, imperfectly formed around beings both limited and temporary. We selected or were selected for such a universe by our needs or our nature, our spiritual color. For reasons unknown to us, or to me at least, we need this impermanence and particularness, this nature, for a greater purpose.
Unfortunately, this adventure often entails pain. The mosquito, in its way, loves us - but its love hurts. It is the central part of the game, this pain, or we would all give ourselves willingly to our predators and the game would be over very quickly. To give in to the pull of universality would mean death. But this comes too, anyway, and the game of life then becomes an afterthought.
What is that afterthought? We get glimpses of it now and then, but then it eludes us. It is not meant for us to fully understand until the game is over.
Huddled in the cabin, I listened to Garrison Keeler on NPR recite a poem on the Writer's Almanac. The poet spoke of life as a song in two harmonies, the one heard most loud and frenzied, the other seldom noticed, an undertone that prevails in everything. I agree with her. Beneath the drone of the mosquitoes hums a song of our deeper lives, but we seldom have time to hear it while swatting away at the bloodsuckers who periodically plague us. But listen for it we should, for there, even the mosquitoes make sense and reflect a universal glory - if we can stop slapping away at them every now and then. FK
As we made the last turn, we could clearly see that everything was intact, as always. The cabins up there, mine included, are humble, after all, with few things to steal, and no one simply stumbles upon such places that are placed off any main road 20 miles from the nearest town. As for fire, the whole way up was wet and green, lush from a month of above average rains, and a forest fire would have been difficult to start without vast quantities of accelerants. No, everything was as it should be, and I finally backed up to the steps for the Great Unloading of more stuff than we would use or eat, then opened the door.
An unavoidable mistake, we would find instantly, as swarms of mosquitoes covered us like mangy fur. Rush to the cabin door! I said as I fumbled for my keys, and then saw with horror that as Jeff entered, he brought in at least 50 of the demons with him.
Such it would be for the entire stay, the devils sparse only along the big lake's shore, where the cold and the wind clipped their wings. The back woods up north are not the worst in the world, though, even though Jeff would swear they were. I had read of the old Eskimos and how they would huddle under skins with handfuls of wet wood, which they would ignite to create suffocating smudge fires, preferring a lack of oxygen and eventual emphysema to being sucked dry by the swarms. My friend Dave also told me of his graduate work in Labrador in summer, where they would pee in jars at night rather than go outside into the fog of mosquitoes. A drive into town told the same story - there, many were masked by netted hats, their hands covered by gloves and the rest covered by thick long pants and jackets, even as the temperature hit the upper seventies. Along the paths we would see frowning overnight hikers, suffering far more than they had thought before first stepping out, never believing that they would be so tortured. Aching backs, yes; being eaten alive, no. So bad that Jeff, while walking in his long coat and hood in the morning before I woke, would come across a large bear just a few yards from him. Neither flinched, both being more concerned with the mosquitoes than each other, like humans at war suddenly confronted with the common foe of an alien invasion.
Of course, Jeff had to make the observation that almost everyone does under such an onslaught - why did God invent the mosquito? If IT is a loving God ... and so on and so on. I could only answer with my typical abstractions - that the nature of this universe is such that each feeds off the other, nursed first through the energy of the sun through photosynthesis. That, this sun, is the purer of the cosmic force; we here in this world only a small slice of the totality. The mutual feeding is a conditional reflection of universal love, of the melding of all into the other and the desire and need of the other for the other. It is a physical expression of a metaphysical ideal, imperfectly formed around beings both limited and temporary. We selected or were selected for such a universe by our needs or our nature, our spiritual color. For reasons unknown to us, or to me at least, we need this impermanence and particularness, this nature, for a greater purpose.
Unfortunately, this adventure often entails pain. The mosquito, in its way, loves us - but its love hurts. It is the central part of the game, this pain, or we would all give ourselves willingly to our predators and the game would be over very quickly. To give in to the pull of universality would mean death. But this comes too, anyway, and the game of life then becomes an afterthought.
What is that afterthought? We get glimpses of it now and then, but then it eludes us. It is not meant for us to fully understand until the game is over.
Huddled in the cabin, I listened to Garrison Keeler on NPR recite a poem on the Writer's Almanac. The poet spoke of life as a song in two harmonies, the one heard most loud and frenzied, the other seldom noticed, an undertone that prevails in everything. I agree with her. Beneath the drone of the mosquitoes hums a song of our deeper lives, but we seldom have time to hear it while swatting away at the bloodsuckers who periodically plague us. But listen for it we should, for there, even the mosquitoes make sense and reflect a universal glory - if we can stop slapping away at them every now and then. FK
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