This Says It All

My all time, #1 favorite T-shirt.

I don't wear it much any more. It sits in the drawer and I see it regularly. I move it, touch it, remember its source. I've had it for about 15 years. I only saw it that one year at a store in Ely, MN, and bought it.

It says everything I know- or need to know about the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and myself.

Clear Water - Clear Soul.

It is truth beyond fact for me. A desert wilderness has its power for the soul, of course. The grand tradition of the Desert Mothers and Fathers of Christian history reminds us of that. The southwest American desert and its native mysticism adds much to the vitality of the world.

But my life has been built in and through heavily wooded wilderness. It has been strengthened by flowing streams and powerful rivers. It has been nourished by clear waters of northern lakes. It has been seen in the images of sky and land reflecting from clear water into my soul,  a soul in need of life-giving light.

My t-shirt reminds me of that soul-feeding possibility of wilderness. One one side an evergreen tree, the other a moose. They surround the middle - a canoe with a single paddler. Alone on the water, a soul makes small headway across a large life. I see my own life in perspective.

Between the flora and the fauna I live, not apart, but between. I am ill-equipped on my own to make this journey, yet I have discovered on those waters that I can make it with the help of powers greater than myself.