Being There

An Apostle Islands postcard

Some mornings, I am out of the boat and in the dark water, scrambling into some remote and unnamed cave still painted with shadows before the sun even clears the watery horizon. Sometimes, I am walking a beach as the sun comes up, deciphering the cursive of gull tracks in the sand. Then, there are other mornings, those mornings when I never get out of the boat, content to shut the engine down and drift, snug and warm in the cabin, a mug of coffee steaming up the windshield.

There was a time, I will admit, when those mornings came with a twinge of guilt. Shouldn’t I be slipping into the dark corners of some new grotto to watch how the light gilds its sandstone walls? Shouldn’t I be hiking a trail I haven’t yet set foot on, or exploring the tangled mists rising off some new bog? Shouldn’t I …

Nah.

Not every moment can be an epiphany. There is a place too for comfort and quiet reflection, good coffee in the cuddy cabin while the sun rises all by itself beyond.

Now, on those more quiet of mornings, I think of a line in Sherry Simpson’s wonderful book The Accidental Explorer. In one chapter, she speaks of a secret black book that rangers in Denali kept under the front desk to record funny questions that tourists would ask — “What time do you turn on the northern lights?” and “How much does Mount McKinley weigh without snow?” But among those seemingly clueless questions, there was one, she says, that haunted her: "How far do I have to go before I can say I’ve been there?”

While it is true that 95% of visitors to such places as Rocky Mountain National Park never venture further than a mile from their cars, there is no boundary where nature begins, no line on a map to show where beauty starts.

And so on those mornings, if you were with me in the quiet, warm cabin of the Little Dipper sipping coffee as the sun rises beyond the windshield, you would understand now if, seemingly out of nowhere, you hear me mutter, “This far.”

— Jeff Rennicke (all photography by the author unless otherwise noted).