The Art of Being There

An Apostle Islands postcard

Few of my trips into the islands have revolved around the hope of a single sunbeam, but this one did.

Frequent kayakers at the Mawikwe sea caves know that on certain kinds of mornings, deep in the throat of spot known locally as the Crevasse, the sun plays a short-lived but beautiful trick: a beam of light sent down from above, a trumpet blare of light just as the morning sun crests the cliffs. I wanted to be there when it came. The difficulty lies in knowing when it will happen. Too cold, it won’t happen; too windy, it won’t happen; too cloudy …

Then one morning, 5 a.m. I had a gut feeling, the kind that I believe is essential not to ignore, not to just roll over, pull the covers higher, and doze back off to sleep. So, I didn’t.

I got up, slipped into my wetsuit in the empty parking lot of Meyers Beach and shouldered my kayak. The lake was as still as something sleeping, the air soft and wet with just a slight chill that would burn off by mid-day. Exactly the conditions I was hoping for. Like a feather slicing the morning air, I slipped my kayak into the water and pushed off.

“The answer must be,” writes Annie Dillard in her classic book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, “… that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.” It is my goal in my commitment to the Apostle Islands to “try to be there” as often as I can, to not let these moments go unsensed, unappreciated, unseen. Moments of beauty, moments of grace, moments when a kayak slides soundlessly into a beam of light deep within the heart of the Mawikwe Bay sea caves, and the silent trumpet blares.

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

— Do you have a favorite moment in the Apostle Islands? Use the button below to send me a note and tell me about it.