What the Raven Said

An Apostle Islands postcard

It is one of those mornings, gray-white and still. Nothing is moving, not a single leaf shivering on a branch, not a ripple on the water. It is as if time itself has gone still, the world in waiting.

If you believe what you see on social media, no one else ever seems to have these kinds of days, every post blaring with action and color and excitement. Every day it seems is a step, or even a leap, forward in a life well-lived and posted, or so it seems.

But, my truth is something different. There are many days with no leaps, or even the slightest of steps, days when I float aboard the Little Dipper in a kind of daze suspended and aimlessly adrift. Must the path to understanding - understanding of a place or the self - be an unerringly straight line? Or, can it be, must it be, more like stumbling in the fog, a few steps this way, a few steps back? Is it ok to stand still? To make no headway at all? I smile at the thought of the way Great White Sharks must move continuously to push water through their gills to breath in a process known as “ram ventillation.”

But there are no sharks in Lake Superior. I can breathe in this languid air with just the subtle wingbeat of my chest rising and falling.

Concentrating on my breath, I do not notice the raven in the tree until it takes flight. It circles once, as if indecisive, then flies directly over me, silent but for a single note, a sound like a bell calling the faithful to their prayers.

Everything I know, or can ever hope to know, is held there, encompassed in that single, weightless sound.

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