UPRIVER: Why REFLECTIONS?

"The singing wilderness has to do with the calling of the loons, northern lights, and the great silences of a land lying northwest of Lake Superior. It is concerned with the simple joys, the timelessness and perspective found in a way of life that is close to the past. I have heard the singing in many places, but I seem to hear it best in the wilderness lake country of the Quetico-Superior, where travel is still by pack and canoe over the ancient trails of the Indians and voyageurs."

-- Sigurd Olson, The Singing Wilderness

GOING UPRIVER was an exercise in double vision: a search for the soul of the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence, if you will. Within the industrial voice of the heartland, there are still undertones of the singing wilderness along the "Voyageur's Highway" that leads up the St. Lawrence toward the NorthWest Territory. These special places, many of them national or state/provincial parks and wild rivers, had the power to crystallize the spirit of place in moments of reflection. The search for the singing wilderness, for the moment of alchemy that turns the land into a landscape of meaning, is an inner as well as an outer journey.

"Even the search," said Olson, "is rewarding, for somehow in the process we tap the deep wells of racial experience that gives us a feeling of being part of an existence where life was simple and satisfactions were real." 

In celebration of the inner journey, I offer several selections from personal journals (my own unless otherwise noted) and from field reports that captured the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence for us. We became voyageurs in time, this summer, and in the timeless music of the river we were privileged to tap the deep wells of the region's heritage. These REFLECTIONS are the river's gift: voices from the singing wilderness, offered here as a reminder of the common face of our humanity reflected in still water.