peacefully alone

Everyone has a passion. Passions are what our lives revolve around. One can spend their entire life chasing after a dream, and that someone is living the most fulfilling life there is. I have a passion for traveling the world, a passion that I have been living to fulfill since I was ten years old. I have recently been to Canada, a trip that I was not looking forward to because Canada isn’t exactly a place I expected to experience awesome and new wonders of this world. With a closed mind, we hopped onto a tiny boat after a five hour car ride immediately following a three hour plane ride. We putted across a massive lake for over four hours, passing town sized, silent islands, containing nothing more than trees and tiny eyes of a few squirrels watching us pass. We arrive to our island, looking no different than the million before it. A small red cabin was purched on the side of a massive rock jutting out over the lake. While being in Canada I experienced a new kind of peace. I found myself lying on a cool grey rock night after night, gazing up at the sky, blazed with stars, my mind scattered in the sky right there along side the stars.

I found myself alone, completely isolated, nothing for miles and miles.

The cool breeze ruffles my frizzy hair and uncovers the dribbles of sweat jogging down my neck. I grip the rusty pole and cast far out into the middle of the untouched glass. It cracks and shatters into tons of tiny droplets, bursting into the sky. Being out here is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. It’s beautiful. The sounds, the smells, there are so many of them, yet they are all so distinctly different. A loon, its head brushed with forest green feathers, fading into a darker green, ending with a blend of misty black, swirling down to its tail, skims the surface of the calm flowing lake, landing on his runway with flawless grace. A small bass makes a sorry attempt to fly, but gravity has other plans for him. He comes crashing down, back into the quite water, only leaving a few lonely ripples as any evidence of his escape attempt. A bald eagle flies solo, hoping he’s not the last of his kind, but still a stern look of determination remains in his piercing eyes. No telephone lines, no roads, not even a dog’s bark. Not a single noise, other than the occasional putter of a John boat. Not a worry or care in the world. Well except that these fish better start biting or we are out of luck for dinner.

That night I find myself lying on my back on the familiar grey rock. Tiny light bulbs explode against a sky of black nothing. One falls to the earth, then vanishes. A coyote howls,way off in the distance, then again, filling the night with it’s voice, . Another calls back on the other side of the lake. Will they ever find each other? Two lost souls, so separated, yet so together on this peaceful night, finally finding each other only once everything else has gone silent. An unknown something launches out of the motionless lake, shattering its surface and cutting the crickets off a beat or two, totally rupturing the humming silence. The unknown, a fish I decide, plummets back down to earth, the crickets continuing from where they left off in their symphony. It sounds as though something is swimming towards me, but with one swift scan of my flashlight I am proven wrong. I am not scared, for once in my life, sitting here alone on this rock, in another country, in another world of water and forest. The black sky looks light compared to the darkness of this night. Another star falls across the sky, disappearing the same moment I spot it. I can’t stop writing now, it is my security. The silence grows louder, raising the tiny hairs on the back of my neck. The coyotes cross my mind again as another howls from a land unknown and so far off. What does their single howl mean? Is it calling for someone? Will those two ever unite and meet at last? My mind continues to wander as my heavy eyes slowly slip into the back of my head. A night so beautiful, so perfect, so unique, wraps its arms around me, pulling me in close, and I drift out of this new world, into the next as every last muscle relaxes against the hard, cool surface of this grey rock. 790