Bundling against the cold is the first step. Alaska socks, heavy hiking boots, jeans and fleece, covered with a lined jacket, warm scarf and ski hat, leather gloves stuffed in pockets – April-wear in the north.
The sun rose at seven in a giant red ball, sailing over scudding clouds on the horizon into a clear sky. By mid morning the lake calls, white caps dancing in the sunshine, gulls bobbing up and down amid the now-melting ice floes.
Before I head to the dense populated cities of Asia, I need wilderness. Walking the beach is sheer delight, even bundled against the stiff wind and well below freezing temperatures of the morning. If the gulls can bob in a frigid lake, I can handle the shoreline.
The rocks on the beach range from smaller than my finger to the size of small cars. Navigating between, along, among them is the reason for hiking boots with high ankle support. Ice and snow cling to the marshes in some places while others have melted into swampy puddles, rocks sticking up to tread across.
I think it is the color that calls me back, day after day -- one day blue, another aquamarine, another slate gray; never the same; always changing. The color and the solitude. There are no neighbors, almost no houses, and only a rare great ship on the horizon to remind me that somewhere in the universe other people exist.
A cry overhead brings a V of geese heading north. Theirs is a faith flight because I see no nesting ground that looks warm enough to lay eggs. Spring is breaking through, slowly, painfully letting go of the grip of winter. But come it will. This marsh will turn green and the scruffy bushes will spout leaves. The water will warm a little and the ice will disappear.
But that day is still distant this morning. I will relish the silence, broken only by the call of the gulls. I will wash my soul in the deep blue water of the still frosty great lake. I will listen to the wind roaring through the cedars on the cove, and the brash splashing of the waves hitting the ice along the shore.
In a few short days I’ll be walking crowded city streets halfway around the world, surrounded by thousands of people, enveloped in the din of languages that I do not understand. The friendships will be deep and rich, and the work satisfying, but when it all seems overwhelming, I will remember this day.
In my mind I will hark back to this solitude and rest there, drawing strength from the One who made it all, the din and the silence.
