I fell asleep last night to the sound of rain drumming outside my open window and the calls of the loons. There's a restful beauty out here; the land feels old, the birches are unfettered, and the animals seem confident in their belonging. Nothing seems out of place here (invasives NOT included). Even when it is stormy, life is calm. Neither do I feel out of place, running along winding single-track or swimming across a lake. I feel that any area, any section of forest, is accesible to me.

I miss the West Coast. I miss Washington. I miss scrambling up a mountainside and regarding the few other friends who also survive on the rocky face as I rest on a sun warmed rock. Those friends are the twisted tamarack tree and lowland flowers in miniature who struggle daily to suck nutrients from the thin layer of rocky soil and the algae and fungi who form a symbiotic relationship so each can survive on bare rock in the form of hardy lichens. I miss the craggy coastline where sea anenomes resist the pounding waves and cling tenaciously to the jagged ground like jewel drops of blood being wrenched from the rock. These things also are beautiful. Instead of a peaceful beauty, however, theirs is a painful, desperate beauty.

Northern Wisconsin has lillies, which I love. They grow wild in marshes alongside the road as well as in well tended gardens showing their big, brightly orange, curling petals. Flowers you would pick for a vase on the dinner table. In contrast, one almost misses entirely the alpine flower high on a cliff face. They are only a small cry of color, some shouting out in bright hues, others merely whispering their presence. A stubby, unadorned five petal flower cows from the wind in the crevice of a cliff. I would never put such an ungraceful flower on my dinner table; nor would I pick a flower that had fought so desperately for its place on the rock, its few grains of soil. Its beauty lies in its struggle for life. I am enchanted by the sounds of the loons, sounds I had never heard before coming to this place. They are fitting sounds to be rolling across the calm lake in the peaceful dusks and dawns. My small alpine flower? Its beauty lies in its dissonance with its environment, its struggle for life, and, ultimately, its triumph.