The words “Be Still and Know” from Psalm 46:10 were on the front of a beautiful card I received in the mail yesterday. Inside the card were words of thanks in Cheryl’s beautiful handwriting. It meant so much to know she had been thinking of me. I took a moment to truly be still and know the goodness of life.
For many of us living in Northern Minnesota the woods and water are perfect places to be still and soak in the beauty of the world. For a very long time the woods has been my go to place. At the age of 15, I got my first job working cleaning cabins at Kirk’s Lodge on Moose Lake, outside of Ely on the Fernberg Trail. The resort was run by Ruth and Burley who came there from Chicago. Ruth ran the kitchen and Bill handled the boats.
It was a housekeeping resort so folks got meals and their cabins cleaned daily. After helping with breakfast and cleaning the cabins, I got to spend the afternoon fishing. An older man, Tom who spent the entire summer at the resort, often waited for me to be done. Together we would troll the shoreline of that beautiful lake. We didn’t talk much, but we did catch fish, often out fishing the guides from the resort. Tom knew the lake well and he always had me back in time to set the tables for supper.
Many Summers I returned to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) to work. I moved up from cleaning cabins, to packing food for an outfitter just down the Lake from Kirk’s. On my days off there I got to go canoeing in the BWCA sometimes hitching a tow up to Birch or Newfound Lake and then paddling back. Those days spent on the water were my way to “Be Still and Know”.
My husband, daughter and I returned to the woods last weekend spending time at a National Forest Service campground on East Bearskin Lake which edges the BWCA. On Saturday morning we woke to the smoke from the nearby forest fires. Signs were taped on the outhouses announcing that the BWCA was officially closed to all. It was the first time this has happened in 45 years. We stood by the edge of lake where the smokey haze hung low truly knowing again how precious this place is and offering our prayers for all who were fighting the fires.
Our time camping made me think again of Mary Oliver’s poem, “Summer Days”. It concludes with these words,
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Thank you Cheryl for the beautiful card with the crucial reminder to “Be Still and Know.” Thank you to her husband, Roger for sending it on to me after she died, finding the card tucked among her things. May we all take time to be idle and blessed, so that we might really consider what to do with our one wild and precious life.
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