Ode to the Spirits of Spirit Lake...

"Evening at Spirit Lake" (Text & Image Copyright Wylddane Productions, LLC)

Beneath the willow’s golden veil,
where evening lingers on the breath of water,
the lake becomes a listening place.

Not silent--
never silent--
but full of voices that do not need words.

The sun lowers itself like a prayer,
spilling amber light across the skin of the lake,
as if remembering how to touch something sacred.

And here--
where reeds bend in quiet knowing,
where the shoreline softens into memory--
the spirits gather.
​
They are not shadows.
They are not gone.

They move in the shimmer
between water and sky,
in the hush that follows a bird’s passing,
in the ripple that begins without wind.

Long before the names we speak today,
before maps and markers and measured miles,
this place was chosen--

not by chance,
but by vision.

They came following prophecy,
guided by dreams carried like fire through generations,
searching for the place
where food grows on water.

And here--
in these quiet shallows,
in the wild rice bending with the seasons--
the earth answered.

Manoomin.

A gift not only of sustenance,
but of belonging.
​
The lake became more than water.
It became a promise fulfilled.

You can feel it still.

In the spring, when sap runs like memory through the trees.
In the summer, when laughter once echoed from camps along the shore.
In the autumn hush, when canoes slipped softly through rice beds,
harvesting not just grain,
but gratitude.
And in winter, when snow folds the land into stillness,
as if protecting all that has been.

Even now,
even here--
they remain.

Not as relics of a vanished time,
but as breath within the present moment.

In the reflection of light on water,
in the gentle insistence of place,
in the quiet understanding that some lands are not owned--
only honored.

And later,
others came.

Carrying their own hopes,
their own hunger for beginning.

They built, traded, stayed--
learning, sometimes slowly,
that this land was already speaking.

That Spirit Lake was never empty.
Never waiting.
​
It was--
and is--
alive.

So stand here,
as the day leans into evening.

Let the gold of the sun
settle into your bones.

Listen.

Not with ears alone,
but with that deeper place
where memory and wonder meet.

For this lake does not ask to be seen--
it asks to be felt.

And if you are still enough,
if you allow the moment to open--

you may hear it.

A whisper across the water,
soft as wind through willow leaves:
​
You are part of this now, too.
Walk gently.
Remember.

~Wylddane