"Tropical Vibes - Clam Falls Reservoir" (Image & Text Copyright Wylddane Productions, LLC)
Yesterday was one of those splendid mid-September days that occasionally graces the Northwoods. The sky stretched endlessly blue, the sun was warm but not harsh, and a gentle breeze carried the first hints of autumn’s touch. Such simple gifts lured me out of the wee cottage and down the backroads until I found myself at the Clam Falls Flowage.
There, where water meets sky and forest, I let the moment hold me. I sat at a weathered table with a Glen Erik Hamilton novel in hand, but truthfully, my truest companions were the wind rustling the leaves, the waves lapping the shore, and the quiet song of the woods surrounding me. Even as I read, the story of the land itself unfolded around me.
The Ojibwe, the Anishinaabe people, called these falls Cobbekonta—Little Falls. Long before paperbacks and picnic tables, their language rode the breeze that still whispers through the trees. History too has left its traces here: the first wooden dam of 1859, the logging dam of 1912, the reservoir that helped drive the flow of timber along the “Clam Falls Trail.” If you listen closely, you can hear both—the soft cadence of Anishinaabe voices and the echo of axes striking pine, all folded into the stillness of this present day.
This morning, as I sip my coffee and let sunlight stream across my table, two quotes linger in my mind. Robert Nathan once wrote: “There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday.” And Harriet Beecher Stowe observed: “The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today.”
At first glance, their words seem to contradict each other—one framing yesterday as unreachable, the other binding it seamlessly to the now. Yet, as I ponder, I see the unity in their truths. Yesterday is far away, unreachable in its wholeness—yet at the same time, it is here, alive in memory, alive in how it has shaped this morning. The present carries the past within it, and the future rests in the choices I make in this very moment.
So I breathe it in—the warm coffee in my hands, the golden September light slanting through the window, the memory of water and wind at Cobbekonta. I am grateful for yesterday’s blessings, grateful for today’s unfolding, grateful for the mystery of tomorrows yet to come.
For it is all one. And it is all a gift.
“Time does not pass us by; it gathers within us, becoming the light of this very moment.” ~Wylddane
~Wylddane
There, where water meets sky and forest, I let the moment hold me. I sat at a weathered table with a Glen Erik Hamilton novel in hand, but truthfully, my truest companions were the wind rustling the leaves, the waves lapping the shore, and the quiet song of the woods surrounding me. Even as I read, the story of the land itself unfolded around me.
The Ojibwe, the Anishinaabe people, called these falls Cobbekonta—Little Falls. Long before paperbacks and picnic tables, their language rode the breeze that still whispers through the trees. History too has left its traces here: the first wooden dam of 1859, the logging dam of 1912, the reservoir that helped drive the flow of timber along the “Clam Falls Trail.” If you listen closely, you can hear both—the soft cadence of Anishinaabe voices and the echo of axes striking pine, all folded into the stillness of this present day.
This morning, as I sip my coffee and let sunlight stream across my table, two quotes linger in my mind. Robert Nathan once wrote: “There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday.” And Harriet Beecher Stowe observed: “The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today.”
At first glance, their words seem to contradict each other—one framing yesterday as unreachable, the other binding it seamlessly to the now. Yet, as I ponder, I see the unity in their truths. Yesterday is far away, unreachable in its wholeness—yet at the same time, it is here, alive in memory, alive in how it has shaped this morning. The present carries the past within it, and the future rests in the choices I make in this very moment.
So I breathe it in—the warm coffee in my hands, the golden September light slanting through the window, the memory of water and wind at Cobbekonta. I am grateful for yesterday’s blessings, grateful for today’s unfolding, grateful for the mystery of tomorrows yet to come.
For it is all one. And it is all a gift.
“Time does not pass us by; it gathers within us, becoming the light of this very moment.” ~Wylddane
~Wylddane
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