Campsites. 46. 47. 48. We have pitched our tents at the edge of the world.
You can hear the waves both day and night – crashing, crashing, crashing into shore. Last night was cool, cold even. First camp of the season. I laid unsleeping in our tent, Jake spooned against my back for warmth of many kinds. I wondered if anyone has ever lived in a place like this and hated the sound of the waves. Wondered if I will love the sound of them by the time we pull out on Monday, or will I have blocked them out to keep from going crazy. Will I wake suddenly that first night back, enveloped in a silence made suddenly eerie by the absence of water nearby.
This is not a beach for swimming. From the main lot wooden staircase leads one step next down to a red and black sand beach; rocks the same colour as kidneys. Liver. Standing there you can see the riptide – pulling, dragging, tearing. Taking everything, everything out into lake.
Lake Superior is so big that you cannot see the opposite shore from where we are camping. Just the point where sky meets water. That is our horizon.
It has been misting, raining on and off since we got here, but there is a kind of raw beauty to it. Did we ever thing the going would be easy right here at the edge of everything?
Maybe I’ve been reading too much fantasy lately, but I can imagine waiting on the edge of an expanse very much like this. Alone, only a journal, few books to keep me company. I can imagine myself looking out each morning, waiting for a boat to appear suddenly on the horizon, the unseen becoming seen at that place where water meets sky. I can see myself standing on the shore, watching the boat grow slowly larger, larger, and knowing somewhere, below the decks, an envelope waits just for me.
An envelope with my name on the outside. And inside, the answers to all the questions that make it so very hard to sleep at night.
Practical Redemption 
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