‘I am the Wild’

Photographer - Liz Jakimow

I am the Wild

I am birds that sing and the promise of spring.

I am morning mist on marshes, a smiling sun at noon, the first star awake, and the cry of a loon.

I am turning leaves that fall and rutting moose that call.

I am the long winter that comes early and stays late.

I am the light in dark at the break of day and the dark in light that first appears as grey.

 I am protruding rock ridges that are the bones of the earth and the streams and valleys they lie beside.

I am a place where lakes reflect the world they see around them and ice that seals their eyelids shut.

I am a place where life depends on listening and I am always listening and watching too.

I am a place where the wind is your only trusted friend.

I am a place where ears and noses detect the sound and scent of danger even before alert and wandering eyes.

I am the white patch on the throat of a white-tailed deer and the dark shadow moving silently across the ground behind it, without snapping a twig or bending a blade of grass.

I am hollow trees and black stumps and the black bear who rules over this place, which is a place without rules.

I am the high wide swaying rack of a long-legged bull moose.

I am the yellow eyes of a pack of hungry wolves watching the tip of that rack dip lower than it should when a limp right hoof presses down on the soft grey moss.

I am a place where patient wolves come closer only when a lame moose tries to rest or eat and they will let it do neither now.

I am a place where killing time has a different meaning.

I am a place with no beginning or end, and for some, no way out.            

I am place where little has changed.

I am the long yellow beak of the great blue heron, a living dinosaur and deadly impaler, standing  motionless and alone like a phantom laced in sunlight and veiled in shadow.

I am the teeth and claws of the secretive fisher who uses cunning to kill porcupines, and speed agility to pursue squirrels up and through the trees.

I am tracks in the snow and the naked feet that keep the game trails worn.

 I am feathered wings that follow a path made in the mind across the trackless sky.

 I am the fur-bearing animal, the trapper’s line and sudden death without overtime.

 I am the hunting camp where men live life a different way, heading for swamps before first light and talking across open fires beneath the stars at night.

I am a place filled with fatherless children where childhood ends early if it ever begins at all.

 I am a place where nature is the mother of all things.

I am the harsh logic called instinct which is the only gift nature provides her children to guide them on their journey.

I am a place that must rot to remain unspoiled.

I am a place where nothing really dies.

I am a place where the flesh of one animal becomes the flesh of another until it returns to the ground.

I am rainfall and sunlight that make it rise up again to be nibbled at and fed on during a never-ending cycle of life.

I am a place where everything is connected and all things depend on each other for survival.

I am a place where life seems simple, which means it’s complicated.   

I am the flat-tailed beaver, the dams it makes and swamps it creates.

I am water bugs scurrying across the surface of those swamps.

I am the world beneath the surface of the swamp, which is more dangerous than the one above because it is a place where all things live and die in silence.

I am bullfrogs and black snakes and snapping turtles that hunt and are hunted along its shorelines.

I am the scented cedars and white pines and soft maples beyond the swamps.

I am the wind that makes them bend and bow and creak and moan.

 I am the sound of axes and saws gnawing away at the edges of this place.

I am a place that was once like the place where you live now but that was a long time ago.

I am a place with a timeless and sacred spirit.

I am a place where light and dark, and water and wind, and rocks and trees, and predators and prey live and die beneath an open sky that can touch your spirit. 

I am a place that will challenge and humble and teach and kill those who enter it.

I am a place that you are drawn to and fear, for the same reason.

I am the wild.

LW Oakley was born and raised in the east end of Toronto. He graduated from RCI and Ryerson. He is a retired accountant living in Kingston, Ontario.