Originally posted on my nature blog.
It’s so wondrous I cannot possibly capture it in a picture. It’s so breath-taking I doubt I can put it into words, but I shall try for the sake of my readers.
The beauty of the Northern Wisconsin Boonies is amazing. All my life I have seen breath-taking spots and I wish I could remember now where they were so I could visit them again.
Places where the oaks fade into the tall pines and when the sun is just right, it shines through those majestic pines and creates a masterpiece that steals your breath and makes your heart skip a beat in delight and wonder. God paints each gleam of sunlight to fall just so through the branches and onto the ground below.
Places where the still waters meet the skies and are so brilliantly blue it feels as if you are in a painting – until that gorgeous Great Blue Heron steals silently over the water and lands on the tiny green island in the middle; watching and waiting for it’s meal.
Places where it looks as if you are in a prairie, so tall are the grasses, weeds, and flowers. So green in the spring and so brown in the autumn, the view hides itself in your memory and comes to you when you are washing dishes or sweeping the front steps and you just stop for a moment, breathe in fresh air, close your eyes and you feel you are back there again.
But sights are not the only ways of remembering – there are sounds as well. The wind whistling through the trees, the breeze making small ripples in the lake, the whippoorwill on the fence post in the dark cover of night, and the pileated woodpecker calling it’s haunting call in the misty early mornings.
When I close my eyes and think about my most favorite of spots I can see and hear it as if I were really there. Dike 17 in Jackson County – prairie here, flowages there, woods surrounding three sides and rolling hills on the fourth. In the morning the geese were awakening and splashing about in the water, the wolf tracks were fresh with just a bit of dew on them, and the Great Blue Heron was taking off from it’s perch on the old observation tower. By late afternoon, the geese were resting in the shade, the wolf tracks were marred by hiker’s boots and the Great Blue Heron was resting but wary enough to sound the alarm when a human approached. By evening the geese had gone to bed, the wolf tracks had been erased and the Great Blue Heron perched on the edge of the observation tower, lovely against the burning sunset. By the middle of the night, the geese and heron were silent, the wolf was making fresh tracks for the morning to come, the loon cried it’s eerie wail across the refuge and the Great Grey owl sat in his tree and guarded the night. The next morning this would all be repeated, with an occasional Pileated Woodpecker breaking the stillness of the afternoon, or the black bear hiking up the trail, leaving tell-tale paw prints that she had a few youngsters.
And that is the beauty of the boonies.