I’m calling it The Year of the Loons.  When we arrived at the island, we discovered that a Loon pair had parked their nest, with two eggs in it, low on the shoreline where our dock was to be anchored.  Happily, we established a peace pact, and the loons, parenting equally, minded their eggs, while we came and went as quietly as possible. Thirty days later, one fuzzy loonling hatched and we spent the summer observing the parents model “How to Be a Loon.”

We sampled three seasons in Ontario this year, from the last days of Spring in June to the first days of Autumn in September–almost three months enjoying cool weather (and a lot of rain) in the cottage country near Parry Sound.  Considering this was the hottest summer on record in the Midwest, we felt more than blessed to be elsewhere.

I read more than forty books–theology, thrillers, poetry, politics.   Wrote a few poems.  Kept the hearthfire going.  Watched Bill work on a never-ending list of Island Improvement projects.

For daily contemplation, I used a book by one of my favorite spiritual teachers, Brother David Steindl-Rast*, savoring his meditations on the 99 Names of God, as revered in Islamic tradition.

We missed seeing the big snapping turtle this year, but we had the joy of watching a trio of otters cavort around the island with their tumbling playfulness.

Bill caught some fish, and we ate ’em.

Obviously, these highlights don’t begin to tell the whole story of the island experience.  The cottage was built–rebuilt, that is, from its earlier existence–the year I was born.  We both seem to be holding up pretty well after seventy-seven years.  Each year, we soak our bodies and spirits in the wonder of our little wilderness, while the stars remind us of our place in bigger things.

al-Mu’izz, the HONORER

…are we not clay, which some unfathomable dynamic honored…

  –David Steindl-Rast, OSB  99 Names of God

I am the clay that remembers,

I am the waters that grieve,

I am the elements earth has assembled

to witness, create, and believe,

to utter the sounds for the naming

of everything given to me,

something from nothingness claiming

to know how I happen to be.

Barbara Loots

At Blackwater Lake 2023

 *author of Gratefulness: The Heart of Prayer