We whittle away at what holds us apart from the world, from each other, crafting ourselves into dovetail joints that lock in and hold fast, like an ancient forest school house built of trees.
Trees on which baby leaves unfurl to nurse on their first rays of sun.
Beneath the leaves a baby turtle is nearly flattened by my mountain bike tire. Tucked safe in his tiny silver dollar shell.
On the river nearby, day-old baby ducklings chasing their mother,
And the baby fish surf the gentler currents in the shallows. Practicing their swim. Strengthening, growing.
While mosquitos are smeared remorselessly on the back of my arm.
And the young poison ivy appears only after we’d set down our bikes there.
At the same time, the bones of the ancient trees stand watching this explosion of life. Some fallen, mostly trampled back to a spongy wood dust littering the forest trail.
Like skeletons of the old stories and narratives that no longer hold living flesh, but stand empty and hollow, allowing the truer reality they were trying to hide to show through.
The truth of raw brutality and violence against any “other.” An aging bully, lashing out in final desperation, clinging to the image of its former waning power and influence.
But all that is not present here and now. Not alive to my senses like this brilliant shining moment of perfection, floating on the crystal blue river.
In our secret little peaceful nook along the creek, a hidden nursery for life to take hold and flourish, within the nook bend in the river forest, within the side path on the edge of a quaint town, tucked away on a pinky finger of land protruding into vast fresh waters, an accidental nature preserve in a nook of time.
Where old barns go to retire on gentle pasture. Far from the frothy whitewater of history unfolding. Preserved as much by being irrelevant to the warring empires as by their human caretakers.
The chickadees and bluebirds carry on their wild concert like they’ve done for eons, oblivious to the drama and despair of the human world beneath them. All of it less consequential than their songs that must be sung.
But don’t they realize we’ve been to the MOON! Doesn’t that prove our might? Doesn’t that justify our dominion over their habitat? Roads must be cleared, mines must be dug, forests must be felled for the great and mighty, the king of all species on this earth!
As much as I long to drop the pretenses of superiority over this living spectacle, I’m still grateful for my thin layers of separation.
A plastic tent to sleep in away from the whipping wind. An inflated plastic mat lifting my body off the lumpy ground. Layers of cloth and chemicals covering my skin to keep out the cold and the sun and the blood sucking cloud of bugs stewing in wet pools beneath the trees.
Even the caretakers of these lands went scorched earth on these relentless fuckers, burning back the undergrowth. Maybe it’s just our nature to always be at war.
But in my hippie wet dream we all put down our weapons and return to twisty turny trails through the trees on human powered contraptions. We bring these old barns out of retirement and fill them with hay for our cattle. We feed the feral barn cats to manage the mice populations in the hay.
And we harvest the fruits of the land with gratitude and joy and plant new forests and build new little school houses to educate and pass on a culture that embraces life and a peaceful balance with all our neighbors, human and non-human.
I guess it’s my escapist fantasy.
– Levi Meeuwenberg 5/2026
Sleeping Bear Dunes Camping Trip
