The Quiet Roar of Wildness

My focus that afternoon was to find living water in the streams draining the foothills of Mount Katahdin. I was not disappointed. Nearly 2 inches of rain had fallen the night before. The added late-summer runoff boded well for exploring Baxter's streams. The underbrush, however, was dense, and I had lost my way for a while the day before—an experience I didn't wish to repeat. I studied my topographic maps the night before, and with compass in hand, I stepped in.

The stream meandered along, yellow sand gathering at its edges. I found a promising cataract. And then I found the place—a living waterfall, crossed with wet logs from the lingering morning drizzle. I was nearly lying flat to make the photograph, shooting beneath branches that at first obscured my view. The space around me seemed to shift.

For a while, I was simply there—hearing the water roar, watching light diffuse through thinning clouds, quietly alone yet welcomed by the forest. I remembered the writing of Henry David Thoreau, and how wildness does not ask to be understood, only to be felt and kept.