Three Days in the Woods

A month ago, in the first week of July, I drove up to Northern Michigan to a cabin in the woods near Lake Huron, right on the coast of the thumb of Michigan.

It was a simple place- no electricity or running water. There was no internet, hardly any cell signal. 

What it did have was a screened-in room that let in a continuous stream of fresh air and a view of the river, not 30 feet away from the bed where I slept.

It was incredibly peaceful. I knew before I went that I wasn’t going to want to leave the beauty of the natural world while I was immersed in it to run to a store or eat out at a restaurant, so I brought with me enough nonperishable food to cook meals for the three days I was there. I brought just one fork. And found that I needed just one fork. I washed it after every meal. I think if I had brought two forks, I would have found that I needed just two forks. There was abundance in the simplicity.  

I had a few reasons for going. First, to be wholly immersed in the abundance of nature is one of the surest ways I have known for restoring the soul. I’m a professor, so summer is typically my one chance to take any extended time like that without ignoring an unending list of tasks. I’ve also been working on my doctorate in Literature, so I’m also in a brief respite from the required readings and essays. I intentionally only brought three books with me. The first two books were Mary Oliver’s poetry- Devotions- a collection of her spiritual poetry and her book Thirst and a collected works of the transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau, both of whom write continually about nature. I spent a lot of time reading about nature while surrounded by nature, which I would highly recommend. 

My other reason for going up to the cabin was to write. 

Before I left for the trip, I splurged and bought myself a new notebook for the occasion. I filled 64 pages in the three days I was there. I did a lot of journaling. I wrote a lot of poetry. 

My first entry on the opening page of this notebook read- “This place is idyllic. It is wholly peaceful here. I feel as though I could too easily forget the world.”

That’s the thing about beauty and peace when we have found them. They bring us new life. We are restored. We are revived. 

For what purpose? To cling to the beauty and the peace we have found to be ours and in our bliss forget the rest of the world?

My second day at the cabin, I wrote this poem-

From a Cabin in the Woods

While I have no signal among the trees

to hear from my friends and acquaintances,

the occasional news report will come through

to notify me about who to hate, what to fear,

and the terrible truths of this world

It is good that I cannot escape them entirely

There are a horrific number who never will

who live them as present inescapable reality

Out my window, I watch the black squirrel

run across a fallen plank, freshly saturated

with rainwater, small wet paws journeying

to some better place, I hope

From the cabin where I stayed, it was a 10 minute walk to get to the beach of Lake Huron. If you haven’t been to one of the great lakes, it’s immense. It feels like an ocean, but it’s freshwater, of course. I was there over 4th of July weekend, and that Sunday morning, I went out early to walk on the beach before the crowds came then spent the rest of the day far from people in that screened-in room just surrounded by the trees. I wrote this poem that day.

July 5th, 2026

5:56 am

I woke to the sunrise, red and bursting

By the time I roused sleep from my eyes,

it was starburst pink and fading

By the time I made it down the path,

it had all but vanished

Tomorrow, I will wake earlier

to be its witness

7:29 am

Freshly showered and half hour along the shoreline,

I found a dry rock to sit and watch the waves

tumbling from the horizon, striations of cobalt, turquoise,

gold, green, in horizontal layers advancing toward the beach

where they burst- scattering pearls

8:16 am

It is Sunday morning and fitting that I should stand

in the water and read Mary Oliver, or rather

read the entirety of Thirst aloud to the

gathered waves, as the seaweed clings to my feet

God, I try to put more love than hurt into this world

I try to put more love than hurt into this world

Forgive me where I have failed

and the sea speckles the pages of the book with water

as if in blessing

9:32 am

Each time the kingfisher, perched on the log,

utters his trilling cry, he turns 90 degrees,

rotating so intentionally that the whole wood

might hear his song a bit clearer

This, perhaps, would do us all some good-

to turn, screaming, in every direction,

until struck, suddenly, by an answer, 

we shoot off that way without a second’s hesitation

11:00 am

I took a nap and was awoken at 11:30 by rain,

a deluge from the white sky,

leaves glinting with shining white light

There is such a thing as being drenched in new life

If anything is a blessing- it was like that

entirely underserved and glorious

I heard beauty singing:

Memorize this tune

for when the ground hardens underfoot,

you can remember how to hum it

2:51 pm

Walking in the woods, I spotted a snail,

polished shell vividly designed with mahogany swirl,

rippling his way along a blade of grass,

shell tipping suddenly over the edge toward gravity,

straining his strong gelatinous being

as though to drag him to the ground,

but he kept going, and it rose again to join him

I wish you could see his antennas

I wish you could see the dewdrop on the blade of grass beside him

I wish you could see the resilience, the tenacity, the hope

7:42 pm

I am again along the shoreline

I have written many, many poems

Perhaps you will read them

Perhaps just a few

I have written several letters to different people

If you were one of them, you will have to find out

Tonight, I will probably read by flickering candlelight

I will probably fall in love again with life

Some of you may be familiar with Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden. It’s one of the ones I brought with me to the cabin in the woods because Thoreau wrote the book about two years he spent living alone in a simple cabin he had built for himself in the woods by Walden pond in Concord, Massachusetts. He lived immersed in nature, and he detailed what that was like. He found great peace there. He could have stayed forever. In fact, he writes at the end of Walden, “Why I left the woods? I do not think that I can tell. I have often wished myself back. Perhaps I wanted a change. There was a little stagnation, it may be. Perhaps if I lived there much longer, I might live there forever.” 

Thoreau resets, finds inner peace, but he does not stay there. After two years, he leaves. And what he does with the rest of his life is just as significant. This was in the mid-1800s, and he was an outspoken advocate for abolishing slavery and known for helping slaves escape and find freedom. In his time living at Walden, Thoreau found comfort in the abundance of the natural world, but rather than retreating further into it, he took that love he had for creation and spent the rest of his life trying to live it out, to ensure that beauty and peace were something that could belong to everyone, that freedom was a right that could belong to everyone. 

Now, the point is not that everyone should go to a cabin in the woods, the point is that reset and inner peace come first. They are a beginning. I imagine you know what moments of reset look like for you- a hike along a trail, a day spent out in the garden with your hands in the dirt, attending a concert where the music and the community are uplifting for your soul, a bath at the end of a long day, sitting by a window, lighting a candle, and making a cup of hot tea. Whatever will awaken you again to the love that is in this world, whatever you know will revive you. 

We have to find ways to love and heal the parts of ourselves that are in need of care and repair, our own guilt and shame, our own fears and anxieties, to be honest with ourselves, to align our lives with our values and who we want to be as good people in this world,    so that  then we are able, then, as often as possible, to put more love than hurt into this world.

River Song

We want answers now

to fix everything so nothing

will hurt like an echo

rising again in our throats

The kingfisher flies

the length of the river

then back again

He is doing the work

Tomorrow morning, he will be there

and into August and September

Come January, his call will skip across the ice

His is the purpose of a lifetime