ROCKS SPEAK. In their own way, to those who have ears to listen. I have long thought that every stone is a teacher and every breeze a language. Boulders have lessons to impart and stories to tell. Each of these great stones, within 25 yards of our island cabin, is a ‘glacial erratic’, dropped where it stands by a retreating continental glacier about 10,000 years ago. As the breezes brush by, they, too, speak the language of boulders, of ice a mile high scraping every speck of soil from the bedrock, itself 2.5 billion years of age, and depositing a silent sentinel upon a rocky point. The boulders and breezes speak of ice-age hunters, of the Anishinaabe in their bark canoes; of the later Voyageurs and explorers like Alexander Mackenzie and David Thompson. They whisper of gold mines and brothels, of logging camps and railroads and rafts of white pine many miles long. Of the later era of commercial fishing, of resorts and families and sport fishermen. And perhaps of a little family who found and fell in love with a particular little island.

The boulders have witnessed it all. And to rest upon one, or to stand beside it and rest your hand on its rough, lichen-covered surface, is to be a witness as well. A witness to the passage of time. A listener to the language of rocks.