So, I was flipping through some of my old LiveJournal entries (as much as someone can 'flip through' a web page), and came to late August of 2005, the week in which my good friend and outdoors partner Dan Bush and I ventured out into the back woods of Maine with a canoe, a really great atlas, and a few days open on the calendar.

I won't re-tell the entire story here, as I can't reliably remember the whole trip even after so few years. However, there is one moment that was permanently etched into my memory, and helped to define the insatiable love of wilderness that lives in many of us.

Bush and I made camp on our second night afield on a small, unnamed island in the middle of Third Machias lake in eastern Maine. Since a canoe shoulders a heavy burden with less injury or complaining than most backpackers, and we had no need to portage along our route, we had brought along enough gear to camp in relative luxury. After dinner, we sat in our camp chairs and watched the evening pale as our camp fire crackled to life, a pale solar impostor we raised in an effort to prolong the beautiful evening.

I can distinctly remember looking out through the shroud of evergreen into the heavy twilight that hung over Machias. I was stunned by the silence of a lake too far into logging country to be lined with summer homes and boat launches. Usually, the glassy waters of a lake or pond are a magnifying glass for civilization, carrying the sounds of human conversation or machinery for miles, constant reminders of our neighbors in the world. That night, the only sound carrying over the black waters of Machias were the groans of a thousand acres of white pines leaning against the wind.

That is, until I heard an eerie wail whose plaintive notes cut through the silence with alarming clarity and the kind of superhuman tonal perfection usually reserved for concert halls. I was baffled, unable to guess what could make such an emotive and shockingly loud call. When I asked Bush, a more experienced than I in the back woods, he explained that it was the call of the loon, possibly the same pair we had stalked up on and photographed earlier in our canoe.

I had heard tell of the loon's famous cry, but was nevertheless amazed that such a sound came from these diminutive waterfowl, in their black and white spotted tuxedos, riding low in the water like overloaded canoes.

That night, I laid awake in my tent, listening to a bevy of loons conversing from across the lake. It was an experience that was as humbling and spiritual as any I have encountered

http://www.atl.ec.gc.ca/wildlife/loons/sounds/wail.au