Hidden Places

The North Shore has many hidden places--deep caverns dug by rivers running from the higher places down to Lake Superior. Many of them are really only accessible in the winter, when the ice freezes and snow covers. I'd never been on the Onion River before last Thursday, when we went with some friends. Karen led the way, and Ellen (the reason for these great pix) brought up the photographic rear.





The walls of these caverns reach high above our heads; small frozen waterfalls come out of rock faces. The colors are subtle but beautiful, reds, browns in the rocks; the ice ranging from smokey colored to bluish green.








Perhaps because we can only hike these places in winter, or because they are invisible from the road or even from the Superior Hiking Trail--or maybe because they are so deep and mysterious--they seem like lovely mystery tucked away. So much of our spiritual life is like that--mystery hidden that we encounter from time to time and can only relish for a short time. Ephemeral is the word for something fleeting--as spring blossoms, fall color on trees, and hikes on rivers in canyons.