NPS/Amie Heeter Isle Royale Reflection"I also looked and listened and tried to know more and, in so doing, rediscovered a calling: looking, listening, trying to know more. My theory is that the boat rides home from Isle Royale are full of such simple discoveries buried in the chests of passengers, that nearly everyone leaves the island with a secret discovery or reminder or resolve and holds it to them tight as this island disappears off the stern, unaware of its plundering." - Excerpt from her entry in the Dassler Cabin journal Excerpt from The Royal Island"Experiencing the island involves simple, bone-deep pleasures, each of them unexpected and occurring from waking until sleep. My solar showers, taken behind the cover of pines, are a goose-pimpled revelation in water-use. That is, I use so little and feel so clean. I bake a pie, ladling into its center a mix of wild berries culled from the island. When done, I pull it from the oven – its sweet buttery self lending the perfect complement to the Dassler’s early evening light – and then I proceed to feel generalize astonishment. How could one place be so good?"
About the ArtistKrista Eastman was an Isle Royale Artist-in-Residence from August 12th to August 24th, 2011. Her book of essays, The Painted Forest, is forthcoming from the West Virginia University Press. She grew up in the Driftless region of Wisconsin and has also lived in Senegal, France, Antarctica, and the eastern U.S. Her writing has earned recognition from Best American Essays and appeared in The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review (KR Online), New Letters, and other journals.
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Last updated: December 17, 2019