View from the cabin where Drew, Urban, and I will be adventuring this weekend.

photo by B. T. Newberg

by B. T. Newberg

No, the title above isn’t the opening of a bad joke.  It’s what Drew Jacob, Urban Haas, and I are going to do this weekend.

We’re setting out on a four-day excursion into the forest at my grandparents’ cabin in Ely, Minnesota.  Set near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, it’s a breath-taking region of marching woods and hidden lakes.  It’s the same place I wrote about in a previous post, To build a fire: The spiritual art of socialization.  The cabin is thirty minutes from the nearest tar road, has no electricity, and lies on a lake with only one other cabin on it.

But what I’m looking forward to even more than the grandeur of nature is spending time with people who blow my mind.

Drew Jacob, author of Rogue Priest and Walk Like a God, and gracious guest of our recent interview here on HP, is one of the boldest adventurers I’ve met.

And Urban Haas, Voodoo houngan and author of Chasing the Asson, is not to be taken lightly either.  From what I’ve seen of him so far, he’s a thoughtful, compassionate, enthusiastic guy with nothing uninteresting about him.  I can’t wait to get to know him better.

It’s going to be a confluence of minds, with Drew a Celtic Polytheist, Urban a Vodouan, and myself a Humanistic Pagan.  We couldn’t be more different, perhaps, but we’re coming together around the one thing we all (not just the three of us, but everyone in the world) have in common: the glory of nature.

It’s going to be a full agenda: hiking, canoeing, fire-building, sword-fighting (Drew’s specialty), and good conversation.  And then of course, there’s always that moment when the talking dies down, silence overtakes, and there is only the presence of the wilderness.

If the mosquitoes don’t eat us, or the bears carry us off into the woods, there will surely be a post on this trip in the future.  Look for it in weeks to come.

Till then, enjoy the excellent post lined up for Sunday: an environmental message entitled The Indifference of Nature, by Rua Lupa.