We are this essence of

There is a lake within each of us. It is deep and wide, cerulean, emerald, aquamarine in ever shifting hues. This lake, this zaaga’igan, is everything we have been, everything we are becoming. In it rests the rough, shorn boulders of our past and the tree filled islands our future. If we are still long enough, we can feel the expanse of the lake, hear the wind skating across the water’s surface. Everything we need is here; it is the depth and breadth of our sentience.

There are days when we can only venture our toes in the cool water, when we can barely breathe in the rich juniper that surrounds us. Other moments, we dive head first into the depths and swim as if returning to. Yet in all times, there is the lake within us; we can rest here and know we are already everything we are becoming. It is only how we choose to inhabit the stark granite and lush beauty that marks our experience of.