Popping wild blueberries into my mouth, gorging on the sweetest tiny raspberries ever, is a thrill for this woods woman, this lover of nature.

We’re here for the week with Marc’s family at Northern Air cabins in Ely, Minnesota. A far cry from the exorbitant heat in the Twin Cities. It has rained all week. Last night it poured, offering soothing sounds in the North Woods darkness.

Like in Maine, where I’m from, wild blueberries make me happy. They’re tiny this year, having kept to themselves in the drought. Until this week.

I usually think: Wow, if only I could read books nonstop in a lovely spot, which is what happened during this past week. Finished two books, half-finished two others. As much as I love reading I was a little bored hanging out inside.

The Lone Wolf Loop, a 45-minute hike on the property where we’re staying, speaks to me. On today’s one-hour hike I experienced a small epiphany.

When I was fifteen, my father was partially paralyzed. He lived in a rehab center in Shelton, Connecticut, about 40 minutes from our Waterbury home. My mother didn’t drive. I illegally drove her twice weekly to see my dad, when I wasn’t working as a cashier at a discount department store or folding children’s clothes in a retail store.

My father was in his sixties and had had a cerebral hemorrhage. Young men paralyzed from motorcycle accidents, or who knows what, filled a number of other beds. This was totally depressing to someone my age, just starting out in life, imagining all that could happen over the years.

My only way out was walking around the rehab center’s wooded property, which harbored broken men like fallen tree branches. Saved me. Saved me. Saved me.

Hiking with imagined wolves following me this morning, it hit me. Being alone in nature, surrounded by ferns of all sizes, assorted leaves blowing in the breeze, and tasty wild blueberry patches, still sustains me.