At 1:00 in the morning on a moonlit, starlit night in northern Maine, in the Allagash Wilderness silent strangers, worked together to break camp and set out onto the still water into the lake, toward the river, running north heading out into the darkness, heavy dark shadows from the full moonlight the moon dancing on the lake, teasing, urging entrancing the band of canoeists, hushed silence through all of us a pact unspoken but honored a covenant of peace, stillness, reverence knowing somehow each of us how special these moments were how treasured they are still thirty years later as I write these lines remembering so well how the shivers felt that night when the only sound was the pearls of water falling from my paddle the keel of the canoe pushing through the water and the sound of my heart because we were so quiet in the dark