The wilderness is my whetstone

“Usually, I’m not tuned in to every Harley roaring, dog barking, engine humming, device beeping, or fan whirring. There’s too much to take in. But here, I parse the sound-scape into each separate noise. The wilderness is my whetstone, sharpening senses that have been dulled by my regular urban environment.”

an excerpt from “Listening,” by Tricia Friesen Reed, an essay about a family canoe adventure in Manitoba’s Whiteshell Provincial Park. Tricia, who lives in Saskatchewan, is one of the thirty five writers whose work is featured in Volume 1 of Deep Wild: Writing from the Backcountry