I can lose myself easily in Richard Wagamese’s descriptions of Ontario lake country—the pines, the cliffs, the water. I imagine paddling the lakes or driving through the forest to White Dog reserve.

His town, Kenora, Ontario, lies across the border and northwest of Minnesota’s Voyageurs National Park, where my family formerly vacationed on a wooded island, Nokomis. A lodge on the island allowed us to take our whole family, from infants to elders, into the lake country we treasured. At the end of summer 2003, Nokomis was scheduled to revert to wilderness as part of Voyageurs. One sunny August day, a few weeks before the park service burned to the ground the lodge on the island, my brother stood on the pier gazing at the lake, mourning. I vowed to find a cabin in a similar setting where we could continue to create intergenerational memories.

A decade later I sat at my desk in the second-story window of this new cabin contemplating the trunks of the tall white pines with new eyes. I wondered for the first time, How is it possible that a collection of biological cells, one built upon another in a narrow, round cylinder, can be strong enough to grow to fifty feet and support the graceful, sweeping arms of the white pine’s branches and needles? I’d taken these trees for granted. As I marveled at this miracle, I felt equally blessed and naïve. Richard Wagamese captured this gratitude in his description of lake country from his native perspective, and Jeremiah and the psalmist offer the image of a tree’s flourishing near water as a basic description of those who trust and delight in the Lord. A flourishing tree seems like a miracle; what miracles might we experience in our lives when we trust in the Lord?