Woods Wanderer

I like to think of myself as a one-of-a-kind writer, whose quirky ideas are utterly new and different.  But I too have my influences.  Emerson and Thoreau are foremost among a hundred writers who have left their mark on me.  Among my contemporaries Gary Snyder looms large, and for good reason.  His book, The Practice of the Wild, came at a time when I was defining myself as a writer/thinker. When it comes to articulating the wild and our relationship to it, I am more indebted to him than I care to admit.

Recently my wife gave me a copy of The Etiquette of Freedom as an early birthday present.  This book is accompanied by a DVD that’s also called “The Practice of the Wild,” even though it’s a conversation between Gary Snyder and Jim Harrison on various subjects, along with a succinct portrayal of Snyder’s life and work.   To those interested in Zen Buddhism, beat poetry and their influence on the counterculture of the 60s, this film is insightful.  To those who want to better understand the roots of Environmentalism, it’s a must-see.  But it struck me in a different way.

Snyder is 80 years old now.  Even though he’s remarkably fit for his age, with a sharp mind to boot, it’s clear that the bulk of his work is behind him.  We assume that our contemporaries will always be with us, and we eagerly await their next books, never considering the possibility that this flow of ideas might end.  What happens when it does?

When I was a young man, I saw myself as God’s gift to the literary world.  But every great book I’ve read since then has humbled me a bit.  And I’ve read a lot of them through the years.  Time marches on and those we idolize soon become history.  This winter two of my favorite nature writers, John Hay and John Haines, passed away.  The generation previous to my own is retiring, fading into the background, checking out.  Can those in my generation fill their shoes?  More to the point, can I be a voice for the wild the way someone like Snyder has been?  My gut says no.

Snyder made it clear in the film that when he uses the word “nature” he means the entire universe, not just the outdoors.  My sentiment exactly.  And when he later said: “Life in the world is not just eating berries in the sunlight.  I like to imagine a depth ecology that would go to the dark side of nature,” he was talking dirty to me.  This is my domain – the wild that I have come to know firsthand.  So maybe, just maybe, I have something to contribute to the conversation.  That said I’m hoping he will write just one more book before, as he put it so eloquently, “walking the ghost trail in the stars.”

Tags: Gary Snyder, nature writing, The Practice of the Wild, the wild

Eighteen months ago I leaned against a big rock, making one last entry in my field journal.  I was exhausted from a punishing hike across north-central Maine on a section of the Appalachian Trail known as the 100 Mile Wilderness.  Judy came along and took this picture of me.  Not very flattering, but telling in more ways than one.

I remember feeling both a deep sense of satisfaction in that moment, and tremendous sadness.  These are predicable sentiments at journey’s end.  But I also remember thinking that the easy part was behind me.  Now the hard part – the telling of the tale – lay directly ahead.  Or maybe it’s the other way around.

This morning I reworked to completion the final chapter of the Maine hiking narrative, thus finishing the journey in another sense.  The physical effort of hiking and the mental effort of writing are behind me now, and all that remains is publication.  That’s always anticlimactic.  So now the trek truly is finished.  Once again, I feel both satisfaction and sadness.

I don’t really know whether I hike in order to write or vice versa.  The two are so much a part of me that I can’t untangle them any more.  What I do know is that I love to hike as much as I love to write, and that journey’s end – actual or literary – always leaves a void in my life.  No doubt there’s another book in my future, along with another trail.  But there are times, like now, when it seems like a crazy way to live.

At midday I went for a walk along the Rail Trail despite a biting cold.  The trail had been groomed for snowmobiles so I walked in the tracks of those fast-moving machines.  Occasionally I stepped aside to let one of them zip past.  And it seemed like the perfect metaphor for the literary life – especially one steeped in wildness.  I plod along at a snail’s pace while the rest of the world races by.  How very Thoreau-like of me.  Am I the lucky one or a pathetic creature?  I know what Thoreau would say, but I am not he.

I’m still on the greatest journey of them all and have, as the old poet said, “miles to go before I sleep.”  That means I’ll be an old man before I can answer that question with anything approaching certainty.  Even then, I might not be able to sort it all out.  Perhaps it isn’t for me to say.

Tags: 100 Mile Wilderness, Appalachian Trail, hiking, nature writing, the writing life, Thoreau

A reading group in Rindge, New Hampshire invited me down to talk about my Long Trail book, Forest under my Fingernails, so that’s what I did last weekend.  I read a few excerpts from the book then recounted my adventures on that trail – something I haven’t done in years.  That got me thinking again about long-distance hiking.  And while studying a New Hampshire road map on the drive back home, my eyes drifted to that section of the Appalachian Trail cutting through the White Mountains.  Talk about scratching an itch!

Last August, after the 100 Mile Wilderness beat me up, I told my wife that I was done with long-distance hiking.  But now, seven months later, I can see why she didn’t believe me.  This is a recurring theme in my life, I think.  The many small miseries of trail pounding shrink in importance, while memories of wild happiness loom large.  Each morning I get up and write about that trek, and each morning I wrestle with the long desire to get back into deep woods as soon as possible.

It’s spring, the beginning of a brand new warm season, and I can’t wait to really stretch my legs again.  The 2 and 3-mile walks I’ve been taking all winter long aren’t nearly enough.  I sneak furtive glances at topographical maps the same way other men look at beautiful women.  Snow-capped mountains taunt me every time I drive somewhere.  My boots are right next to the door, ready and waiting.  And my dog, Matika, looks at me each day, her eyes saying:  “Isn’t it time to head for the hills?”  Soon, very soon, I tell her.  Right after I finish this task and a few more.

No doubt about it, thinking about hiking leads to hiking.  The more I think about it, the more I want to get out there.  My body has been telling me as much for months now.  The desire is as physical as it is mental.  In fact, I can’t tell any more whether it’s my body or my mind egging me on.  All I know is that it’s time – it’s past time.  So soon I’ll grab my rucksack and go . . . right after I finish this very important task . . .

As an outdoor/nature writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about hiking.  I probably think about it more than I actually do it.  That is the terrible irony of my line of work.  But I suspect that many non-writers fall into this trap, as well.  Modern living encourages it.  We all live busy lives, which lends itself to more thinking than doing.

That said, I hope to drop everything soon and disappear into the woods for a day or two.  I’ll make it a point to take a longer hike this summer, and tackle yet another 100-mile stretch of trail before I grow much older.  Yeah, I’m a busy guy.  But whatever needs to be done, I’m sure it can wait.

Tags: hiking, modern living, nature writing, walking, wild mind

Although some of the trees here in the valley are still aflame with late autumn brilliance, the mountain forests are largely denuded – a sea of brown/gray sticks waiting for snow.  I look up and see tangible proof of what my light-hungry psyche already suspects: the beginning of winter is weeks, not months, away.

There are more leaves on the ground than there are leaves still clinging to branches.  The tourists who stampeded into Vermont for peak color are long gone now, leaving natives behind to contemplate the long, cold season ahead.  A winterizing to-do list grows, yet there’s still gas in my lawnmower.  Once again, it seems, the changing season has taken me by surprise.

The hunters are all excited.  They gather up their gear like squirrels gathering nuts and will soon be chasing their quarry through the hills.  I am one of those left-behind people, hired years ago by avid hunter to keep his small motel running during the weeks he’s away.  My season is the season of wildflowers, dusty trails and brook trout, so I don’t mind babysitting a nearly empty motel between Halloween and Thanksgiving.  I watch TV when I’m not daydreaming of summer adventures.

My dog, Matika, is restless.  She gets a little ball-chasing exercise every day, but knows all too well that it’s been weeks since our last big woods adventure.  What can I say?  I’ve been busy working, entertaining visitors, and fighting off a virus.  I’ve been too busy writing about the wild to immerse myself in it, as sad as that may sound.  That’s the big joke of being a nature writer.  Your subject is outdoors but you do your work indoors.  My dog is not amused.

The sky is a gray sheet.  Geese honk in the distance, just in case I had any doubts about what time of year it is.  There’s a nip in the air now, forcing me to leave the house with a sweater or a light jacket when I run my errands.  But psychologically I’m still in shirtsleeves, and frequently I scrape the morning frost from my car windshield that way.  It’ll take a dusting of snow on the ground to change that.

Stick season is the in-between season, and that’s exactly how I feel these days, like so many others.  Time changes this weekend.  Our clocks will fall back an hour and dark evenings will soon be a way of life.  But I’m not ready for it.  I saw a wooly worm the other day and it looked ready for a long, hard winter.  Wild creatures, it seems, are always one step ahead of us – more in touch with the seasons than we could ever be.

Tags: moods, nature writing, seasonal change, Vermont

After the freezing rain had turned to snow, I bundled up, grabbed my dog’s leash and stepped out the door.  Matika ran ahead of me, naturally, excited by the prospect of a long walk.  We reached the trailhead after a short drive, then laid tracks in the pristine snow.  We had the rec path all to ourselves.

The naked trees and brush were a dozen different shades of brown, contrasting nicely with the whitened ground, rec path and sky.  The snow blew at a sharp angle across the path.  I raised the hood on my jacket to conserve body heat.  I picked up my pace.  Matika was already thirty yards ahead of me, terrorizing a squirrel.  The snow muffled every sound except that of traffic on the nearby highway.  Incongruity.  Nothing but trees in view, yet a blind man would have thought he was near a busy intersection.

Sometimes a walk is just a walk.  Sometimes I head outdoors, stretch my legs for a couple miles, then return home sweaty and a little winded but otherwise unchanged.  A lot of nature writing leaves the reader with the impression that every outing has the potential of being some kind of life-changing event.  Not true.   Sometimes the walk itself is all one gets out of it.  Sometimes there is nothing worth reporting – no wild encounters, no great moments of insight, nothing the least bit out of the ordinary.  Perhaps that is why so many nature writers tend to make something extraordinary out of the ordinary.  No writer wants to be caught without something to write about.

Ah, but there’s always the ineffable – that aspect of the wild that goes beyond words.  If an ordinary walk so often takes on the trappings of a religious experience, it’s only because the ordinary wipes the slate clean, making it easier for even an irreligious fellow like me to pick up on the essential Otherness permeating nature.  But that isn’t something easy to talk about, so we talk about the many familiar objects in nature, instead, hoping that something might emerge as a workable metaphor for that Otherness.  And it usually does.  But this is religion, not natural history.

Truth is, I’m not much of a naturalist.  Neither was Thoreau.  I’m just a writer with a bad habit of philosophizing while walking in the woods by myself.  But often I return home from an outing without a scrap of insight.  You, dear reader, usually don’t hear about those outings.  Why would you?

Sometimes a walk is just a walk.  Sometimes I head outdoors, stretch my legs for a couple miles, then return home happy to have gotten out.  I’ve had bad days that included a long walk, but they are rare.  I’ve had good days where I didn’t get outdoors, but they would have been even better if I had.  Above all else, a long walk is good for the body.  We Thoreauvians sometimes forget that.

The snow squall intensified as Matika and I finished our walk.  It quickly covered our tracks.  We were both covered with flakes by the time we reached the car.  While the defroster cleared the window, we exchanged big, goofy grins then picked chunks of ice out of our hair.  No doubt Matika was just as happy to get back to our nice, warm house as I was.  But going for a long walk is never a bad idea.

Tags: nature writing, walking