In Why Write?, Astrid tried to answer the question, “Why write?” for herself. She wrote to be a better thinker, because writing well takes more thought than speaking. But she also wrote to remember.
And, as is many times the case, answers lead to more questions. “Why remember?”
Why did she carry a pencil and notebook into the wilderness and record reactions, observations, impressions? Was it worth the trouble just so she could remember the finer details of her adventures?
“One of the drawbacks about adventures is that when you come to the most beautiful places you are often too anxious and hurried to appreciate them…”
The Horse and His Boy, C S Lewis, page 132, Harper Trophy.
Was it because: “Those who forget history are bound to repeat it”? Sure. Remembering and reviewing her adventures made her better prepared for future visits to the wilderness.
C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien could write realistic tales about characters going on long “walking tours” with groups, because they did it. They didn’t walk into Narnia or Mordor, but they knew what it was like and could convey the dynamics of traveling long distances on foot or by canoe with a group of acquaintances.
Did Astrid do the same–to better document experiences so she could use the details to craft fiction later? Maybe. Only the future would tell.
Did she want to seal herself a place in history, to leave a legacy, so her name wouldn’t fade from the earth when she died? That would be a hard, laughable, NO. She was not that deluded.
Did she want to craft an “examined” life? Maybe. She would not go so far as Socrates is thought to have said, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” but, to grow in mind and body, one should learn from one’s past, and to do that, sometimes we have to document and examine it. If you have kept a journal in your youth, and read it in your adulthood, you understand this.
Did she remember so she could re-live the experiences, the objective situations, sensations, feelings, perspectives, surroundings, reactions, atmospheres, struggles, wonders, fears and marvels that left small indents on her consciousness which would fade and heal if she didn’t get them down in writing? Yes, yes, and yes. She wrote, not nearly enough, futilely trying to encage her surroundings in words, and failing. She wrote thousands of words to go with the pictures she took.
As humans, we make a point to remember some things–the parking garage level where we left our car, the dentist appointment in two weeks, a loved-one’s birthday–but do we try to remember everything? Every item we bought at the grocery store last Tuesday? The color of the car that just passed us? No. Why?
We make an effort to remember experiences that are unique, rare and valuable, things worth keeping. We keep tangible mementos from events we want to remember, in efforts to somehow keep a place marker in our minds. But mementos weren’t enough for Astrid, she wanted to remember more–more accurately.
Astrid wrote to grow and remember. She wanted to remember, to re-live and study the life she’s living. She wanted to remember so as to keep the experience as authentically as possible. If an adventure pushed her pen to paper it is was as valuable as jewels to her.
Last June, she once again headed north to a part of The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of Minnesota with an intrepid group of acquaintances.
The last page from her field notebook: “I don’t want to lose it–that strength–physical and mental, that wonder, that leaning into physical and mental challenges. You will lose it. But, because you wrote it down, you might get some of it back, bit by bit, you might draw strength from it because you can turn to your notebook and at least be reminded of the more subtle feelings and observations of the challenges, beauty and contentment that surrounds you now.”
***
The jewels she tried to remember:
-Self-talking her way through long, rocky, downed-tree-crossed portages, over moose droppings (they’re oval), and intersecting game trails.
-A pair of Loons hydroplaning toward her canoe.
-Despite the physical exertion of the days, sleep abandoning her at 4:30AM everyday, but waiting until 6:00AM to leave her tent, out of consideration to her voyage mates.
-Tiny leeches.
-“Sailing” with canoes across a windy lake.
-Loons popping up to the surface from their deep dives.
-Using rocks or downed logs for chairs, counters, tables and pillows.
-Not seeing another group of canoeists for at least a day or two.
-A campsite with a peninsula of large boulders jutting into Lake Winchell.
-“Latrine” on top of a mountain.
-Clearest night sky, bright shining stars and the Milky Way, with shooting stars and Loon calls.
-Clear, loud, most cheerful Chickadee songs (White-Throated Sparrow?).
-Aroma of cedar burning in the campfire, rich smells of compost in swampy areas.
-Tenacious sensation of swaying in the canoe when she shut her eyes to sleep.
-Sunburn, the result of not bringing her tried-and-true sunblock.
-Wet boots, everyday.
-Reading C S Lewis on the boulders of Lake Winchell.
-All the pictures she took were almost always clear and weirdly beautiful.
-Seeing something so perfectly beautiful, but keeping her camera in her pocket.
-Turtles, nosey grouse, rabbits, beaver, moose, unseen chewing insects.
“I don’t know if this is worth it,” she said a few weeks before the trip, in her home in SW Michigan. She was sweaty and a little frustrated as she dumped the contents of her backpack on the floor for the 5th time, trying to get her stuff packed as efficiently as possible as she prepared for the trip.
She remembered that question on the last evening of the trip. In that moment, resting in her tent, listening to the wind whisper a hint of rain through the trees, watching the sun dapple through the leaves, her boots drying outside the tent, she had a definite answer. “Yes, absolutely. Absolutely, thank you Jesus. Thank you God of all Creation, yes, it was worth it.”
At the end of the week, like a broken-hearted child crying because she had to leave the playground, Astrid reluctantly prepared to leave Boundary Waters. But just as a child can’t live on a playground, she reminded herself that she could not live in Boundary Waters.
But she could remember it.
***
An Inconvenient, Very Long, but Beautiful Night Symphony:
Trying to Describe Nature’s Music in Words
June 20-21, 2022
As the evening progressed, a weird, dry, oppressive heat descended on the camp. Weird, because the canoeing group was in the middle of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters and the nights had been cool until then. A storm was headed their way.
As she zipped up her tent for supposedly the last time that evening, the air was still and hot. She tried to read herself to sleep in the uncomfortable heat when it began. The Night Symphony started with a low, grinding, rasping sound from the log nearby, a sound which she had been hearing intermittently since she set her tent up near the pile of firewood. Insect larva were busy eating away at the slowly rotting logs, evident from the holes and sawdust.
“My socks are still out there,” she suddenly thought. So she unzipped the tent, snuck out, grabbed her damp socks off the tree branch and headed back to the tent, but not before rain-proofing some items left around the camp.
In the stifling, still darkness, the mosquitoes moved in, their numbers creating a high-pitched buzzing as they tried to find a way into her tent.
The breeze picked up to a loud whisper through the trees, drowning out the sound of the chewing insects.
The patter of rain drummed the tent–lightly, then harder, louder–and lightning cued the thunder to build slowly to a breathtaking crescendo of deep, dramatic rumbling which drowned out all other sound.
The first stormy movement of that symphony ended gently with the most magical of bird calls–a Loon, somewhere out on the lakes in the oppressive and complete dark, crooned, eerily and sweet. The bird was likely just saying, “Hey, you ‘good’ over there?” to his friends or his mate, but their voices were so beautifully mournful, we humans are either mesmerized or creeped-out by it.
And the chewing insects kept chewing, then she fell asleep.
Astrid woke to the second movement of the symphony, which began with another storm, drumming rain, lightning-cued thunder, then the strong whisper of the wind in the trees, then slowly, over hours, calm again.
As a faint light grew on the eastern horizon, cheerful songbirds sang up the rain-soaked sun.
The Night Symphony was over, but the chewing insects chewed on.
Not I 