The Wilderness Between

My place is soggy. The constant rain over the last few days has seeped into the decaying leaves, making them as pliable as wet napkins. The weight of the water drags the yellow leaves beneath that vicious green ivy, where the leaves will rot away completely, turning into rich brown earth. Oh, the ivy always wins. It remains hardy against the pelting rain. Water runs off of the leaves as if they were shiny plastic. If only I could remain as buoyant under the storms of life.

I am sad that this is my last entry here. I will miss this place. Though I pass through it most days to get to campus, it’s not the same. If I don’t take the time to stop and savor the wildness around me, it simply becomes another in-between place. Neither here nor there, and therefore, nowhere I want to linger.

But I do want to linger here now. Even if it’s nowhere. It’s special to me now. I’ve watched it die. I’ve watched the seasons happen here. So that even when I hurry up the stairs, huffing and puffing, I find myself glancing about, looking for changes, for signs of some new development. I see trash and litter like flashing lights. I see the ivy, creeping ever forward. I’ve seen the trees undress until they stood bare, tall and proud against the coming winter winds.

That is not something you forget.

I will worry about that savage green ivy when the snows fall. And when at last it melts away, in February or March, I will venture up the stairs as if checking in on an old friend.

I am grateful for the chance of having gotten to know a place so well. To see its moods, its different faces. I want that sort of intimacy with every place.

I feel that I have discovered something in this place that is not here, nor there. I have found a peace in the passing of time. I have watched death happen, and life. What would it be like if we all took the time to treat every place as a destination instead of simply a space to travel through? If every step took us somewhere.

In a world where so much of our lives are spent in these between places, like college, like grad school, where we spend significant amounts of time, but never settle. Places where we are not quite kids and not quite adults. Isn’t it important for us to look around at these places? To slow them down, to really experience them instead of passing through?

I’m not even sure we know how to live with such intensity any more. I don’t think we know how to slow down and treasure, notice, watch these in between places anymore. Do we remember how to identify with the trees, or ivy? I think as poets, we try. We try to rekindle those ancient connections between land and man, space and soul. But as writers, that’s our job. To look, to see, to tell others of that which they are blind to.

I think that Environmental and Nature Writing has been terribly important and constructive toward my writing. Already in my fiction and other work, I find a deeper sensitivity and connection between landscape and mood and character. I let myself linger a little longer in those moments of setting and description, allowing for a moment of reflection and detail before moving on to action and character.

This class also reminded me of the importance of specifics. Specific plants and animals and textures and colors. Knowing the name of a thing gives it power. It lends this power to the writing as well. I think this also has to do with metaphor. Metaphor is so incredibly effective and creates its own type of specificity. Nature Writing has really allowed me to work on the craft of metaphor.

Metaphor allows for the imprecision of language and communication to become more precise. It creates certain subconscious connections that convey so much more than just the subject itself. Some of the most memorable ones that I’ve written for me have been in my essay. Like the thunderheads over the prairie. I described them in my midterm as “convening like bullfrogs, swelling their chests to claim their territory.” And then in a draft of my final as “bullying thunderheads that flashed as they jostled one another like jocks before a big game.” The bullfrogs convey a much different image than the jocks, and the second description also gives a better sense of imminent threat. Or at least some ill will. I am really glad that I got this chance to hone my language.

I also feel that nonfiction writing has allowed reflection in my pieces that I don’t normally get to take. While I realize that I may not be quite reflective enough to succeed at nonfiction, I feel that this freedom to linger creates some very powerful moments. Moments that I would not have found if I had simply rushed on to the next scene.

Of course, I also learned a lot about the environment that I didn’t know about. Again, specifics. And a lot of the discussions we had (what is nature? Etc) really challenged what I thought about certain topics. I really enjoyed the class trips that we took as well. It was nice to get into nature. For similar reasons, even though it got to be a little much at times, I really enjoyed the nature blogs. I liked being forced to stop and really look at the nature around me. I liked watching autumn happen. I liked the few moments of quiet introspection that made me think, but didn’t feed into my neuroses like worry.

Overall, I thought this course was well put together. It had a nice balance of writing and reading, talking and doing. While I wasn’t crazy about all of the readings, I think that there was something for everyone in the wide spread of nature writing. I’m even recommending Ed Abbey to my father who is a geologist! Most importantly, though I wasn’t converted to nonfiction, I see the important lessons this style of writing can teach me in general. And I enjoy it.