The Ohio River Valley has been frozen in for a few weeks, making hiking a challenge and riskier than this sexagenerian, and the photographer, were willing to chance. With no hiking essays in the queue it seemed an appropriate time for another book essay.
For this one I went back to Paddle Whispers, a book by Douglas Wood, that I originally read in the 1990’s. It has stuck with me for these three decades because the uniqueness of its formatting. The author is also an illustrator, and the short passages are paired with outstanding pen and ink drawings that take you to the Boundary Waters of Minnesota’s North Woods.
The reader becomes a companion on his solo canoe trips. But this is not a celebration of the athletic feat of canoeing lake after lake and portaging the canoe and backpack. Rather it is an observation and celebration of nature – in the grand vistas, the night sky, and the items of beauty he sees along the way.
Interestingly, he places the simple phrase “the paddle whispers, the canoe glides…” intermittently throughout the book. For me it was a cue for slowing down and contemplation.
Wood is a wordsmith – his phrases enlighten the reader’s senses. The prose is so descriptive that I can hear the loon, see the detail of the white bark of the Aspen tree, and smell the Balsam Fir. I was there with him as I read.
This is a short read, easily done in a few settings. But like a good hike, you will want to slow down, to take it all in – I found myself rereading paragraphs, not because they were confusing, but because they were so descriptive and beautiful. Spending more time with the words allowed me to spend more time with the trees, lakes, granite outcroppings, and loons.
Wood is very descriptive, turning trailside spider webs into glistening art.
“Walking along the stream I noticed something that I have missed before. The spider webs are everywhere. Exquisite webs, hundreds of them – every stunted jack pine and ground juniper gilded with a necklace, each necklace hung with lucent pearls of dew.”
Like me, Wood has a reverence for trees, especially those that are battleworn and have faced adversity. It shows in his sketches and writings.
“If you’re a pine, growth seems to have a lot to do with making the best of where you started. Sometimes that’s just a bare-bones, blustery, rocky outcrop of a place, inhospitable, with little soil or shelter, nurturing or encouragement. It may take a long time, but you somehow come to grips with it – this starting place. You reach and reach, stretching needy roots over naked granite, through tiny cracks, down into crevices. Until you finally find footholds, the stability and sustenance you need. Then, someday, somehow, you transcend . . . growing up, while at the same time growing down, and growing out. Growing though all kinds of disasters. Growing through them.”
And he does get philosophical, but more in a humorous and not esoteric way.
Overhead on a limb, a red squirrel has a pine cone. Within the seeds of a single cone, a sleeping forest.
Now What? Is the squirrel in the forest? Or is the forest in the squirrel?
Lastly, I enjoyed this passage from near the end of the book that expresses his thoughts on mankind’s place in the world, and the natural world’s holistic importance to man.
“As I look around me, I see the sapphire blue of sky and a sparkling lake, the green shades of trees, the swooping arcs of gulls, and the clean hardness of rocks. And I sense that only in opening my eyes wide enough to see that the world is a living poem and not dead matter, can I begin to know reality. Then I can embrace a real and natural world….that embraces me. And my family, my species – perhaps our salvation ultimately lies less in technology than in the simplicity of that timeless embrace – pondering a sunset, smelling a flower, planting a tree, beholding all life with wonder and reverence, and honoring the mysterious, beautiful poem of which we are a part.“
For me this exercise has been fun. It was interesting to look at my copy of Paddle Whispers and see the essays whose corners I dog-eared in the 1990s as favorites and worthy of rereading. But now, 30 years later, on reflection, I would probably mark different essays as impactful. The essays haven’t changed, but I have.
It also brought back memories of a canoe trip that I took in the North Woods with two friends forty five years ago – stunningly beautiful.
I’m not sure how I lost track of Douglas Wood after such a joyful introduction, but I did. The exciting conclusion of all this was finding his presence on the internet and to see that he has carved a successful career out of his love a nature; writing, blogging, lecturing, and hosting wilderness workshops. And now there is a collection of books with titles such as A Wild Path, Finding True North , and The Things Trees Know that should fill my need for nature during future stretches of inclement weather – though I suspect I will not have the will power to shelf them until those cabin fever days.
Unfortunately Paddle Whispers is not available at our regional libraries, but many of the children’s books that Wood has written are. I have provided a link to his website below where his books can be ordered. In addition, I highly recommend his blog, where it appears he offers regular helpings of peace (link provided).
“the paddle whispers, the canoe glides…”
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The art work in this essay is that of Douglass Wood’s as it appeared in Paddle Whispers.
Links:
Just another to be read added to my list! Thanks!