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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

2:42 PM

(Surfacing)

This time last week I was paddling in a canoe, sniffling and shivering even under a fleece jacket and three other layers, my housemates and I singing and groping for the next lines of “Anna Begins,” while around us the landscape was rain-softened, the skirts of pine trees lifted as the sun flirted from behind a wash of clouds, the lake’s infinite song barely punctuated by persistent raindrops. I was thinking about the first Atwood novel I ever read, Surfacing, the one about a woman searching with friends for her missing father in the Canadian woods, and that surreal section where she chooses to disappear and live like a hermit in the wilderness to come to terms with her ghosts.

I don’t remember how it ends, only that she reemerges from her foray into oblivion, dazed but resolute, with the sunlight scalding her hands. (Except I realize upon coming home that the last image isn’t from the novel but from an Adrienne Rich poem, “Integrity,” the one that begins with one of my favorite lines, “A wild patience has taken me this far,” and that describes “this hot misblotted sunlight, critical light imperceptibly scalding the skin these hands will also salve.” Oh, how the things we read mesh and wind and find their own patterns in our minds…)

* * *

So yes, I went camping with good friends (the gang was composed of 2 “efficient” Germans, 2 “sadistic” French chefs, 2 “colonizing” Filipinas, and 1 “native" Canadian- American) in Algonquin Park (“park” is a misnomer, really; at 8000 square kilometers, it’s larger than entire countries). As we moved from one campsite to another, I experienced a lot of “firsts” in four days: first time in a canoe, first time to sleep in a sleeping bag in a tent with four other people, first time to carry what must’ve been 1/3 of my body weight during a 2435-meter hike, first time to eat roasted Camembert and that graham cracker-marshmallow-chocolate treat North Americans call S’mores,

first time to shit in a typical “bear box” in the woods, first time to successfully start fires (though I couldn’t keep them alive for too long, ooh, how telling), first time to catch a real fish (!) and whack it on the head (though I couldn’t gut and clean it, also telling). I guess I’m really bad at persevering and seeing things through to the end, especially things I’m weak at…in the wilderness though there’s no escape route, no way of getting around the dishes and sleeping bags that have to be washed and rolled and packed each day, the beaver dams that have to be crossed, the treks that have to be made in order to return home. There was so much wild beauty, from wind-sculpted trees to clear-as-mirror lakes, from mournful loon calls to soaring seagulls, to utter darkness weaving like scarves around your head. I’m such a child of the city, though…my heart lifted to the sound of Joni Mitchell’s “Carey” playing in the van as more streetlights and other vehicles entered our view. Nothing was more revitalizing than jumping into the shower and shampooing the woodsmoke out of my hair…

* * *

Yup, it’s been a while, I know. But I’m back from the silent swamps, with a clear head and words bubbling up, wondering how everybody else is doing. I’ve moved into a beautiful house with two good friends (and with a neighbor's cat, Maude, who comes and goes as she pleases), another school term has ended (ok, with another defferred paper, yikes), a writing mentorship is on the horizon, a teaching assistantship will keep me afloat over the summer, and there are pages waiting to be navigated. Today I am reading a friend’s novel-in-progress, shopping for salmon, writing in my room with the late afternoon light turning my room orange, and cooking dinner for another friend who’s coming over with a Bergman film and a bottle of wine. Summer is just about to begin, work and career crises can be postponed, and life can be good, for now.

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