Literature
Yesterday I got lost in the woods. I mean really really lost: totally disoriented, middle-of-the-day sun overhead and so no bearing on cardinal directions, going probably in meandering circles up ridges and down valleys, tromping through heavy undergrowth, dense expanses of ferns up to my thighs, over a bog whose entire mass jiggled underfoot, through raspberry patches and groves of balsam poplars...trying to find an elusive logging road that finally appeared right in front of me after wandering along a winding ridge-line for a mile or so.
What was supposed to be a relatively short walk in the woods to a somewhat remote glacial 'kettle' lake turned into a four-hour excursion that entailed a lot of displacement and uncanny feelings of total isolation amid the old growth deciduous forests. The tiniest details?the maiden hair fern rachis, a splotch of slime mold on a downed birch tree, drosera carnivorous plants around stunted cedar tree bases, the texture of leatherwood bark?took on incredible thing-ness in the dark and circular woods.
The weird thing is that when I got home and charted where I had been on Google Earth, the area looked so small and easily navigable. Yet while aerial perspective and satellite imaging can certainly zoom in and out impressively and cover a lot of ground, it is very difficult to map or otherwise render the scale of getting lost.
- Reflecting On & Experimenting With "prismatic Ecologies"
At the recent conference for the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE), I dared my rental car company by lingering in Lawrence, Kansas for an extra couple hours, squeezing out some additional time so that I could go to a panel...
- Morning Walk Photo Essay Ii
It was about a year ago that I posted my first morning walk photo essay; I figured today that it was time to post a second one. (I find myself telling students that things become so much more interesting when you do them multiple times?like reading,...
- Logging Camp
I am strongly drawn to Camp, and almost as strongly offended by it. That is why I want to talk about it, and why I can. ...
- Petoskey Stones: Decorative Objects, Hyperobjects
Shortly into Ernest Hemingway's "Ten Indians," one of the Nick Adams stories, we read the following paragraph: They drove along. The road turned off from the main highway and went up into the hills. It was hard pulling for the horses and the boys...
- Up In Michigan
I'm up in Michigan again this summer, where I go to write and plan my courses for the coming school year. I grew up here, traipsing around the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. It's a beautiful place, with sand dunes and white pines, foxes...
Literature
Of Getting Lost
Yesterday I got lost in the woods. I mean really really lost: totally disoriented, middle-of-the-day sun overhead and so no bearing on cardinal directions, going probably in meandering circles up ridges and down valleys, tromping through heavy undergrowth, dense expanses of ferns up to my thighs, over a bog whose entire mass jiggled underfoot, through raspberry patches and groves of balsam poplars...trying to find an elusive logging road that finally appeared right in front of me after wandering along a winding ridge-line for a mile or so.
What was supposed to be a relatively short walk in the woods to a somewhat remote glacial 'kettle' lake turned into a four-hour excursion that entailed a lot of displacement and uncanny feelings of total isolation amid the old growth deciduous forests. The tiniest details?the maiden hair fern rachis, a splotch of slime mold on a downed birch tree, drosera carnivorous plants around stunted cedar tree bases, the texture of leatherwood bark?took on incredible thing-ness in the dark and circular woods.
The weird thing is that when I got home and charted where I had been on Google Earth, the area looked so small and easily navigable. Yet while aerial perspective and satellite imaging can certainly zoom in and out impressively and cover a lot of ground, it is very difficult to map or otherwise render the scale of getting lost.
- Reflecting On & Experimenting With "prismatic Ecologies"
At the recent conference for the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE), I dared my rental car company by lingering in Lawrence, Kansas for an extra couple hours, squeezing out some additional time so that I could go to a panel...
- Morning Walk Photo Essay Ii
It was about a year ago that I posted my first morning walk photo essay; I figured today that it was time to post a second one. (I find myself telling students that things become so much more interesting when you do them multiple times?like reading,...
- Logging Camp
I am strongly drawn to Camp, and almost as strongly offended by it. That is why I want to talk about it, and why I can. ...
- Petoskey Stones: Decorative Objects, Hyperobjects
Shortly into Ernest Hemingway's "Ten Indians," one of the Nick Adams stories, we read the following paragraph: They drove along. The road turned off from the main highway and went up into the hills. It was hard pulling for the horses and the boys...
- Up In Michigan
I'm up in Michigan again this summer, where I go to write and plan my courses for the coming school year. I grew up here, traipsing around the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. It's a beautiful place, with sand dunes and white pines, foxes...