Hold this Thought - Outdoors

The Singing Wilderness: Lucian Childs

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

In The Singing Wilderness, Sigurd F. Olson's first book, he describes the onset of spring for residents of the North.

"To anyone who has spent a winter in the north and known the depths to which the snow can reach, known the weeks when the mercury stays below zero, the first hint of spring is a major event. You must live in the north to understand it. You cannot just come up for it as you might go to Florida for the sunshine and the surf. To appreciate it, you must wait for it a long time, hope and dream about it, and go through considerable enduring."

A Sand County Almanac: Sarah Hanuske-Hamilton

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

This reading in A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold is especially meaningful to me.

"One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring.

A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence. A chipmunk, emerging for a sunbath but finding a blizzard, has only to go back to bed. But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges."

A River Runs Through It: T.L. Ridges

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 01:00:00 -0700

In "A River Runs Through It," Norman Maclean and his father try to help his brother, Paul:

'"Help," he said, is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly.

So it is ... that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed. It is like the auto-supply shop over town where they always say, 'Sorry, we are just out of that part.'"

"We are willing to help, Lord, but what if anything is needed?"

... "It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us."'

A Walk in the Woods: Shelly Morgan

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 01:00:00 -0700

Bill Bryson hiked the Appalachian Trail, leaving and returning to it. Over the months, he notice a pattern, which he describes in A Walk in the Woods:

"At the end of the first day, you feel mildly, self-consciously, grubby; by the second day, disgustingly so; by the third, you are beyond caring; by the fourth, you have forgotten what it is like not to be like this. Hunger, too, follows a defined pattern. On the first night you're starving for your noodles; on the second night you're starving but wish it wasn't noodles; on the third you don't want the noodles but know you had better eat something; by the fourth you have no appetite at all but just eat because that is what you do at this time of day. I can't explain it, but it's strangely agreeable."

Listening Point: Jo-Ann Mapson

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 01:00:00 -0700

In his book Listening Point, Sigurd Olson revels in "The Sound of Rain:"

‘Last night in my tent I listened to the rain. ... The tent, on the little rise with its thick cushion of bearberry, had perfect drainage all around, and the ropes were tied to two good trees. The gale could blow now and the rain come down, but I would be safe and dry the rest of the night. I settled down luxuriously to enjoy a sound I had known on countless campsites in the wilderness.
...
As I lay there, I too seemed to expand and grow, become part of the lushness and the rain itself and of all the thirsty life about me. This is one of the reasons I like to hear the rain come down on a tent. I am close to it then, as close as one can be without actually being in it.
...
"In my old tent somewhere, safe and dry with nothing to do but listen to the rain come down."'

My Wilderness: Eleanor Huffines

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:00:00 -0700

Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas visited the Brooks Range and wrote about it in My Wilderness: The Pacific West.

"The Arctic has strange stillness that no other wilderness knows. It has loneliness, too -- a feeling of isolation and remoteness born of vast spaces, the rolling tundra, and the barren domes of limestone mountains. This is a loneliness that is joyous and exhilarating. All the noises of civilization have been left behind; now the music of the wilderness can be heard. ...

The Arctic has a call that is compelling. The distant mountains make one want to go on and on over the next ridge and over the one beyond. The call is that of a wilderness known only to a few. It is a call to adventure. This is not a place to possess ... it is one to behold with wonderment."

A Walk in the Woods: Katie Conway

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 01:00:00 -0700

Bill Bryson hiked the Appalachian Trail and wrote about it in A Walk in the Woods:

‘Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light again you get up, and everything in between is just in between. ...

You have no engagements, commitments, obligations, or duties.... All that is required of you is a willingness to trudge.

There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. However far or long you plod, you are always in the same place: in the woods. It's where you were yesterday, where you will be tomorrow. ...

Walking for hours and miles becomes as automatic, as unremarkable, as breathing. At the end of the day you don't think, "Hey, I did sixteen miles today," any more than you think, "Hey, I took eight-thousand breaths today." It's just what you do.'

Steepletop - Lilacs: Leslie Shallcross

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:00:00 -0700

Edna St. Vincent Millay loved the lilacs in her garden, but she noticed what happened in the rain in her poem "Steepletop." This is the second stanza of the poem:

"Nothing could stand
All this rain.
The lilacs were drowned, browned
   before I had even
   smelled them
Cool against my cheek, held down
A little by my hand.
Pain
Is seldom preventable, but is
   presentable
Even to strangers on a train--
But what the rain
Does to the lilacs--is something
   you must sigh and try
To explain."

Bear-Aware Trash Talk Poetry Challenge: Elizabeth Manning

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 01:00:00 -0700

This summer, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game held a Bear-Aware Trash Talk Poetry Challenge in which entrants had to use the words "bears," "garbage," and "shorts" in a haiku. These were the distinguished results:

First prize, from Barb Williams and family:
   "Eat my shorts!" I cried
   Backing into the garbage,
   Afraid of the bears.
Megan Sharkey got right to the point of the contest:
   Garbage on the porch
   is the best way to get a
   bear on short notice.
As did Jessica Pisa:
   Bears in undershorts
   Belong in a circus act
   Not in your garbage.
Jamie Rogers focused on the crime:
   Bear's tight alibi
   Rules out short list of suspects
   in garbage caper.
And Jessica Bowman, with the title "Divorcing Him of His Clothes," threw in some humor:
   If there's garbage here
   Unfit even for the bears
   It's his yellow shorts.

... hoping you're keeping your bears and garbage separated ... at least when they're not in poetry.

Traditional Food Guide: Karen Mitchell

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:00:00 -0700

The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium just produced the Traditional Food Guide, which covers the nutritional value of subsistence foods and includes traditional recipes. In the book, Eleanor McMullen of Port Graham describes how they shared their fish:

"I took my grandson out in a skiff to catch pinks. We caught 15 fish, and then went house to house to give to elders. At the last elder's house, we gave away the only fish left. After leaving, my grandson asked ‘Umma, what are we going to do? My mom needs fish too.' I said we can go fishing tomorrow. This was my grandson's first experience of the ‘gift of giving' to others."

Everybody Needs a Rock: Sherri Douglas

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:00:00 -0700

In Everybody Needs a Rock, Byrd Baylor provides ten rules for finding a rock:

"Not just any rock. I mean a special rock that you find yourself and keep as long as you can -- maybe forever. ...
   Don't get a rock that is too big. You'll always be sorry. It won't fit your hand right and it won't fit your pocket.
...
   The size must be perfect. It has to feel easy in your hand when you close your fingers over it. It has to feel jumpy in your pocket when you run. Some people touch a rock a thousand times a day. There aren't many things that feel as good as a rock -- if the rock is perfect.
...
    Don't ask anybody to help you choose. I've seen a lizard pick one rock out of a desert full of rocks and go sit there alone. I've seen a snail pass up twenty rocks and spend all day getting to the one it wanted. You have to make up your own mind. You'll know."

A Walk in the Woods: Geo McCann

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:00:00 -0700

In A Walk in the Woods, author Bill Bryson describes the months he spent hiking the Appalachian Trail. Finally, they reach the end of their adventure:

"So do you feel bad about leaving the trail?" Katz asked after a time.

I thought for a moment, unsure. I had come to realize that I didn't have any feelings towards the AT that weren't confused and contradictory. I was weary of the trail, but still strangely in its thrall; found the endless slog tedious but irresistible; grew tired of the boundless woods but admired their boundlessness; enjoyed the escape from civilization and ached for its comforts. I wanted to quit and to do this forever, sleep in a bed and in a tent, see what was over the next hill and never see a hill again. All of this all at once, every moment, on the trail or off. "I don't know," I said. "Yes and no, I guess...."

Spirit of the North: the Quotable Sigurd F. Olson: Pudge Kleinkauf

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 01:00:00 -0700

Wilderness advocate Sigurd F. Olson rhapsodizes about trout fishing.

"To certain people, speckled trout are more than fish, and the catching of them an aesthetic experience.... To the trout fisherman these creatures of spring fed pools and riffles are the loveliest on earth. So beautiful do they seem, it is almost gross to consider eating them. These purists firmly believe that once a man has seen a speckled trout fresh from the water, thrilled to its crimson spots and the mottling of black and green -- especially if the taking has been with a dry fly -- something has happened to his soul. He has become an artist, a connoisseur, a dealer in rare value and a searcher for the unattainable forever."