July 23: "Backyard," Roughing It, Mysterious and Terrifying

Mary Oliver lets things go wild . . .

Backyard

by:  Mary Oliver

I had no time to haul out

the dead stuff so it hung, limp

or dry, wherever the wind swung it

over or down or across.  All summer

it stayed that way, untrimmed, and

thickened.  The paths grew

damp and uncomfortable and mossy until

nobody could get through but a mouse or a

shadow.  Blackberries, ferns, leaves, litter

totally without direction management

supervision.  The birds loved it.

People who live in the city won't get this poem, unless they've spent time traveling and camping.  And I'm not talking a couple days "roughing it" in rented cabins or tenting in Yosemite.  I'm talking about at least three or four weeks where trees and birds are your closest neighbors.  Where you wash up in a cold lake, and text messages are notes left in a spiral notebook.  That's what Oliver is writing about here.

I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, just about 20 miles from the shores of Lake Superior.  It's not unusual for deer to walk down my street at sunrise or sunset.  Rabbits graze the tall grass of my backyard, and, in winter, the snow behind my house is mapped with animal tracks.  Last spring and summer, there was a patch of fern on the side of my property that was flattened every morning.  Something large and wild slept there every night.  It could have been a bear, although I can't imagine any respectable black bear bedding down in the middle of a somewhat populated neighborhood, even in the middle of the U. P.  Maybe it was Bigfoot setting up camp near a Bigfoot-friendly house.  If you've been in the U. P. for even a little while, you will quickly understand why the idea of Bigfoot doesn't seem so outlandish.

I spent this afternoon and evening at my wife's family's camp.  It's a rustic cabin on an inland lake down a dirt road.  No electricity or internet.  Just water and grass and wood smoke and a sauna.  An occasional sandhill crane.  We sweated, splashed around in the lake.  I took a nap to a soundtrack of wind and waves and an occasional motorboat.  When I woke, the aspect of light had changed.  It was close to 6 p.m., and the sun had started its downward journey.

As I sit writing these lines in my journal, I know that soon we have to pack up and head back to our lives of electricity and streaming services and online grading.  Just now, as I wrote the word "grading," a huge spider crawled across the page.  

This right here, this deep breath moment, is what Oliver is writing about in this poem.  It's about letting the wild be wild, leaving the world without direction, management, or supervision.  A space only mice and shadows can penetrate, and birds sit and sun and sing.  Where my human presence is Bigfoot, mysterious and terrifying, to everything untamed and untamable.

Saint Marty may howl at the moon a little tonight.

July 11: Shapes and Powers, Euell Gibbons, Roughing It

This is what I had come for, just this, and nothing more.  A fling of leafy motion on the cliffs, the assault of real things, living and still, with shapes and powers under the sky--this is my city, my culture, and all the world I need.  I looked around.

Dillard loves roughing it.  She packs up her sleeping bag, a couple of sandwiches, a flashlight, a canteen of water, and off she goes into the woods, like some erstwhile Euell Gibbons.  It's where she feels most at home, with all the shapes and powers under the sky. 

I have never been that much of a nature person.  I do appreciate the beauties of nature.  When I was in Hawaii, I hiked across a lunar landscape to see real lava pounding into the Pacific Ocean at midnight.  I've sailed on Lake Superior (and gotten monstrously seasick).  In California, I stopped at a beach to see a legion of manatees basking in the sun (and promptly threw up because of the smell of rotten fish).

That's me.  Like Dillard, I've seen all the shapes and powers under the sky, and they have nauseated me.  I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, just about fifteen miles from the shores of the biggest freshwater lake in the world.  Last summer, I went waterfall hunting and found five in the space of two-and-a-half hours.  Yet, when I'm roughing it, I like free Wi-Fi, a couple double beds, and a pizza from Pizza Hut (preferably with Alfredo sauce and chicken).  If there isn't free HBO and Cinemax, I'm roughing it.

Here's Saint Marty's wisdom for tonight:  there aren't any mosquitoes at Holiday Inn Express.

June 18: Sleeping Bag, Picking Up Daughter, Bible Camp

I made a sandwich, filled a canteen, and slipped a palm-sized flashlight into my pocket.  Then all I had to do was grab a thin foam pad and my sleeping bag, walk down the road, over the eroded clay hill where the mantis laid her eggs, along the creek downstream to the motorbike woods, and through the woods' bike trail to the dam.

Dillard is going camping.  She's got everything she needs to spend a night in the wild--water, sleeping bag and mat, flashlight.  In her list of camping necessities, she doesn't mention Cheetos or Hershey bars or even beef jerky.  Just water.  Obviously, Dillard's idea of roughing it is very different from my idea of roughing it.  My idea of rustic camping is staying at a hotel without room service.

I mention these facts because, in a few hours, I will be picking my daughter up from Bible camp.  She has been there almost a full week.  The accommodations at this camp are not quite as bare bones as Dillard's.  There are cabins and flush toilets and showers.  Oh, and a chapel for worship.  It's a great place in the middle of the woods, right by a beautiful little lake.

I'm not sure which daughter I will be picking up:  the moody, tired teenager or the funny, happy-go-lucky girl who sings along with the radio.  I'm betting on the former, simply because she has probably not had a whole lot of sleep these last six days.  Usually, the conversation when I pick her up from Bible camp goes something like this:

Me:  So how was your week?

Her:  Fine.

Me:  Make any new friends?

Her:  (incomprehensible mumble)

Me:  What?

Her:  NO!!  GOD!!

Me:  Did you go swimming?

Her:  No.

Me:  Why not?

Her:  (incomprehensible mumble)

Me:  What?

Her:  Could you just please NOT?!!!

You get the idea.  After spending a week with her friends, reading the Bible, going to worship, inviting Jesus into her life, my daughter will be tired, in need of a shower, and demonically possessed.

Saint Marty can't wait to see her.