It snowed in Bellingham last night. And I wore hiking boots to school. Then we talked about Emerson in my “American Nature Writings” class. If I’m not careful, I could get stuck in Bellingham for a long time…
I’m sorry I’ve been a negligent blogger. But whatever. It’s been a crazy month. But I’m not going to tell funny anecdotes in this post about my ridiculous Europe trip. You’ll have to actually talk to me if that’s what you want.
No. I’m here, once again, to talk about the theme of this blog. Awake my soul. By the way, if you haven’t heard that song by Mumford and Sons, I say to you, “Do it. Do it now!” Then proceed to buy the whole album. It’s worth it.
Anyway, I haven’t blogged in awhile because all of my deep thinking and philosophical insights, etc. have gone into my two English classes. Over the past three weeks, my mind has been running around between English classes, writing discussion questions, “journal entries”, response papers, etc. And I had to read Jane Austen at superhuman speed. Needless to say, my brain is having a hard time organizing my non-English-class thoughts.
So here is something I wrote for my “American Nature Writings” class. We were assigned to find a “place” in nature where we have to read and write journal entries every week, reflecting on our experiences of reading in nature. So here it is:
My “place” is nothing too spectacular. It is a creek that runs quietly through a modest grove of trees. I’ve had quite a few “places” over the past several years that were much more dramatic.
This past summer, I worked at Mount Rainier National Park, and my place was a small footbridge over a mountain stream, looking out over the exquisite Paradise Valley and the dramatic Tatoosh Mountain Range. To my left, Sluiskin Falls tumbled over Mazama Ridge and rushed into the stream that ran beneath me. If I turned around, I would see the summit of Mount Rainier, looming over the landscape with authority. But I would sit with my back to that beloved mountain, comforted by its presence, and marvel over the perfect stillness of the valley and gagged peaks on the other side. There was a meandering stream through the lush meadow, where deer, marmots, foxes, and bears could usually be seen. I fell madly in love with the Tatoosh Mountains this summer. I would sit on that bridge, reading the poems of William Wordsworth and Emily Bronte. I once sat there with my sister and a very dear friend, reading Psalms, and letting the words fill the valley, and bounce off the mountains. That was a spectacular place.
Last year, I lived in Chicago. I was starved for nature in that flat, gray city. But I found a “place”, where the city ran up against the vast and beautiful Lake Michigan, where the great schemes of man were halted by a large mass of water. I could stand on the edge and almost make the city disappear in my mind. There was always wind on the edge of Lake Michigan. In Chicago, the wind was dear to me. When the sparse trees were bare and I ached for mountains, a powerful gust of wind would suddenly bombard me with nature.
Two years ago, I lived in Northern England for nine months. My “place” was a grassy hill in the middle of a valley. I one direction was the “castle” where I lived and went to school. A sleepy brook wound its way through the valley, conquered by an occasional ancient stone bridge. In another direction, I could just see the Lake District “mountains”, begging me to explore them. There was a tree on my hill with a perfect nook where I could sit and read. At other times, I would walk through the fields, reading Jane Austen (I was reading Sense and Sensibility at the time). British literature definitely comes alive when it’s read while wandering about the English countryside. I fell in love with poetry that year. I found a beautiful old Wordsworth anthology at the used bookshop in town, and I spent an entire week in the Lake District, following Wordsworth’s footsteps and reading his poems in the very places where they were written. That was spectacular.
So my “place” Bellingham is nothing too spectacular. But I came across it about a month ago when I was riding my bike. I had my trusty copy of Wordsworth, so I stopped to read some poetry. The poem was “Influence of Natural Objects”:
Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul;
Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature; purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such discipline
Both pain and fear, -- until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
With stinted kindness. In November days,
When vapours rolling down the valleys made
A lonely scene more lonesome; among woods
At noon; and mid the calm of summer nights,
When, by the margin of the trembling Lake,
Beneath the gloomy hills, I homeward went
In solitude, such intercourse was mine:
'Twas mine among the fields both day and night,
And by the waters, all the summer long.
And in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and, visible for many a mile,
The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,
I heeded not the summons: -happy time
It was indeed for all of us; for me
It was a time of rapture! -Clear and loud
The village clock tolled six -I wheeled about,
Proud and exulting like an untired horse
That cares not for his home. -All shod with steel
We hissed along the polished ice, in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase
And woodland pleasures, -the resounding horn,
The pack loud-bellowing, and the hunted hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle: with the din
Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while the distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound
Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars,
Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.
Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, -or sportively
Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,
To cut across the reflex of a Star;
Image that, flying still before me, gleamed
Upon the glassy plain: and oftentimes,
When we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheeled by me -even as if the earth had rolled
With visible motion her diurnal round!
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
Till all was tranquil as a summer sea.
Something about the combination of the tranquility of the stream and the trees beginning to bud resonated with the words of this poem, and I was inextricably moved to tears. I am now attached to that place, not because it is the most dramatic view in Bellingham, but because it made me cry.
If you made it all the way through that, congratulations. You know how much of a nerd I am.
