Woods with Friends
In both A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and The Maine Woods Thoreau brings a companion with him on his journey. His brother in A Week and his guide and travelling party in The Maine Woods greatly alter his engagement with Nature, as bringing a companion did in my trip as well. I brought my close friend Lani who I have gone hiking with on several occasions before. It was a beautiful Sunday on which we decided to traverse into the woods, and the conditions couldn’t have been more perfect. Having Lani with me on this excursion influenced my exploration of the place both inwardly and outwardly, leading me to even further developments in my sense of the place and myself.
From the very outset this trip was quite different from my previous ones thanks to the influence of my companion. We decided to get breakfast in town before setting off into the woods, so we stopped off at a little café in Fairhaven. After taking our fill of a delicious meal, a far cry from the usual Clif bar or PB&J that I had usually fortified myself with prior to these journeys, we headed out of town along Chuckanut Drive. As we moved further from the city and into the green, fertile reaches of the Chuckanut mountain range, I was able to witness a parallel transition from the concrete jungle into deeper and denser stages of forest, albeit with different scenery. Coming in a car rather than by bike also made the approach much faster and easier; I think the convenience made me less able to appreciate the gravity of transplanting myself into this new environment. I had no measure in sweat or a burning in my legs of what it takes to ascend to this greater place. I felt like I hadn’t really earned my presence there in the same way that I had before, and yet there I was anyway, and so I went on with the trip.
We walked down the path towards my chosen spot and as we approached the pond my companion was struck with the same sense of being in the presence of something special, magical even, that I experienced on my first visit to the place. The deeply black, reflective pond seems to have that effect on people. I wanted to show her the river so we made our way over to the other side of the pond and through the reeds that cluster along the water’s edge. As we came closer to the river we both became simultaneously aware of a strange smell. It was no scent that I had picked up on in my previous visits and so I knew immediately that something was different. The smell was acrid and dank, and I felt a creeping suspicion that there was something dead and rotting somewhere nearby. We struck on inquisitively, searching out the source of the strange smell, and at the moment when we came upon the river we were instantly given an extremely surprising answer to our questions.
The river was filled with what must have been hundreds of fish, struggling to make their way upstream. These huge salmon were answering an instinctual calling to come in from the sea and spawn. Covered in purple and red blotches, their forms were morphing and growing in contorted ways, driven by the flood of hormones being released in their bodies. The visitors seemed like a new addition to the place from my perspective, although their kind has been making their way up this stream for much longer than man has been settled in the area. We were completely blown away by the presence of the salmon in the river and the sheer magnificence of the creature. Both of us being from out of state, we were not familiar at all with the phenomenon of salmon proliferating in local rivers and were completely taken aback by our assignation. Like our first encounters with the pond, this event held a rare and unique, almost magical quality. I identified the smell from before as quite clearly fishy, and we noticed a dead fish washed up on a rocky outcropping.
The presence of the fish was not the only change that took place between my previous outings and this one. The pond had changed, as it has on every visit so far. The first time I saw the pond it was covered in hundreds of water bugs that created thousands of circles of dancing light on the surface of the pond where they balanced on the delicate surface tension of the water. The second time that I came, the pond lay under a thick blanket of fallen leaves, which had been stripped from their branches in a windstorm on the previous night. On this third visit, the pond was an expanse of glass tucked in the middle of a grove of trees, perfectly placid. From far away the pond looked completely black, unfathomable. Upon closer inspection I could see a bright sky reflected instead – just as infinitely deep, but stretching into the heavens rather than the bowels of the Earth. The pond has served as an excellent metric for gauging the state of the ecosystem during each visit. Another change reflected in the water occurred in the river. The water level in the river had risen significantly to the point even that I could no longer jump across at the same point where I had before; this increased water flow seemed to coincide perfectly with the needs of the fish for spawning purposes. In the closely interrelated nature of the ecosystem and the biological design of the salmon I caught a glimpse of what a beautiful and harmonious structure Nature is.
As the water level had risen, we were forced to seek out a different way to get across the river. We continued picking our way through the reeds and about a hundred yards further down along the river bank we found a fallen tree stretching across from one shore to the other. The log was wet and slick with moss; we carefully picked our way across as fish thrashed around in the water below us. On this other side of the river we had more free room to roam around and we moved along with the current, coming across large patches of fish in the stiller bends of the river with stretches in-between populated by only a few stragglers. We were having a lot of fun with the fish, and I soon got the idea in my head to chase after one of them who had suddenly cut backwards and was swimming downstream.
Abandoning the timorousness with which I had carefully made my way across the log bridge before, I took off, tearing across many more log bridges and jumping along rocks. Whether it was some primal hunting instinct that gave me tunnel vision in the chase or a more child-like willingness to get into the game at hand, I left the careful manner of civilized man behind and ran wildly in pursuit of the fish. Lost in this moment, I felt free and unburdened by the stresses of society. The fish darted around another bend and I ran out along an outstretched tree. He had turned into a small alcove on the other side of a sandbar and I saw my opportunity to grab him. Where these ideas to chase after a fish and try to grab him with my bare hands came from I have no idea, but I followed them unquestioningly and with reckless abandon, completely immersed in the moment. I stepped onto the sandbar to position myself strategically within reach of the silver and purple fish, and my foot immediately sunk down into the muck, submerging the whole of my foot up past my ankle. Quickly, I retreated my step and the quicksand belched out a *sssquuuuuolp* as it released its hold on me. My shoe had gotten amply dirty, but it didn’t matter – I was having fun like I hadn’t in years. We were children playing in the woods, and this simple, silly act was opening my eyes to the wonder around me.
From the very outset this trip was quite different from my previous ones thanks to the influence of my companion. We decided to get breakfast in town before setting off into the woods, so we stopped off at a little café in Fairhaven. After taking our fill of a delicious meal, a far cry from the usual Clif bar or PB&J that I had usually fortified myself with prior to these journeys, we headed out of town along Chuckanut Drive. As we moved further from the city and into the green, fertile reaches of the Chuckanut mountain range, I was able to witness a parallel transition from the concrete jungle into deeper and denser stages of forest, albeit with different scenery. Coming in a car rather than by bike also made the approach much faster and easier; I think the convenience made me less able to appreciate the gravity of transplanting myself into this new environment. I had no measure in sweat or a burning in my legs of what it takes to ascend to this greater place. I felt like I hadn’t really earned my presence there in the same way that I had before, and yet there I was anyway, and so I went on with the trip.
We walked down the path towards my chosen spot and as we approached the pond my companion was struck with the same sense of being in the presence of something special, magical even, that I experienced on my first visit to the place. The deeply black, reflective pond seems to have that effect on people. I wanted to show her the river so we made our way over to the other side of the pond and through the reeds that cluster along the water’s edge. As we came closer to the river we both became simultaneously aware of a strange smell. It was no scent that I had picked up on in my previous visits and so I knew immediately that something was different. The smell was acrid and dank, and I felt a creeping suspicion that there was something dead and rotting somewhere nearby. We struck on inquisitively, searching out the source of the strange smell, and at the moment when we came upon the river we were instantly given an extremely surprising answer to our questions.
The river was filled with what must have been hundreds of fish, struggling to make their way upstream. These huge salmon were answering an instinctual calling to come in from the sea and spawn. Covered in purple and red blotches, their forms were morphing and growing in contorted ways, driven by the flood of hormones being released in their bodies. The visitors seemed like a new addition to the place from my perspective, although their kind has been making their way up this stream for much longer than man has been settled in the area. We were completely blown away by the presence of the salmon in the river and the sheer magnificence of the creature. Both of us being from out of state, we were not familiar at all with the phenomenon of salmon proliferating in local rivers and were completely taken aback by our assignation. Like our first encounters with the pond, this event held a rare and unique, almost magical quality. I identified the smell from before as quite clearly fishy, and we noticed a dead fish washed up on a rocky outcropping.
The presence of the fish was not the only change that took place between my previous outings and this one. The pond had changed, as it has on every visit so far. The first time I saw the pond it was covered in hundreds of water bugs that created thousands of circles of dancing light on the surface of the pond where they balanced on the delicate surface tension of the water. The second time that I came, the pond lay under a thick blanket of fallen leaves, which had been stripped from their branches in a windstorm on the previous night. On this third visit, the pond was an expanse of glass tucked in the middle of a grove of trees, perfectly placid. From far away the pond looked completely black, unfathomable. Upon closer inspection I could see a bright sky reflected instead – just as infinitely deep, but stretching into the heavens rather than the bowels of the Earth. The pond has served as an excellent metric for gauging the state of the ecosystem during each visit. Another change reflected in the water occurred in the river. The water level in the river had risen significantly to the point even that I could no longer jump across at the same point where I had before; this increased water flow seemed to coincide perfectly with the needs of the fish for spawning purposes. In the closely interrelated nature of the ecosystem and the biological design of the salmon I caught a glimpse of what a beautiful and harmonious structure Nature is.
As the water level had risen, we were forced to seek out a different way to get across the river. We continued picking our way through the reeds and about a hundred yards further down along the river bank we found a fallen tree stretching across from one shore to the other. The log was wet and slick with moss; we carefully picked our way across as fish thrashed around in the water below us. On this other side of the river we had more free room to roam around and we moved along with the current, coming across large patches of fish in the stiller bends of the river with stretches in-between populated by only a few stragglers. We were having a lot of fun with the fish, and I soon got the idea in my head to chase after one of them who had suddenly cut backwards and was swimming downstream.
Abandoning the timorousness with which I had carefully made my way across the log bridge before, I took off, tearing across many more log bridges and jumping along rocks. Whether it was some primal hunting instinct that gave me tunnel vision in the chase or a more child-like willingness to get into the game at hand, I left the careful manner of civilized man behind and ran wildly in pursuit of the fish. Lost in this moment, I felt free and unburdened by the stresses of society. The fish darted around another bend and I ran out along an outstretched tree. He had turned into a small alcove on the other side of a sandbar and I saw my opportunity to grab him. Where these ideas to chase after a fish and try to grab him with my bare hands came from I have no idea, but I followed them unquestioningly and with reckless abandon, completely immersed in the moment. I stepped onto the sandbar to position myself strategically within reach of the silver and purple fish, and my foot immediately sunk down into the muck, submerging the whole of my foot up past my ankle. Quickly, I retreated my step and the quicksand belched out a *sssquuuuuolp* as it released its hold on me. My shoe had gotten amply dirty, but it didn’t matter – I was having fun like I hadn’t in years. We were children playing in the woods, and this simple, silly act was opening my eyes to the wonder around me.
My companion was so taken with the place that she wanted to explore the area even further, so we decided to head in the opposite direction, upstream, past the pond. We made our way back across the fallen tree that lead back to our starting point and then continued along the path into new frontiers. The river widened as we moved upward and I noticed several new species of fungus that had not taken root near the pond. Tiny black tentacles with white tips reached up out of some decaying stumps like little alien feelers.
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Slimy, fleshy-colored, caps grew in clusters around the bases of some of the larger cedars. Clearly there was a greater biodiversity here than I had yet come into awareness of in my limited scope of surveyance thus far. With my companion I saw many new and beautiful sights there in the woods through further exploration, but we did another kind of exploration while we were there as well, one with an inward-looking perspective.
For Lani’s “Psychology of Mindfulness” class, she needed to lead someone through a body meditation and so on the trip we helped each other out with our assignments. She lead me through a very specific type of meditation where I mentally scanned my whole body, became aware of different sensations in my body, and then tried to follow those sensations to see where they might take me. The exercise was profoundly helpful considering it only took about ten minutes, and I became aware of some possible sources of inner tension that have been weighing down on me lately. Thus, while my companion helped me to take part in a more free-spirited engagement with and exploration of my environment, she also influenced me to explore inward as well, guiding me to peer into my depths as had I peered into the infinite depths of the pond. As with the pond, there came a point where the murky depths turned into a reflective pool and I was able to see aspects of myself in new ways through their reflection.
Having gone into the woods to write three times now, I’ve become aware of a trend in the development of my engagement with the place. My first trip gave me a sort of experimental control to view my starting point in terms of what I thought it meant to be a writer, and specifically when trying to write an “outdoor” piece in the vein of Thoreau. The second trip brought me into awareness of an abstract side of the landscape, in which my imagination and the physicality of the place intertwined to produce fantastical images. On this third expedition, I had a companion with me who allowed me to engage with Nature in yet another completely new way. A child-like spirit took over the essence of my interaction with my surroundings as we ran along the river banks and explored with the wonderment characteristic of youth, and I turned my eye further inward as well under Lani’s influence. Each time I have in a sense peeled away a piece of my conception of what it is to be a writer, and even a piece of my civility. This trend of peeling away the layers seems to me to indicate that, through these writing exercises, I am slowly getting more in tune with an inner-self that is void of all the baggage associated with civilization and modernity. This primal essence inside of me seems at home in the wilderness, and by accessing it I am becoming more able to engage in a communion with Nature, which is truly a beautiful thing.
For Lani’s “Psychology of Mindfulness” class, she needed to lead someone through a body meditation and so on the trip we helped each other out with our assignments. She lead me through a very specific type of meditation where I mentally scanned my whole body, became aware of different sensations in my body, and then tried to follow those sensations to see where they might take me. The exercise was profoundly helpful considering it only took about ten minutes, and I became aware of some possible sources of inner tension that have been weighing down on me lately. Thus, while my companion helped me to take part in a more free-spirited engagement with and exploration of my environment, she also influenced me to explore inward as well, guiding me to peer into my depths as had I peered into the infinite depths of the pond. As with the pond, there came a point where the murky depths turned into a reflective pool and I was able to see aspects of myself in new ways through their reflection.
Having gone into the woods to write three times now, I’ve become aware of a trend in the development of my engagement with the place. My first trip gave me a sort of experimental control to view my starting point in terms of what I thought it meant to be a writer, and specifically when trying to write an “outdoor” piece in the vein of Thoreau. The second trip brought me into awareness of an abstract side of the landscape, in which my imagination and the physicality of the place intertwined to produce fantastical images. On this third expedition, I had a companion with me who allowed me to engage with Nature in yet another completely new way. A child-like spirit took over the essence of my interaction with my surroundings as we ran along the river banks and explored with the wonderment characteristic of youth, and I turned my eye further inward as well under Lani’s influence. Each time I have in a sense peeled away a piece of my conception of what it is to be a writer, and even a piece of my civility. This trend of peeling away the layers seems to me to indicate that, through these writing exercises, I am slowly getting more in tune with an inner-self that is void of all the baggage associated with civilization and modernity. This primal essence inside of me seems at home in the wilderness, and by accessing it I am becoming more able to engage in a communion with Nature, which is truly a beautiful thing.