The Blue Boat

As most of you know I recently read The Healing Woods by Martha Reben. A little bit ago my wife and I visited Weller Pond. We wanted to make sure that we got to Weller in the month of May, just as Ms. Reben did 79 years ago.

We didn’t travel by the same route. Nor did we travel in the same type of craft. But both of those aspects didn’t really matter to us. Our most important reasons for going are another set of whys. Ms. Reben traveled to Weller Pond to cure. And in a sense we did too. Neither BethStar nor I are ill, as Ms. Reben was. But we were looking for a quiet place, with blue skies and clean water; a spot that could renew our sense of why we continue to travel on lakes, ponds and rivers, up mountains and deep into the woods. In that we were successful.

Both of us had been to Weller before. But this time we saw everything a little differently. This time, we had read about this spot and time spent there prior to our traveling to it. To be fair I’m only going to write about my thoughts. When I read about a place I get the benefit of the writers’ impressions, thoughts and emotions. I also get their reactions and perceptions to any and all events that take place, no matter how significant or mundane. By the writer sharing these events and thoughts I now get to see the area in a completely different light. It doesn’t matter that my trip was this last May and that the one I read about was taken in 1931. What matters is that we both went to the same places. And by following I am able to fold in the thoughts, emotions and perceptions of the previous traveler into and with my own experiences. My trip is greatly enhanced because an earlier person had taken the time to share what they had discovered. When we went to Weller it was almost as if we were also traveling with another person. We could appreciate what she had seen and thought and add those items to our trip. In addition, by traveling to this place we were able to personally connect with the book in a very physical way.

A lot has changed since 1931. Ms. Reben saw virtually no other travelers besides Mr. Rice during the months she stayed at Weller. We did see a couple of folks on the creek, lake and pond; a number of whom we know. We were able, to our own satisfaction, to identify the spot where Ms. Reben and Mr. Rice camped. And here is just one of the pleasant surprises we discovered on our trip: the view is virtually the same as it was almost 80 years ago. You can still see the pond, islands, peninsula and wild forests as they saw them. The sky cleared off to a pale blue and the clouds reflected with a wispy white on the surface of the water. Butterflies flitted around and fish jumped from the lake. You can also still see Ampersand rising in the background over a few layers of hills. The camping spot is now well overgrown. But many of the older trees are still the same ones that they saw and she wrote about all those years ago. How fortunate for all of us.

See you at the Library,
Pete

Why Did I Want to Read That Book?

I recently started reading The Healing Woods by Martha Reben. The book was published over sixty years ago. For those of you not familiar with the work it is the memoir of a twenty year old tuberculous patent who spends the summer in the woods and lakes surrounding Saranac Lake, NY. She does not enter these formidable woodlands alone. She answers an ad in the local paper of a guide looking for a client for the summer. He was not expecting a her and she had grown up in the city. The two make an interesting pair.

Let me state right off the bat that many of the things they do are no longer appropriate for people traveling or camping. I've spend thousands of hours and hundreds of days in the woods and on lakes and rivers and never "let the critters wash the dishes with their tongues". But many of the descriptions the reader will find still ring true. When the storm suddenly arrives you are awoken inside the tent and can here the wind and feel the thunder. And as in real life, while the event passes quickly, the effects linger and it is not forgotten.

But as I read the book I kept asking myself "Why am I reading this particular book?" I think I now know the answer. When I was much younger I could not get enough of this type of reading. I grew up twenty minutes outside NYC. I went through every book I could find that dealt with spending time in the woods, on lakes or rivers or in the mountains. I was not particularly interested in fiction, although I did read that too. What I was looking for was stories about people living where I wanted to live, doing what I wanted to do. I remember very clearly spending a lot of time looking out classroom windows.

So when I picked up The Healing Woods I immediately recognized an old friend whom I had never met. This idea lead me to wondering if others did the same: do we all continue to read the same sorts of things throughout our lives? Now I know that I have read other types of books and many different authors over the years. Being the curious individual that I am, many librarians share that trait, I've covered all genres and done more then my fair share of deviling into the different Dewey Decimal numbers.

But I often come back to this type of read. Even though I have lived in the middle of the Adirondack Park for over thirty years and the woods are pretty much just across the street I still like reading about living or traveling through the woods, lakes and mountains.

So I'll leave you today with two thoughts: if you enjoy reading about being in the woods you could do worse then to pick up a copy of Reben's work, and if you ever find yourself drawn to a book but can't quite figure out why you might want to read it, just do it. Read the book. You might just be traveling back to what excited you about reading in the first place.

See you at the library,
Pete