Books in Running Brooks
Can where you read be as important as what you read? (plus a pro tip at the end)
Sleeping bag? Check. First aid? Check. Book to read?
This week’s essay on the Little Dipper blog “A Turn of the Page” focused on the idea that, for many of us, picking the right book to carry with us on a trip into the wilderness is as important as choosing the right sleeping bag or tent, a necessity not a luxury.
The spectrum of suggestions I received when I asked readers what kinds of books made their “must bring” list for wilderness trips was enlightening. There was everything from Ado Leopold’s classic A Sand County Almanac to the modern classic Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Some liked escapism stories, something to take the mind off the aches and pains of carrying a heavy backpack all day or to distract the mind from hordes of mosquitoes and put them in a world far, far away, books like A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.
Others leaned towards scientific tomes such as Great Lakes Rocks: 4 Billion Years of Geologic History in the Great Lakes Region by Stephen E. Kessler while still others would prefer lighter fare and admitted they’d pack a Calvin & Hobbes comic book.
There were suggestions of novels like What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage, and baseball stories such as John Grisham’s Calico Joe. There was nonfiction like Scott Russell Sanders and his Hunting for Hope.
Some people said they would use the time for self-improvement with books like Switch On Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health from Dr. Caroline Leaf while others would go for the rollick of the good belly laughs found in a book like Gary Paulsen’s My Life in Dog Years.
But, for all the great book suggestions, the comments on this week’s blog took an interesting turn. Perhaps it was because the essay centered on the reading I do aboard my boat in the Islands, but the discussion quickly veered from simply suggesting what books to read in nature to waxing poetic about where to read books in nature.
Some spoke of how joyous it was to lie in a tent with a soft rain plinking all around you, a favorite book propped on your chest. There were memories of reading while sitting cross-legged on a streamside boulder. Some spoke of how important a few minutes of reading were for settling in before clicking off the headlamp and curling up in the sleeping bag. Nature, it seems, is not only a great subject for literature but the perfect setting for its enjoyment as well.
As a former teacher of wilderness literature, I have seen firsthand the power of taking students outside to read and the connections that are forged with a story when the reader is living what they see on the page. Read Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” outside on a -15f day and you will understand the feeling of cold in the protagonist’s fingertips. Read Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” while fly-fishing and you’ll hear the cadence of his syllables in the whip of the flyrod. Read “Stone Creek Woman” by Terry Tempest Williams in a wild landscape and you too will be seeing faces in the cliff walls. One who reads John Muir’s “Windstorm in the Sierra” high up in the branches of a white pine on a windy day will never doubt that there is music in the winds again.
In Act II, Scene I of As You Like It, William Shakespeare writes, “And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
I don’t know about “everything” but I do know that those tongues in trees, books in running brooks, and sermons in the stones speak to the good of immersing yourself in literature, particularly nature literature, while you yourself are immersed in it. There is a synergy here that even the Bard himself could not ignore.
Perhaps it is the natural quiet, perhaps the warm sun on your face or the softness of the pine needles that cushion your legs as you sit. There are no phones to ring, no text notifications, no doorbells or deadlines, or sirens, or snapchats. Sure, a sudden breeze may turn a few extra pages for you, those pages may end up with raindrop smudges or flecks of fallen leaves or a mosquito or six pressed in the margins, but reading outdoors is perhaps the ultimate way to experience wilderness books for those of us who love both nature and literature. The sun is rising, the coffee is steaming, you are in one of your favorite spots in the world and, look, there is a good book on your lap.
So let’s keep the conversation going. Tell me your favorite reading spot in the comments, a place you have enjoyed both literature and nature, in nature, and I will share them in a future post.
PRO TIP: In my 17 years of teaching wilderness literature, I’ve learned to spot students who want you to think they are diligently reading away behind that book but perhaps, just perhaps, may be doing something else. If you can spot the clue in this picture, you may be a potential wilderness lit teacher yourself.
(nice book choice but very poor “fake reading” form.
Remember, tell me your favorite outdoor reading spot in the comments and thanks for supporting the “Little Dipper” or should I say,
— Jeff Rennicke
Books in Running Brooks
At anchor in a protected bay. I’m awakened at first light by the sound of squawking gulls. Hand-ground coffee goes into the Bialetti. The Bialetti goes onto the alcohol stove. I open the companionway hatch and step out to check my surroundings and the temperature. I wipe the dew from the seat before heading back down to the warm cabin. The gurgling pot tells me the coffee is ready. I grab the coffee, wool blanket, and my book then climb back up to the cockpit and snuggle into a corner under the dodger. I’ll vacillate between reading and absorbing the awakening of a new day on the Great Lakes.