The New Bark Canoe

"When he can, in his travels, he visits his canoes. This satisfies his longing to know how they are doing. He is pleased to get one 'back in the yard,' so he can touch it up, repair it, perhaps even improve it in the light of continually rising skill." – McPhee, from The Survival of the Bark Canoe







Oct. 30

The birchbark, a light, beautiful, entirely natural hand-handled boat. Living across the street from a river that flows into a lake which then flows into another river and ends at a final lake, the vision of setting one of these glowing white and light 16-footers up on the shoulder and walking across the street to drop it in any time of day is very alluring. There are any number of vessels that show up along this strip of the beach, itself lined by enormous quarry stones used as perfect landing zones. Old fiberglass canoes, clearly left outside under a house window in the leaves, are seemingly the most common. Because they are from directly in the immediate neighborhood, many are walked down on wheeled contraptions, then paddled off upstream toward the lochs. All kinds of varied colored kayaks, the bright blues and the sharp dandelion yellows all over the place. Once these are dropped into the Yahara River, they are picaresque at least as jut out from under the nearly hundred year old cobblestone Rutledge Bridge. The river here is often, unfortunately however, of a milky green cream color, as phosphorous is churned up at the lochs only a mile away and flows to expand itself along the northern shores of Monona. I picture the white birchbark gliding over the green, outrunning, if you will, its flow out into the middle of the lake where apparently the water clears up. It says in the book that Vallencourt, the skilled creator of the birchbark described in the books, spent all of his days working, repairing and testing his creations at 'his yard.' That each one, first and foremost, were artistic possessions, honed with skill and wisdom. That the split wood of the birches is far more strong than anything sawed, but therefore needs the patience of shaping. Once assembled the tensile strength of the unsawed birch is close to unbelievable; Vallencourt might very well punch the bottom of the boat with all of his might and that nothing more than deep thud occurs. He had spoken of rowing over stumps at a local lake and that it was the stump that took the worst of it. All that strength, a lightness of navigation, a pretty boat, handmade so that every fiber has been cared for technically and each shape and dynamic a deep homage to an ancient art. I have read recently that folk art craft and trade schools have taken on a very significant upswing in popularity in the past few years. We can see so many reasons why when we give ourselves a moment to see what it is that actually tends to gobble up our days, our time, and assess that with the same exact criteria of building a canoe, as just one example. The digital trades can easily take care of one half of the equation of time: it does indeed keep us busy; but has a much more difficult time holding up to the second halves of satisfaction: is what we staying busy doing have meaning, depth, lasting promise? Maybe most obviously, for those of us who have a strong spiritual leaning toward the outdoors, digital busy-ness can virtually never promise that a connection other than mind to digital can be achieved. In other words, in the end, there is no there there. No lasting substance. And you begin to wonder if the making of canoe should should show up at sixth hour school right after computer class? At the end of the day, a field trip to the local lake.

How to Read and Live McPhee's
The Survival of the Bark Canoe

"When Henri Vaillancourt goes off to the Main woods, he does not make extensive plans. Plans annoy him. He just gets out his pack baskets, tosses in some food and gear, takes a canoe, and goes." – McPhee, from The Survival of the Bark Canoe









Oct. 29

You might think that after reading the ways of Vallincourt above, about not making any extensive plans, just get out there, that the last thing a series of journal entries about the process of creating something would be a long term plan. Not planning is the ideal of things; its once you have all of the other things handled, so to speak, that you are allowed to simply wake up in the morning, peak out the sliver in between brown curtains, catch a nice shard of sunshine, and just head out to the river with birchbark lightly over the shoulder. Problem is you have to have the birchbark. I do have one-mans, and I do have the river. As for the sunshine between the curtains, well, it is Wisconsin, and that is about as unpredictable as the future success of my undertakings. It is quite fascinating though, isn't it, how long a man or woman might spend planning certain things just so that they might experience no planning. I'd say in many ways this is the very crux of the idea behind the writings here. My idea to personalize the reading of the great McPhee's work stems from a seed of recognition that has grown inside my bellow for virtually ever. It has now sprouted at mid-age and is trying to find some ways grow outside of my ears or wherever else it can find some sunlight. It is this recognition: I, as I sense just about every other American (adult or young), need some more constructive stuff to do than sitting inside our minds and we watch our minds even more than ever as it usually sits right in front of us as a lap top or in our hands as a phone. I happen to love both of these, so this is not by any means an anti-tech screed. It is, however, a final acceptance that the being we call human has a lot of impulses and abilities inside it, formed over a considerable amount of time, that simply are not getting proper exercise in these modern times. I always ask myself the most rudimentary philosophical / lifestyle question in the world: would a day go by better if I were able to both look into my self-styled mirrors (computer, phone), and create something by hand all the while? A favorite move and historical character comes to mind, Ghandi, who was often shown throughout his day both handling the political foment of his country while sitting or lying down at the weaver's box...making something. I think to the farmer's trade and craft, the original back to nature work, but that also had things to do, create, offer, share, make a living. As we've all rapturously escaped the farm, we'll notice we have also rapturously escaped collective sanity. I'd give every cent I earn from all endeavors, if our current group of political class had to farm on the side. Every one of them. Make something. Do something. Get to know a tree, they're neat! What happens when your farm water gets sick? Help it out with sustainable solutions! Maybe show the country some leadership in how to ... govern! Point being, the modern has figured out a way to unconsciously skip over the raw material of being human and we live inside bright and seemingly always gratifying mirrors. It's a land of narcissism, but that, if not detected, goes on as a cultural mantra and has fewer wise detractors left to say, hey, wait a minute, take a look inside another kind of mirror, one that is either right at the end of your own arms, your hands, or the woods, or the rest of the world which holds some folks out there that might not be exactly like you. Whoa. This may be the beginning of something. I sense I'll read the book. We'll just have to see if I ever get around to crafting my canoe.

"Our Pure Land is not only the fragrant lotuses and bunches of chrysanthemums, but is also the mud which nourishes the roots of the lotus and the manure which nourishes the chrysanthemums." –Hanh, from Touching the Earth









Little chance for Pure Land
from here behind the house windows

there it is, at the edges of city,
a little out there just off the highway–
    Get out, find a northern horse
             and pack the dog in back

Capital Springs, sodden marsh
        closed off, boardwalk
            carlots empty
the trailing of geese calls from a flood creek
a rise up out of the source of things
sun off the October grass
bright as moss
bright as the inside of stars

-----

Let go of the leash
What's behind you in the background
the sewage, the dump, asphalt living
the end of things, the beginning

Ahead through two inches of mud
we see only the black
fine velvet gloves of the geese heads
steadily swim along
the swollen creek which has no banks
they're not going anywhere

later they swoop down onto the city park
just north where you live

at the bench
under old friend oak

you know where it all came from

Farm Fresh Revisited

"Her first thought, curiously, was of Auden's poem on the fall of Icarus. Such events, said Auden, occur against the backdrop of people going about their ordinary business." McCall-Smith, from The Sunday Philosophy Club










Sam Farrar had just made up his mind. It was far too early in the morning and he knew by 4:45 that he had not closed blinds to his second story window above the Farm Fresh overlooking Lake Monona, Madison WI, and the mere brightness of the sun had begun to make its soft glow along the walls of his office. He didn't make a habit of sleeping here anymore; there had been plenty of these nights when the Fresh had just opened when he decided by one-thirty in the morning, with dirty dishes still stacked at the rack, new servers still stunned, and tomorrow's rotating menu already peaking up over the morning of his mind, that he would casually disappear from the kitchen, grab a cheap bottle of Korbel champaign and slip up into his office for a few hours of sleep. It had been over the course of many of these nights that he had brought up with him a pull-out ottoman bed, a fine piece of furniture that no visitors could every guess also served as a nightly mattress. He had thought of a washer and dryer; why not a small version of a kitchen right here in the room along with him? Well, why not move in? It was at that revelation that something in him had snapped and he realized that there are many ways to live your work but without proper definition of drawing boundaries, well, days become one long elastic stretch with no real divisions. He got rid of the ottoman and never did build his own kitchen. This morning, as he was looking through the news online, he wished he had his bed back, and last night.

Date to Watch the Moon

"Our date
To watch the Moon
Has problems. A quiet visit
To discuss the mountains is far off."
   –Hsi Chou, "Early Spring At the Capital Sent to the Honorable Kuan"









I sit.
I see mind release
to landscapes
each leaf.

I know this is
as good as any home.
Maple so golden
by autumn it has become
a sun of its own.

As if ascending
some castle stair
from around a blind bend
I stood at the top
of the knoll blooming
like pure land.

The thousand passers
in the distance along
the howling highway
heading to other
loud gray roads.

The Stream-enterers

"According to the story, by simply hearing these words, which to our ears may hardly seem inspiring, Sariputra gained the first stage of insight into nirvana and became a stream enterer." – Lopez, The Story of Budhism










It is not always the new trail that I find all that is remarkable.
There is that, too, new adventure upon new adventure,
some new scene upon the mind I walk with hope of the new.
Today we parked along the upper ridges of Picnic Point,
a spit of a peninsula which overlooks the other side of Mendota;
the water all around so high that the green waves crashed
inside the usual hollows of walkable trail and new trees
were under water, new waterlogged stumps, new leaves jewels.
We made it in under the curves of the Frautschi Point trail,
something of a winding lair of dark muddy trail curves,
our own footprints temporary relics to behold on our return.
Where were we? Had we every truly been here overlooking
the swollen lake as this before or was this a new creation?
I could have sworn that the last time we walked through
my mind had been nothing more than a television of serpents,
as the news and the loud mouths had gained foothold there.
I thought of the Buddha and his following sangha,
walking from village to village for forty years learning
anew the same people who they had known for centuries,
and braided fresh eyes to a trail home right where they stood.