Doug Bruns

Archive for 2011|Yearly archive page

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“…away from Heald Pond.”

In Life, Nature, Philosophy, The Examined Life, Thinkers on August 26, 2011 at 1:56 pm

I walked out of Maine’s North woods last week after hiking into Heald Pond. A few days later I realized that I had, at that point, likely been more alone than I had ever previously been alone. Alone in the physical sense. That is, I was physically removed from another human being by a distance of significance. It was a few miles at least, this measure of significance, probably more than a few, whatever a few is by definition. Regardless, it was apparent that I had been in a place, literally and figuratively, that I had never appreciated previously.

I’ve been to some remote places, mountains in South America and Asia, afloat in the Indian Ocean, places where if I got into a pinch, it would take some effort to get out of trouble. But I was always with others. There were people around, fishermen, climbers, photographers, adventurers. But at little Heald Pond there was no one. Just my dog Lucy and countless moose.

Being alone and removed from civilization isn’t so much about how to get help if you get into a pickle. If you let that concern get into your head you might as well stay home on the couch. For me rather, it is not about the risk, but the benefit of the experience. Snowbound in the mountains, the American thinker Eric Hoffer read the essays of Montaigne, leading him to conclude, “With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves.” I appreciate the effect Montaigne would have on a man stuck in the mountains for a winter. But the notion gives me pause and I am unsure about Hoffers’ conclusion –aloneness as a vehicle to escaping oneself(?)

I experience a magnetic pull to the wilderness. I always have. Despite years of domestication–perhaps due to years of domestication!–I seem more susceptible to true north than ever. I don’t believe it to be a consequence of trying to escape myself, to acknowledge Hoffer’s observation. Rather, I think it more Thoreauvian, more an effort to confront life intensely. On the surface of things, those seem two competing notions. Upon reflection, though, for some of us it is perhaps necessary to escape one’s self in order to drive life into a corner and measure its true account.

Regardless of the motivation, I sense a singular truth to being alone in the woods. My mission at this stage of life, is not so much to understand such a thing; rather, to be simply aware of it. It should not take two or three days after the fact to sink in. To be present is the great motivation.

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N 45° 41′ 12.57 – W 70° 36’35.80

In Nature on August 12, 2011 at 8:24 pm

N 45° 41′ 12.57/W 70° 36’35.80

N 45° 36’35.80/W 70° 21′ 50.09

Above: Coordinates for Eagle Pond and Horseshoe Pond respectively.

I was humbled by the North Woods last month. The Audubon Society and Trout Unlimited put a call out to members interested in volunteering for a study of remote ponds in Northern Maine which might hold native brook trout. It is estimated that 97 percent of all native brookies resident in the lower 48 live in the state of Maine. But no one knows for certain. One way to find out is to fish the ponds and lakes which have never been stocked. Hence the call to anglers comfortable in the backwoods. I raised my hand, packed my gear, loaded my dog into the Escape and headed north to Jackman, a lumber outpost a dozen or so miles shy of the Canadian border.

I did not leave home leave without committing the Google maps of my ponds to memory, not without my compass and a quick brush up of orienteering skills. I used to be pretty good with a map and compass. No more. Of the five ponds I was to survey, I could not deliver myself to a single one. I knew where I wanted to go, but I could not get there, which feels like a metaphor for (my) life. Apt metaphors aside, I found the woods impenetrably thick. The deeper I got into them, the less likely I was heading in the right direction and the more concerned I grew about getting out. Frankly, I bailed. Me and Lucy, tails between our legs, came home humbled.

The difference between pride and humiliation is a matter of a few degrees. Where I was proud of back country skills, I was handed up a meaty dish of humiliation. But that was then. Modern technology has a solution and I embrace it wholeheartedly. I now own a Delorme PN-60 GPS, loaded with the lastest topo map and, most importantly, keyed with the coordinates to my assigned ponds. No matter how deep I crawl into those wonderful 27,000 square miles we call the The Great North Woods, I should find my waters–and my way out! Old school be damned. Maps and compass are so very yesterday. So next week I’m off , as Twain said, to parts unknown, seeking redemption and tight lines.

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An attempt to strangle-hold summer.

In Dogs, Nature, The Examined Life on July 31, 2011 at 12:42 pm

Boats come and go under my balcony all day long. Sometimes, late at night, after I’ve gone to bed I, hear them plying the calm night water, slowly going up and down the slip out to the Fore River and the bay. It is a pleasant sound and one that comforts me, as the sound of the fog horn in the winter comforts me.

It is summer in Maine and the water-ways are full of traffic. I sometimes envy the boaters, power or sail there is no discrimination to my envy. I don’t have a boat, nor will I get one, but I envy the ready access to the water a boat affords. The best I can do, is get in the water directly. I tried to swim off the East End yesterday. Usually I can get in a mile or even two mile swim and be better for it. But yesterday it was choppy and windy and the bay was teaming with white caps and I turned back after only a half mile. As I walked out of the water a boater launching his craft from a trailer said he was going to get wet in the chop, that I had chosen to get wet but he wanted to avoid it. I’m sure he got soaked.

A boat is a thing and I’m trying to avoid the accumulation of things now. I’ve had my run at “things” and now am attempting to shed them. Eventually you come to understand that the things you own end up owning you. “Simplify, simplify, simplify,” repeated Thoreau. I grew up with that phrase but forgot to practice it somewhere along the way. Now I attempt to make amends. I have a tattoo on my left arm, Om mani padme hum–the Tibetian mantra. Perhaps I should consider Thoreau’s admonition on the other arm, as I tend to forget it.

Regardless of all that, summer is the time to be out of doors. And even more so here, where summer has a short–but intense–life span. Last week I was in the Moose River region, near Jackman, a dozen miles or so from the Canadian boarder. It is a remote area. And the weather can be challenging, even this time of year. I had to put on a heavy fleece when I got out of my tent in the morning. And in a cold downpour poor Lucy, soaked and obviously not happy, looked at me as if to question this strangle-hold I seem to exercise on the summer experience. Like youth, summer is gone before you know it.  I recognize this. It is a singular wisdom that I now grasp. Soon enough you realize that sleeping on the ground and scrounging for firewood was easier before hip replacement. This truism I realized a couple of years ago, but am too stubborn to accept. It is my nature to nurture this stubbornness as long as I can.

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Out of Ambivalence

In Nature on July 17, 2011 at 9:48 am

I swam the Peaks to Portland yesterday. At 55 I was encouraged that the race was won by a 47 year-old, James Yeomans of Bethlehem, Pa. I understand that when he finished–43 and half minutes after entering the frigid water–a roar went up in the crowd. It was the first time in years that a twenty-something year-old didn’t win, an encouraging sign for the (more) mature Mainers and visitors on the beach.  (I finished in an hour and six minutes, better than I anticipated, and smack in the middle of my demographic spectrum, 50-59 year olds.)

What I find remarkable about this event is what awaits the emerging swimmers: a beach-full of screaming, encouraging, cheering, shouting and yelping fellow community members, family and friends. This year, experiencing it for the first time from the water-side, it felt as if all of northern New England had turned out to support the intrepid swimmers. I’ve competed in road races, triathlons and sporting events all my life. I have never experienced anything quite like the crowd at the Peaks to Portland. Community is alive and well in Portland, Maine.

On the other end of the experience register: Two weeks ago, Carole, Lucy and I went north to Moosehead Lake for a few days of North woods camping and canoeing. At one point, as the sun set and the stars emerged, I stood on the shore and looked across the lake. I was peering perhaps two miles across the water. I then studied the landscape up the lake, another couple of miles, then down the lake, to the south, maybe three miles. There was not a light to be seen on any shore, in any direction. It was complete and utter remoteness.

The filling aspect of these experiences–the swim across the bay, the remote waterway–is found, for me, in supplementing experience with an element of the wild.   That is to say, nature, and the compliment to a singular experience it affords. (I am encouraged by remembering the zen philosopher Dōgen‘s comment, “Practice is the path.”) I don’t subscribe necessarily to the idea of the transcendent. I don’t wish to transcend. Rather, I strive to enhance, to experience a world that spans wide(r) and forces me out of ambivalence.

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Storm

In Life, Nature on June 18, 2011 at 7:54 pm

I sat outside under the canvas covering our balcony this evening as a storm rolled through. It came easily enough, the storm, though we had been told to expect it all day. And finally it came. It began with a rumbling and with the rumbling Lucy darted inside, but I stayed and read on; then the rain grew heavier and the canvas became saturated and began to leak and I took inside my phone and returned to my seat. And the rain grew heavier and as it beat on the canvas overhead I closed my eyes and occasionally the canvas leaked above me so I took my book and tucked it up under my fleece, as it was cool enough to wear a light fleece still, and as I sat with my eyes closed the rain beat on and when I opened my eyes I saw a single gull in the dark sky soaring, it’s wings not flapping, and I had to image what it must be like to be in the air, suspended, while pelted by the rain. The other gulls, of which there are normally many, were nowhere to be seen, but for this one, defying the rain and the storm and the stories’ high clouds and the rumble of thunder. And when I lifted my eyes, even though it was still raining heavily, there was a patch of blue sky to the west and through it the sun shown and a rainbow appeared, arcing from Peaks to South Portland, across the river Fore and Casco Bay, a full arc, firmly planted there and here.  I was being splattered by rain and the waterway in front of me was dimpled and corrugated and I cannot remember being so alive and so close to the elements; even when out on the trail and in my tent, or in a canoe, I cannot remember being so close to heaven and earth. The rain fell heavy and thick and each drop seemed intent on rushing faster than gravity could pull it, as if each drop had a mind of its own and was thinking, I’ll show you. There is a cruise ship in town and I thought of the passengers rushing to their comfort and their dinners and their cabins, thinking that perhaps the day had ended badly. But for the day had ended with an exclamation, a statement that nature cannot be ignored forgotten or even, for that matter, desired otherwise. It was not good nor was it bad. It simply was. Rain and the gull and the rainbow and feeling as if: This is the stuff of life, heavy and real and not to be ignored.

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The nature of the thing itself.

In Creativity, Curiosity, Happiness, Photography, The Examined Life, The infinity of ideas, Truth, Wisdom on June 13, 2011 at 5:27 pm

I went to Maryland over the weekend for the marriage of a dear friend of the family. It was a wonderful opportunity to renew old friendships, catch up with people I care about and have a general good time. Late in the evening Duer sat down next to me. The last time I saw him was at my son’s wedding, over four years ago. Duer is a serious amateur photographer. Although the weekend’s bride and groom had hired a wedding photographer, Duer, the step-dad of the groom, was photographing as well, working with vigor and enthusiasm. By the time he sat down with me, the evening was well on and the Johnny Walker wisdom was running high, as Leonard Cohen says.

I had my trusty little Leica wrapped around my wrist, my camera bling of choice. I’d been, throughout the evening, hunting for intimate shots, hoping I might make a photograph that the hired-gun missed with his shoulder-breaking hardware. The last time Duer saw me, four years ago, I was holding the same camera, working in the same fashion. “Man,” he said, “you and your Lieca. It’s film, right?” I nodded. “Black and white, I suppose,” he said above the din. I nodded again, smiling. “Man, you have a passion. I admire that, a real passion.”

There’s passion, then there’s passion. There was an article in yesterday’s New York Times, Sports Section, called The Mets’ Bat Whisperer. Accompanying the piece is a picture of Carlos Beltran holding a bat to his ear. The caption reads: “When Mets’ Carlos Beltran receives a new box of bats, he likes to listen to them as he gently taps them. He divides them into game bats and batting-practice bats based on the pitch.” It is an understatement to say that Carlos Beltran has passion.

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft recently told the graduating class of the University of Southern California that passion is “the thing that you find in your life that you can care about, that you can cling to, that you can invest yourself in, heart, body and soul.” Ballmer was echoing Joseph Campbell and his famous admonition to “follow your passion.” But I fear Campbell’s sage advice has sadly lost some of its punch. Sometimes simple truths wear out in the usage. Ironically, they can get lost in the shuffle of things. But not always, and not for everybody. I interviewed a canoe maker a couple of years ago, Rollin Thurlow. He makes canoes by hand up in northern Maine. Rollin has passion, like Beltran has passion. Nothing is lost in the shuffle for these types of people. I aspire to that.

That to me feels like the core of it all; that passion is the pursuit of, as well as the practice of a discipline. That is what Duer was suggesting, I think. My camera is a tool, as the bat is to Beltran. I know it well and as a good tool will do, it responds to my need without complaint or effort on my part. Part of a passion, I sense, is the seamless nature it affords one–a pursuit without hinderance. Words for the writer, oils for the painter, ideas for the scientist and so on. Satisfyingly, I recognize in the pursuit of such efficient elegance as passion affords, the nature of the thing itself.