Week One: The Finer Details
The Gapper Blog is back! Solana is here with a report and reflection from week one. She decided not to bring any technology with her this semester, so she wrote her journal entry by hand…
Before I came to Glen Brook, one of the books I occasionally read before bed was The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau is one of the more well-known nature-related authors, particularly for his book Walden. He was the one who wrote the famous quote “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” I thought of this quote absentmindedly on the day I arrived, thumbing it in my head as if it was an interesting rock I’d found on the trail.
By the time we were camping out by Mount Monadnock for the first time, I found myself thinking of him again, but for entirely different reasons. When Thoreau wrote his chapter on the mountain Ktaadin, he talked a lot about his experiences of venturing down rivers by boat and visiting log cabins near the mountain. I enjoyed reading these records of his journey very much. But by the side of Mount Monadnock, I realized that Thoreau had neglected to mention many of the finer details. The mosquitoes, for example. Or stumbling on your own feet in the dark. There was beauty to be found in summiting the mountain, to be sure. Now that’s something Thoreau would have liked to write about. But I think a lot of what I enjoy about spending extended amounts of time in the woods is the smaller things. Even the inconveniences. Thoreau does give some credit to this sort of experience, such as getting somewhat lost, or the struggle of trying to cobble a meal together.
I think, however, that he leaves out how good it can feel to laugh at yourself. Some parts of adapting to living in the forest are seamless, as if you were always meant to do so. Waking up to sunlight, for example, feels beautifully natural to me. Other parts - not so much. The forest makes you feel silly and awkward in ways that only humans can be. And being an awkward human is very, very funny. I loved being high above the world on the top of Mount Monadnock. I loved the way the wind whipped past my body and the way my feet felt on the rock. But I also loved laughing in my tent before the climb even started.
Summit photo on the top of Monadnock of the fall 2023 cohort.