Hills and Woods, Dogs and Caravans

At times I find myself overcome by a kind of emotional paralysis, as, moving still (physically) through the world, I wonder why. Is it really worth the bother? I felt that way on Saturday, in the late afternoon, coming home from my last bookstore day of the season, but I came home to my dog, and Sunny and I went outdoors to ramble through the sun-dappled woods, beech-gold-and-brown now at the end of October, then home to supper, and I was content for the evening, or as content as is possible for me with life as it is now, life without the Artist. The same tired Why? question waits for me in ambush when I first wake in mornings, but my dog’s presence and a comforting mug of hot coffee push it away. Empty journal pages are ready to be filled, pages of whatever book I’m reading ready to be turned, and in time another day’s light will push away the darkness, and the dog Sunny and I will go outdoors once again.

 

Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Scots Quair will be a lifetime book for me, I’m sure, one I will re-read in coming years, either starting at the beginning of the first book, Sunset Song (as I do with Pride and Prejudice or South of Superior or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn) or opening anywhere, to any page, to read with pleasure (as I do Proust or Thoreau). For now, with Gibbon, I’m only almost to the end of the second book, Cloud Howe, for the first time, but it’s all there: the ancient land; thousands of years of struggling, striving humans; the cycle of seasons and all the beauties of the year in turn, returning again and again; farming and mining and industry and their hardships (“the Economy”) and workers always up against it; religion and politics and waves of hope and anger sweeping through the land; and always “the speak” -- gossip, that is -- eyes of neighbors on neighbors. All of life, in other words, the universal in the particular (the only place it can abide), and Gibbon seeing and showing both the horrors and the wonders, sadness and joy of it all.

 

Leelanau hills

Always Chris (who began as Chris Guthrie and was then Chris Tavendale and has now become Chris Colquohoun) liked walking up into the hills, and now she and her minister husband sometimes go together:

 

Robert was walking so fast that Chris for a while could hardly keep up with his stride, then she fell into that and found it easy, the Kaimes was past and above it the path opened out through the ragged fringe of the moor that came peering and sniffling down at Segget as a draggled cat at a dish out of doors, all the countryside begirdled with hills  and their companions the moors that crept and slept and yawned in the sun, watching the Howe at its work below. 

 

-      Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Cloud Howe

 

Isn’t that fine, though? The “ragged fringe of the moor” as “a draggled cat,” sniffing, perhaps at a saucer of milk put out on a stoop? And the hills and moors that “crept and slept and yawned in the sun”? Here on my home peninsula, water in every direction but south, my husband the Artist used to say of the islands offshore that they moved around in the night, and it’s true that the islands’ perceived location from any particular viewer depends on where that viewer stands, so that from one beach they are straight ahead, from another to the left or the right of a person standing onshore. In Cochise County, Arizona, landmark mountains similarly shift about through the landscape and perform the same orienting function there as Leelanau County’s lakes here.

Orienting by bodies of water: Suttons Bay

Orienting by bodies of water: Lake Leelanau Narrows

Blue heron hunting

Here. I am here now, and the fields and orchards and woods have taken on their late fall colors, and the apple harvest is in, and all the villages and county roads are lined with campaign signs, Election Day only a little more than a week off. And “the speak” goes ‘round and ‘round, as always, as locals keep track of one another’s doings and sayings. 

A California couple thinking of moving to Michigan visited the bookstore one day and said they felt drawn to Northport. The husband asked me, “And is this a town where everyone gets along and there are no quarrels?” “There’s no place like that,” I told him, not adding, as I could have, "except in fairy tales." People are people, anywhere they live together. It doesn’t make a place bad, only human. 

 

Chris Colquohoun’s pregnancy becomes “the speak” of Segget, many seeing it as shameful for a minister to “show plain to his parish that he did that kind of thing,” but Chris has lived with “the speak” all her life and doesn’t let it upset her.

 

Most of the gossip Chris heard of or knew, and cared little or nothing, folk were like that, she thought if you’d neither books nor God nor music nor love nor hate as stand-bys, no pillar of cloud to lead your feet, you turned as the folk of farm and toun—to telling scandal of your nearest neighbors, making of them devils and heroes and saints, to brighten your days and give you a thrill. And God knew they were welcome to get one from her, she found herself liking them as never before, kindled to new interest in every known face….

 

One of my favorite old sayings, one that applies both to small-town gossip and huge social tumult, goes like this: “The dogs bark, the caravan moves on.” Life moves on. We are all here now but for a brief moment (Gibbon himself died in his 34th year), and beyond campaign signs, autumn leaves turn and fall, and beyond rancorous voices, day brings chirps of chickadee, cries of crow, a bluejay's objections, and in the night coyotes yelp and howl.

Happy November, friends.