Exploration

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
—T. S. Eliot

My friend John and I take a long walk through along the Ice Age Trail through Wisconsin's Lapham Peak State Park. When we planned the walk, we hoped to snowshoe over a new 14" blanket of snow. However, as temperatures climb to the 40s, we pick our way over iced tracks up and down hills in the woods, and stride along the clearer paths through the meadows and prairies.

Our hike begins at the 45' tower, perched atop the highest point in Waukesha County. We inch our way down the hill, the path slick with ice and the woods too dense to allow surer footing alongside the trail. The smell of woodfire rises along with the ripping buzz of chainsaws, and soon we pass woodcutters clearing the undergrowth from beneath the hardwoods. Boardwalks guide us over cattailed wetlands and the path winds through prairie tall grass, both landscapes stark and beautiful through the muffling fog that creeps over the land.

Venturing onto a swirling cluster of bike paths in order to loop back, we ascend and descend moraine hills. Along the path, I spot a clear plastic tarp, blown from Cushing Park Road. I consider stashing the tarp in my pack, but it's huge and dirty; I don't want to take this burden.

Fog thick along the maze of looping paths confuses us. Standing at a crossroads already crossed, both of us spread trail maps smooth, both of us consult compasses, both of us are confounded. Despite our intentions, an easily-identified road cutting through the park, and very clear compass indicators, intuition tugs north when we want to go south. The indecision grows intolerable; I suggest a path and John readily agrees.

Ten steps along our chosen path, we spot the tarp—the one piece of trash in the park serves as a waymark. The spell lifts as we laugh at ourselves and follow the compass to the south and west, tracing our wayward path back up the thigh-shredding hills to the foot of the tower hill where we began.

The Key

Ninety-five degrees on a humid Sunday in July—it's three hours after opening, and we are the first visitors to the Indian Agency House in Portage, Wisconsin. I am psyched; I've pored over Wau-bun three times, studied numerous historical essays, and as I tell the docent, I've been waiting for this for a long time.

Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie came to Ft. Winnebago as the young bride of Indian Agent, John Kinzie. When she arrived, she was the only woman in the fort, but she brought good humour and a practical courage to this country far from home. She lived in rooms at the fort before ultimately building the Indian Agency House that she could call home for a short while. Along the way, she met rough and ready voyageurs, métis ladies of charm and grace, humorous and tragic Ho-Chunk peoples, and women who sank under the burdens of the lonely frontier life.

The large brass key looks like a theatre prop in the docent's hand. "Is that the original key?" I wonder. It seems unreal to me that the key that opened the early 19th-Century home of a pioneer woman is the same as the key that opens the 21st-Century museum. Can an owner imbue an object with her spirit? I don't know, but I feel close to Juliette Kinzie as I hold the key to her house.

Click here for Nina Baym's introduction to Wau-Bun: The "Early Day" in the North-West by Juliette M. Kinzie, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

Channeling Tess

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it."
-Elizabeth Drew

Laura Lippman, one of my favorite writers, is on tour promoting No Good Deeds, and I noticed she had an appearance scheduled at the Skokie Public Library. Whether or not you enjoy mysteries, read her To the Power of Three for its mastery of point of view and character development. If you're always looking for a good mystery, you'll also enjoy By a Spider's Thread featuring her private investigator, Tess Monaghan.

I cleared my day and drove two hours to find I had arrived an hour early—a perfect opportunity to find coffee beans' Spare Time letterbox. Still early, I took the rest of my spare time to write in the cool of the auditorium as I waited. I was interrupted by a woman asking if I had checked in. "I wasn't aware that I had to check in."

As it turned out, this appearance not only required an admission fee but was a closed meeting. I had invested too much to leave meekly, so I emulated Tess Monaghan, unabashedly talking my way in. Such a small victory, really, but so exhilarating.

Anniversary in the Countryside

Gibralter Rock—We push against the palpable, humid 98° gravity as we ascend. Underfoot, grasses and wildflowers patiently shove apart the steep old road, twining toward the light as if parting the crowding asphalt in very slow motion.

Standing atop the hard dolomite capping the softer, more fragile sandstone bluff, we look below to the river and the bog, the cedars and the red oak—the entire life of the valley lies beneath our feet. We look up to the hawks lazily rising on the the warm invisible air of the flawless skies—skies that loft a ghostly moon and his bright sister sun.

Between sky and rock we strive and we rest, steering a middle course on the trail, in our lives and through our marriage—equally grateful for the blessings of our life, the small triumphs, the daily struggles, the patient perseverance, the splendor in the sky.

Fighting the Tyrrany of the Logbook

Until recently, I felt as if I've been a prisoner of the blank white rectangle. When I realized I would not have some wonderful anectdote or reflection on each letterbox I visited, I just started stamping into my logbook in order—generally including a note of the date, but not much else. My logbooks didn't evoke much response when I looked through them.

I like a chronological logbook too. It's like my own letterboxing diary and I love leafing back through it. I just look wistfully at some of those gorgeous neat and clean, lined with tissue paper books. *sigh* My logbooks definately are of a guerilla boxer. Inky fingerprints, smudged images restamped, notes written all over...

LockWench

I like her style. LockWench is unfettered by an impossible quest for perfection; she has really lived her letterboxing travels.

After a nature journaling workshop, I branched out in my logbook, giving me a way to enjoy my hikes even more. Although I'm no artist, no photographer, I sit and sketch or paint some small detail I encounter on my walk. When I'm with others who have little patience for me sitting and staring, I photograph beauty I admire yet fear to forget. Even though these pictures are not masterpieces, they compel me to really see and they help me to remember.

I've taken to stamping in at letterboxes on separate pieces of glossy paper; they take the ink beautifully, and I don't worry about messing up my logbook with a sloppy stamp. I'm also able to group the stamps thematically, putting a series together, for instance. When we attended the Wandering in Wonderland Great Lakes Gathering, I bought an inexpensive copy of Alice in Wonderland that had illustrations and plenty of white space. Rather than stamping in on pieces of paper, I stamped right into the book and asked other letterboxers to stamp in there too.

One of the attractions of letterboxing is the opportunities it presents for creativity. At first, I was happy to be bookbinding as I created logbooks. I enjoyed writing clues and the stories that went with them. Then, resigned to my crude carving efforts, I started producing better stamps. Now, I experiment with altered books, photography, sketching and painting. While I try my best, I've made my peace with imperfection and I take more risks. Isn't that the essence of creativity?

Anniversary in the City

My legs stride trails through woods and over moraine hills. When they traverse the granite plazas and concrete paths of the city, an ache like a hand around my ankle or a knife to my kneecap reminds me that a life is written in my body.

We drink a leisurely cocktail at a piano bar, tracking "Misty" and "I've Got You Under My Skin" through the forest of improvisation. I've selected a French martini: a martini because it seems so self-possessed in its silver shaker and elegant glass, unadulterated by sodas and tonics; Chambord because that is how we used to celebrate our friendship and romance; Moët champagne to honor this new year; and Grey Goose vodka because its name reminds me of marshes and lakes in the fog.

I sip mindfully, slipping into the coolness, welcoming the trickle that loosens my throat and my heart. Content, I rise to beat my languid way back to the street.

Chicago Underground

"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—
—Emily Dickinson


On an urban letterboxing quest, we descend to the netherworld of Lower Wacker Drive. As Pico, D and I pass the burnt shelters, cordoned off by police tape and impassively guarded by a watcher clad in an unlikely sunshine yellow, I wonder what brought the residents to form such a community in a public walkway. I wonder about the man who stores his much-used, well-loved bible in the pillar supporting the world above. Towns spring up and are continually rebuilt on flood plains or in tornado alleys. The sense of place must exert a powerful shaping influence on our souls. Places I have lived haunt my dreams, making up the mysterious architecture of my subconsciousness. Do those who lived in these flimsy boxes, now lying in ashes, dream of the community they so bravely built?

If history is any guide, under the feet of tourists and workers they will build again. Since the 1930s, the homeless have exerted their resourcefulness and resilience—despite fires, despite floods, despite police actions to remove them—and built shelters on Lower Wacker Drive. Chicagoans are tenacious, industriously squatting, or building or rebuilding in the same spots.

On this day we not only see the remains of a squatter's village, we journey to Chicago's far south side, through the modest neighborhoods lining South Shore Drive. I smile at the pink and white Rose of Sharon blossoms; the copious flowers cheer a bleak area. Some far-seeing gardeners have planted these bushes, knowing the flowers will gladden the hearts of their neighbors and visitors to their community.

Heading north again, we see the renaissance of Chicago's Prairie District. The last time I was here, rubble was its dominant feature. Now the neighborhood is vibrant. Children, smelling of sunscreen, chase bunnies through a park bedecked with whimsical birdhouses. The breeze caresses us as we refresh ourselves at the outdoor cafe beside the Glessner and the Clarke Houses that have been restored to remind us of our history. New homes have been built. Industrial factories and warehouses have been reclaimed as elegant hardwood floored, brick walled and wooden beamed apartments.

What causes us to rehabilitate our homes, to redefine our old buildings or public spaces, to remake a wasteland into a beautiful park where we can meet our neighbors? What force fosters our attachment, despite repeated decimation, to a place we have learned to call ours? Why do we plant gardens in the face of a gritty city? Why do we tuck away a bible in a place of squalor?