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?