TRAVELS THROUGH SUMMER 2022
Summer is short up here in the Pacific Northwest this year. Sun did not come out until second week in July and already temps are dropping. I hesitate to say that as I know some are suffering from high temperatures in many parts of the country. We have had a few of those 90 degree days but fortunately Rich and I have been tucked away at our place on Orcas. How we came to spend retirement traveling back and forth between two resort houses is something I will save for another blog. Attending regular meetings of the wonderful Union Poets group has spurred me into writing more poetry. This is such an outstanding group of people from many places, that I keep expecting them to ask me to leave! Below I wanted to share something I wrote about “The Traveler,” a phenomenon that appears in spring on the Olympic Mountains.
GEOLOGICAL FORMATION by Susan Glenn Lampe
The words geological formation are enough to twist, trip up and tie, any self-respecting tongue.
As winter forges a last tussle with spring and snow melts, a looming massive wedge of black-edged rock thrusts from the Olympic Mountains to bare an image that hovers
as a specter above Hood Canal.
Behind the mountains rise with jagged peaks, cut sharp as scissors to form lines between
the Pacific Ocean and the land called Washington State.
Peaks glow ghostly and show shrouded most of the year but barren in summer, they appear
dusky purple
Back into forever, humans have contemplated this image, described as “The Wanderer” or “The Traveler” or “Man of the Mountain,” although the rock is not gender specific.
Unyielding, the specter remains stationary, goes nowhere on asphalt, grass or bumpy gravel.
Chooses to define a road through seasons—fall, winter, spring and summer.
Those in the artist colony Canal-edged town of Union see the formation best.
Residents of the village Hoodsport live below the mountains and some Indigenous tribes skirt
the edges of an estuary at the Canal’s End; others line the Big Bend where the Canal curves.
Most learn how to find the figure and anticipate its spring appearance when vanishing snow
allows him to stride forth brazenly, right hand balanced on a staff.
Legends surround the black, stark figure; some see him as part of Mt. Washington; others
among the Twana Indigenous tribe claim he is a she who searches for a lost lover.
I spy a Shepherdess who kneels beside the figure near the head and ears of her lamb.
Heat rising into late August, early September obliterates snow in crevices as humans below
frolic in water with boats, jet skis, boards and kayaks.
When Storms blow Fall into mountains, The Traveler vanishes to remain buried until Spring.
For those familiar with this reappearing figure, whether visible or not, an aura remains of
someone, something-- always watching, guarding, a protector.
NOTE: The photo and some information was taken from the Kitsap Sun, 2019, newspaper for residents in Kitsap County, WA
Poetry month in April inspired me to do some research and play about a few of my favorite women writers and poets. Below is what happened to that idea, sort of a poem and essay combination.
A DARING LIFE BY SUSAN GLENN LAMPE
How dare she, a lowly college reporter question the lifestyle of such a great author?
Eudora Welty, Southern queen of the short story! What brought the reporter to ask, “How does it feel
to lead such a sheltered life?”
Did she shield herself with the dark ignorance of youth?
Did jealousy linger in the question mark?
With barely a bristle, a slight lift of eyebrow, the faintest quiver on smiling lips
Miss Welty answered in a measured tone “A sheltered life can be a daring life,
as a daring life comes from within.”
Consider then the Emilys, Miss Dickinson (b Amherst Mass, 1830, d1886,) and Miss Carr of Victoria (1871 to 1945). Did Carr know of Dickinson? Did either consider themselves living sheltered? Both were protected by parameters of family and remained in the same town most of their lives.
Miss Carr once spent a year in England and found herself in a sanatorium there until rescued by a sister. Safely back home in Victoria, British Columbia, she resumed life amidst the care and chores of family where she developed her artistic talents, painting and writing about the simplicity of a life lived with animals, in nature, in a city she knew. Summers she often fled with her furry pals to a farmer’s acreage where she tunneled inside a traveling home she concocted from a van. She was joined by her monkey, a parrot, dogs and cats.
Emily Dickinson inhabited her childhood bedroom for a lifetime, caretaking and helping her family with domestic chores, escaping to her room to design a life around the poems she envisioned. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Mass., and made a trip to Philadelphia and Washington D.C. and twice visited Boston for eye care.
Both Emilys met resistance to their creative talents. They found little support in a world unreceptive to their lives of assumed menial talents.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, another creative artistic woman, Beatrix Potter, struggled to get her works published for readers but publishers greeted her sketches of talking characters such as rabbits and hedgehogs that spoke, with snarls and hearty guffaws.
Acceptance eventually rose from the forbidding world of publishing for all of these women. Miss Dickinson was dead and left only a packet of poems tied in blue ribbon before anyone noticed her poetic talents. Emily Carr’s artwork found some recognition before her death but most of it came when she’d passed. Today a shining statue erected recently near the Empress Hotel in Victoria, B.C. salutes her and her books of art and words are sold in bookstores there.
Miss Potter purchased a farm, agreed to marry a gentleman friend and lost herself in the acreage where she could imagine her book characters greeting her on walks along the property. And maybe they did.
How many women writers and artists never found recognition, their works buried in family boxes or burned, tossed? Publishers and editors laughed and scoffed at their work or just ignored and rejected them. How many withdrew into a world of their own creation and imagination? How many found comfort among their real animals?
Resources: Emily Carr: A Biography by Maria Tippett
Final Harvest Emily Dickinson by Thomas H. Johnson
Poem quote in first paragraph taken from Brian Doyle’s One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder
In April, I also attended The Orcas Island Literary Festival held at Eastsound on Orcas Island, WA.
I met most of the authors below and brought home some of their books:
Rosanne Perry’s two books, A Wolf Called Wander and The Whale of the Wild. Although both are put into the Young Adult category, people of all ages can enjoy them. They hold so much information for those of us in the Pacific Northwest about the creatures whose world we share.
The Wild Birds by Emily Strelow, a book rich in setting by an author who does avian field biology. I found this unusual where setting trumps character, plot and story.
The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara. A story taken from India ancestry of the author’s father and combined with tech and capitalism.
Eliza Waite by Ashley E. Sweeney—historical fiction during Klondike Gold Rush.
A Pilgrimage to Eternity by Timothy Egan. Author seeks to define his spiritual beliefs through a journey into Rome, Italy, France, Switzerland and Spain.
Also note a few recent books by friends and family:
Larry Fowler’s new book on Lincoln titled The Turn: A Bond that Shaped History. This book won awards in the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Assn. Literary Contest
Mindy Hardwick’s recent book, Some Stories Are Not Seen, is a middle grade story about Cannon Beach, Oregon, sea stars and Haystack Rock. The World is a Sniff, coming soon, features a cocker spaniel named Stormy who lives on the Oregon Coast.
Click below for links to purchase these books: