aesthetics of joy

Say the name Sam Gribley and many Americans of a certain age will be instantly transported to a hollowed-out oak in a Northeastern forest, to the fictional home of a fictional boy who ventured bravely into the woods thinking anything was possible. They may tell you of how quickly they devoured My Side of the Mountain, the book that introduced Sam to the world, or how they confidently packed up a rucksack and told their parents they were “running away” in emulation. They may tell you how that book kindled in them a love for nature, or a love for writing. Or they may just nod quietly, as if appreciating some stlll-burning embers of childhood wilderness fantasies.

My Side of the Mountain was unique in that it made manifest the joy of the wild to children, for whom nature was so often tamed and sanitized. It was the brainchild of Jean Craighead George, a prolific writer and naturalist who was for many children a kind of guide to the beauty and wonder of the natural world. I was among those many children touched by Jean’s words, but I also had the privilege of knowing her personally, of being her neighbor and friend. Jean passed away earlier this year, and last Sunday I joined the (very) many who gathered to celebrate Jean and share what she meant to them at a memorial service in Chappaqua, NY. She was a formative figure in my life, and I thought you might like to know more about what it was like to grow up within the orbit of this remarkable woman. Jean embodied joy. In fact, she taught me much about it before I even knew it was what I was looking for.

I never “met” Jean, I just knew her. I lived across the street from her while I was growing up and she was a part of my life going as far back as I can remember. I would show up at her house unannounced, knocking on the screen door, in the way that Dennis the Menace dropped in on Mr. Wilson on TV. (This seems unfathomable now, doesn’t it? How impossible and quaint such a friendship seems now as kids are sequestered at home in front of devices, rather than left to wander the neighborhood, finding their own amusements.) I would arrive with some discovery, a strange plant or insect, and Jean would examine it with me, identify it, and tell me stories. She seemed to know everything. When I found a frog in the skimmer of our pool, Jean helped me set up a tank with fresh water and rocks to help it recover. When I encountered a fallen nest crowded with hatchlings, she took them in. She took note of my curiosities, and fed them. After reading My Side of the Mountain, I wanted to know if it was really true that Sam could stay alive eating only what he could find in from the forests. She soon gave me a book on foraging. This led to my decimating in short order all the fiddleheads in our front yard to sauté for dinner. (I’m not sure that counts as “foraging,” but it was delicious.)

The door to Jean’s wood-shingled house was always open to me. Invariably she was hard at work, but she was never too busy for a visit. I was never told to come back later. I was always welcomed with an exclamation — “Oh, Ingy!” — and a hug. And how I loved going to Jean’s house. Across the dirt road and up a few steps from my house was a wonderland, a world of curiosities. Jean loved to travel, and her house was full of her findings from these journeys. Inuit masks hung on the walls, a feathery blade of baleen hung over a doorway, a shark jaw sat on top of the television. A giant whale vertebra, like a stone propellor, sat on the floor by the fireplace. At the same time, Jean’s house was more than a repository of souvenirs. A lush mural on the front wall had been painted by a friend. In the foyer, a koi pond burbled a comforting background track. It was an unusual but real home, a home well-lived into. And it smelled that way too, the warm smoky air of the always-burning wood stove mingled with transported scents from faraway lands.

Jean amazed me with her adventures, traveling well into her golden years to places I hardly knew existed. She was always just back from somewhere at the edge of the map, and because of this she expanded the boundaries of what I considered my world. Jean traveled outside the realm of guidebooks. She trod the off-off-beaten path. She traveled to connect with the people in foreign lands, more often than not the native peoples who lived in kinship with the wildlife she studied and wrote about. And they embraced her because she was genuine in her desire to understand those places, the spirit that kindled their unique beauty. She listened with reverence to the songs of the wildlife, giving voice to creatures that for many people are distant and silent. She interpreted their characters for us in the hope of creating empathy that might protect them from the dangers of the encroaching modern world.

Jean’s life was so vibrant, I think, because it was all about life, the joy of all that lives and breathes and squirms and squawks around us. Jean embraced all of the messiness of the world, savoring its incongruities, its tensions. She didn’t let discomfort stand in the way of discovery. She ventured into the world’s mysteries deeply in tune with her own sense of wonder, and she cultivated that wonder in others. It was infectious. You couldn’t be in Jean’s presence and not be amazed by what fascinated her. You couldn’t read her books, especially the ones so beautifully illustrated by her collaborator Wendell Minor, and not fall in love with the landscapes she depicted. She understood that she only had one life and she was keen on using the time she had to experience, to explore, to create, and to love.

When I was discovering writing, Jean cheered and fed my passion. When I didn’t know what to write, Jean said to me,”write what you know.”* But she may as well have said, “write what you love.” It is what she did, and oh, the places it took her. At the memorial last weekend, as I listened to so many people speak of how Jean had changed them — how she had pulled them out of depression or inspired them to adventure or taught them to listen to their inner child — I thought of the words of another writer, the poet Mary Oliver:

               Tell me, what is it you plan to do
               with your one wild and precious life?

So many of us forget, in our humdrum routines, that we only have one life. We let days full of potential go by without realizing just how rare they are. But Jean didn’t, and looking back, I believe that is her most important gift to us. By living her life to its wild and precious fullest, she leaves a light for the rest of us. And I feel sure that there’s no better way to honor her memory than to do the same.

For more:
Jean’s website
NYT obituary
Jean’s books

*To any of you who aspire to write, this remains the best advice I’ve ever been given on the subject. It’s certainly what keeps me at it.

Sometimes there’s a theme that just begs you to write about it. You ponder it, you scribble down a few thoughts, you procrastinate — but it just keeps following you. That’s how it’s been these past few weeks with rainbows. They arrive surreptitiously, by night in my inbox. They appear in the scatter of the spray from a drainpipe. They pop up at the ends of random links, cheerily persistent: “Hi, remember me? I’m that rainbow you were going to write about!” These rainbows act like they have important business.

And so they do. The other night I received a note from a reader named Lauren, with a story that both broke my heart and touched it deeply. Lauren wrote:

…I like to look at how others have used rainbows to brighten their world. I painted a rainbow chrysanthemum on the coffin of my baby boy when I buried him in July this year. Somehow, the colours have inspired me to keep going despite the tragedy that has divided our family.

I must say, first, that there can be nothing so horrible for a family as the loss of a child. Just reading Lauren’s few words filled me with empathy and sorrow. But Lauren’s story is not just about pain. It’s also about an act of beauty that is an expression of fierce love, and positivity that looks an awful lot like hope.

A rainbow is no compensation for the losses in our lives. Filmy and weightless, a rainbow replaces nothing, certainly not a beloved child. But strangely, the rainbow’s kind of joy is often the most able to reach us in those dark moments. Wordless, visceral, instantaneous: it has a direct line to our unconscious. We may feel incapable of laughing in a tragic moment, we may be ashamed of our impulses towards play, but we don’t begrudge ourselves a feeling of wonder at the sight of beauty. Rainbows, light, color, music — these are the things that break through to our dark places and lift us up. They make small spaces of lightness in a heavy heart, spaces for hope to take root. And it’s amazing (isn’t it?) that this kind of hope can be ignited just by color, by something so many people dismiss as “just decoration.” The surfaces of things have a deep kind of power.

In the fourteenth century, the German mystic Meister Eckhart wrote that there was a place within the soul that neither time, nor space, nor no created thing can touch. John O’Donohue, writer and philosopher, interpreted this to mean “that there is a place in you where you have never been wounded.” This place, I think, is our childlike heart, our awed and hopeful heart that dares to believe that life is worth living even in the midst of terrible pain. In depths of sadness, this place can seem inaccessible. It can feel as if it doesn’t even exist, that joy has been wrung out of our lives by struggle. In those moments, when we feel we cannot even find ourselves, it is good to remember that the way in, the way back, is beautifully simple.

So the rainbows were right to pursue me — their message is an important one. Beauty matters, especially in times of pain. If you know someone going through a difficult time, perhaps there is something beautiful you can do for them that will provide a spark of hope. And if it’s your difficult time, trust your own impulses towards beauty. Be kind to yourself. Take a walk somewhere open and wild, play music, or look at art. Seek out rainbows, or make your own.

I’m inspired by Lauren’s example, and feel privileged that she reached out to share her story. She continues to look forward, not forgetting her son Elijah (whose middle name is Rainbow) but remembering with a joyful mindset:

Elijah’s unfuneral in the park was a special day with rainbow flares coming up on the lens and rainbow face-painting. Now, two months after his death, I have yet to see a real rainbow. When I do, it will be special. In the meantime, I make my own rainbows and plan to decorate our new housebus with a rainbow of colour.

Image and story shared with openness and generosity by Lauren Fisher. On her site, you can learn more about her story, and the things she does to bring joy into her life and lives of her girls.

New York magazine’s Lady Gaga cover story this week again had me thinking about joy. She’s so playful with fashion and identity that I can’t help but feel a sense of delight at her style choices. In December I considered some of Gaga’s outfits and concluded that the bubble dress was the most joyful. So it gave me a little burst of joy to read that Lady Gaga seems to feel the same way:

Gaga was very taken with her new “bubble dress” at this point, and we talked about its unreality, the beauty of the imaginary. Everyone wanted that dress, but it wasn’t a dress at all—it was a bunch of plastic balls. “On my tour,” she declared, “I’m going to be in my bubble dress on a piano made of bubbles, singing about love and art and the future. I should like to make one person believe in that moment, and it would be worth every salt of a No. 1 record.” She dropped the accent for a moment now—the real girl, unartificed, was right underneath—and leaned in. “I can have hit records all day, but who fucking cares?” she explained. “A year from now, I could go away, and people might say, ‘Gosh, what ever happened to that girl who never wore pants?’ But how wonderfully memorable 30 years from now, when they say, ‘Do you remember Gaga and her bubbles?’ Because, for a minute, everybody in that room will forget every sad, painful thing in their lives, and they’ll just live in my bubble world.”

That’s joy, right? Something evanescent but memorable, something that stays with us in a way that is compelling, repeatable, and a little bit timeless. A little bit of the imaginary where it doesn’t quite belong.

Yes, the Georgia O’Keefe show at the Whitney was joyful, but this magenta-haired lady in the lobby stole the spotlight this weekend. Pink hair on a teenager is ho-hum, but the same shocking hue on a more mature subject is a delightful surprise.

I just hope when I get older I have similar confidence to not always act my age!