Chapter 1 Swallowed by the wilderness

why I decided to morph from lawyer to author

The wilderness swallowed me as soon as I finished trespassing on the edge of the farmer’s field. I never imagined that being consumed would be so satisfying.

The Maine air was so pure that I felt the alveoli in my lungs quiver with delight. The only sound that I heard was the reeds in the beaver flow down below whispering to me that I should keep moving. I saw the large stand of pine trees to my left bend toward me as if they were eavesdropping on my thoughts. They were softwood but they asked hard questions.

“What are you doing in the middle of the unspoiled forest in a state far from home?” said one. 

“What on this green earth caused you to retire early as an attorney to start life over as an author?” said another.

“Why do you bother to write?” said a third.

I glared back at the judgmental pines. They seemed almost reproachful. It was not easy to step away from a well-ordered though taxing life as a lawyer and enter the extremely unpredictable world of writing when you have no guarantee that you’ll produce something that anyone will want to read. 

Well they do tower over me, and I am a mere passerby in their kingdom, I thought. And maybe I was misjudging the intent of their questions—they could just be curious.

I decided that I should answer their queries, especially since my writing process often still starts on epidermis from their brethren. When you’re crafting a tale on another being’s skin, it had better be meaningful.

No immediate answers flickered from my tongue, and that would have been too snake-like. I was preoccupied with trying not to sink into unfathomably deep pockets of standing water as I navigated the beaver flow, hopping from one clump of soggy grass to another while holding onto saplings for balance. I was grateful to encounter the occasional moss-covered trunk of a fallen tree which allowed me to more securely cross stretches of marsh.

After about fifteen minutes of slowly picking through the swamp, I spotted the pond. Tall trees surrounded it on three sides, with the only open boundary being the beaver flow from which I approached.

My host, a Maine native, spotted a sizable lodge that beavers had built on the far side of the three-acre pond. “That’s a large one,” he said as he pointed at the dome-like structure composed of branches, mud and thistle that rose above the smooth dark water.

As if on cue, I saw a beaver skimming over the surface quite far away—near the lodge. “They’re generally quite shy, and prefer to stay by themselves,” he added.

“You seem like an expert.”

“Don’t know about that, but I’ve been around beavers my whole life. He’s gonna stay over there all day long and continue to work on fortifying the edge of that there dam you see over there on the left.”

The beaver appeared oblivious that we were talking about it. It knifed through the water with some brush in its mouth and headed toward the left edge and worked its head vigorously as it weaved its bounty into the retaining wall it had built at that side near the flowage.

“Well you seem like a beaver savant to me,” I said.

My host shook his head, dismissing my compliment. “It’s quite simple. It’s natural. That’s just what they do.”

It’s like writing, I thought.

I am not much different than a beaver, except that they do not lose their hair as they age. They build their lodges and dams to maintain their habitat, store their food, and protect themselves from predators. I do all the same things, but also construct stories built with odd clumps of words just because it feels natural.

Stay tuned for the next chapter in this story in two weeks