The Wildernesses

Returning home from Dr. Doug Thorpe's reading of his recent book, Raptures of the Deep, his words about wilderness haunt me. As someone commented on his lack of "urban oases" in this book full of outdoor ruminating, I felt rather smug. I, of course, appreciate the wilderness. It is home for me, daughter of island, mountain, valley, with no fear of heights because no one told me about the terror of falling from those dizzy heights, only the ecstacy of seeing the ocean from this pass or that summit, just over there. I have spent many pieces of summer on this wilderness, chasing down the natural world, as I try to remember its stars and smells and quiet through the dripping pre-dawns of winter in the city. Oh yes, I know this wilderness, this apartness of which Dr. Thorpe writes so well.

But no, says the professor softly. Though nature provides a metaphor for wilderness, his wilderness is more and even other than simply exisiting outside. "It is your edge," Thorpe said, bobbing his head emphatically. "Your place of vulnerability."

I think of my edges. Of the cities where I wandered alone. Of the crowds of high school and college freshmen in which I have been lost, shorter and quieter than the rest. And then, another wilderness, I remember the quiet classroom I shut at 3:15 this afternoon, the classroom that will tomorrow fill with 160 ninth graders.

A room full of strangers: this is my wilderness, my edge. Oh, they will be friendly strangers, mostly, eager to please and be pleased. They are at their edges, too, these new high school students. They have left behind places they knew--perhaps precious and perhaps painful--places in which they were known. As I leave the comfort of a summer with people who know me, people with whom I no longer worry about impressions, I am comforted to know that we enter this wilderness together, my students and I. Let it be as nourishing, as challenging, as beautiful, as the wild places I leave behind.