Photo Walk

After 2 hard days of skiing, I set out for the river near my family's cabin in Packwood, Washington, legs tired and fingers numb. Just a minute or so walk away from our haven in the woods, the trees open up to reveal a vast riverbed. Tall trees conquered by the rushing floods of the Cowlitz in the spring pepper the riverbank, gnarled roots exposed to the frigid winds. All of these photos likely look the same to many of you, shot after shot of brown and dark green woods with a light dusting of snow. But, in fact, each of these are something entirely different to me. Maybe because I am hyper aware of my surrounding and any change in them, but more likely because of the many years I have spent exploring these woods and riverbeds with my brothers.

I came across a little clearing that Seth and I dubbed "Walk Like an Indian Campground." When we were little, my brothers always instructed me to "walk like an Indian" during our voyages through the moss-covered groves. Not to make a noise, step on a twig, brush up against a leaf. And I, the recalcitrant girl that I was (and am), always questioned them. Whats the point of exploring, adventuring, living if I don't leave my mark behind, to be remembered by those to come? I would stomp through the woods, twigs breaking helplessly under my velcro skechers. But I realized something the other day. This world is more beautiful than anything I could ever hope to leave behind. In fact, I can't picture myself making a single improvement to the wild beauty and freedom of this place. I don't want to leave my mark on this wood, I want to respect and enjoy it without corrupting one of the few things that seems, well, natural in my life. Its like climbing mountains, or skiing a really hard line--you don't "conquer" the mountain (a mentality that I have set out with more than once). Rather, I have respect for the mountain's danger, strength, and grandeur, and hope and pray that it respects my attempts to enjoy that grandeur in the best waysI know how.

Honestly, people kind of suck sometimes. Let's compare: the Miller Lite can nestled in the well of a grand old tree, blue and silver aluminum adding nicely to the rich pallette of green and brown, or the gigantic beaver dam, an indication of the intelligence, strength, determination, and organization in nature. Which would you rather leave behind? I don't want to touch these woods. I want to respect their wildness, I want to enjoy their beauty, I want to walk like an Indian.

Don't get me wrong--I've always been the type of girl who wants to be remembered, to make her mark on the world. But not here, not in the woods, not someplace thats already perfect. No, the girl in the woods, the girl who doeasn't wear makeup, has a compulsive need to keep up with the boys, plays in the dirt, skins her knees, and is an awesome shot with a slingshot, she doesn't leave a mark. The girl in the city, the girl in heels, with an insatiable appetite for fashion magazines, who knows way too much about pop culture, and uses more than 5 adjectives to order her coffee--she won't hesitate to leave a mark on those city streets, because that home of hers isn't perfect, and she won't rest until she's done all she can to make it just as wonderful, wild, free, lovely, perfect as the woods she grew up in.

I'm scared. I'm scared of leaving these woods behind. I don't want to lose the girl in the woods. I don't want to lose my passion for the outdoors, the inexplicable power a beautiful sunset at the cove has to clear my head, the feeling of flying through the trees, skis buried in knee-deep powder, and simply letting go. these pictures look cold, unwelcoming. Some of them seem as if they were taken in black and white, the colors are so

bleak. But these woods, this riverbed, is welcoming, comforting, and warm. Memories flood my head--getting trapped in a whirlpool at the base of a tree in a yellow rubber raft, paddling and laughing and screaming for dear life, the bottom of that yellow raft falling out on us while lazily floating along, a brother's trick that left me standing barefoot in a pile of elk pellets, dams built, towers knocked down, frigid swims, hot days, burying ourselves in mud, finding pools so beautiful we pretended that we were in Lord of the Rings. My life has been idyllic thus far, so much that it scares me sometimes. I'm afraid of losing the joy, passion, and vibrancy of my childhood when I face the real world. And frankly, the idea of living in a concrete jungle freaks me out a little bit. Sometimes I just want to escape and live in a little cabin in a ski town and play outside my entire life. But I know that I have so much more potential, and I would kick myself for eternity if I wasted the gifts I have been blessed with because I am afraid of going out of my comfort zone, afraid of being away from sunsets, mountains, snow, rain, trees, rivers, oceans. I have to trust that God is just as present in the city sidewalks as he is in the wide open sky, and that I can find myself just as well in the library of a university as I can atop a mountain. Just like jumping off a cliff, taking a breath and skiing off that ridge, running for miles--I have to let go. But before I do, just one more look at the riverbank, dusted in snow.

Total and Prose Meaning of "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot

“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”

J. Alfred Prufrock lives inside his head. His fantasies throughout the poem deviate further away from reality as the poem goes on, beginning with the idea that he might simply interact with the women, then the daydream of a long relationship with one of the women, and finally a scene involving him swimming with the mermaids. With the final stanza, Prufrock reveals the gravity of these daydreams. The idea that he is fully submerged in “the chambers of the sea” heightens the feeling of being trapped inside his head. However, Prufrock does not paint this scene as an unpleasant one. In fact, his description of the mermaids is beautiful and peaceful—“sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown.” Thus, he acknowledges his separation from the real world and admits that his seclusion isn’t an unwanted one. In the final, haunting line, Prufrock is forced to face the contrast between his situation and reality, and he “dies,” for Prufrock lives only in his dreams and fantasies, and, when he is faced with reality, he dies (figuratively, that is). When he is shocked out of his contented dream, the force of the water—the realization of the isolation, stagnancy, and depression of his uneventful life—crushes him.

Now, I’ve gotten a bit ahead of myself. Prufrock comes to this conclusion after just over 130 lines of internal monologue, written in a stream-of-consciousness style that make this insecure man even more vulnerable and transparent than he already is. As I said, he slowly drifts away from reality. He begins by asking an ambiguous other character (interpreted in this analysis as himself) to walk around a decrepit city, described with raw, even sexual imagery. (The evening is “spread out across the sky/like a patient etherized upon a table,” “restless nights” are spent in “cheap hotels,” and streets are like arguments with “insidious intent.”) At the end of the stanza, he says “Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”/Let us go and make our visit.” In this opening stanza, he appears to have a purpose (to visit the women), seems likely to fulfill that purpose (telling himself not to ask questions, but to simply act), and also seems to have a full grasp on reality (through his descriptions of highly tangible things). His imagery and diction is characteristic of a somewhat despondent, sexually inclined, normal man. In the next stanza, he compares the “yellow fog” in the city to a cat, rubbing itself against the buildings, “lick[ing] its tongue on the corners of the evening,” “lingering” in stagnant pools, and letting itself be dirtied by soot. While, yes, the metaphor is between the fog and the cat, the cat’s actions in fact mirror those of Prufrock. He wallows in the muck of his surroundings, he revels in the grimy puddles and smudged windowpanes, and then, with full understanding of his depressing surroundings, turns his back and falls asleep, to fester in his own passivity.

While I have yet to discuss the bulk of the poem, these first and last stanzas speak the most of Prufrock’s character and mental state. The middle stanzas are all very similar, all rebounding back to his passivity and dreaminess. This idea of him talking himself in a circle is reinforced by his repetition of the sentence “In the room the women come and go/Talking of Michelangelo.” He questions himself (against his own wishes, ironically) repeatedly as well, questions such as “Do I dare?” “How do I presume?” “Would it have been worth it?” that prove his uncertainty and insecurity. This insecurity is furthered with his awareness of his physical imperfections that hold him back from action as well. When he plans to triumphantly “descend the stair” he remembers his appearance, certain that the women will say “How his hair is growing thin!” and “But how his arms and legs are thin!” However, it is not only his insecurity that holds Prufrock captive to his own inactivity. He uses violent, gruesome imagery to depict his society’s reaction to him, saying they will pin him “sprawling…wriggling on the wall” and that his head will be “brought in on a platter.” He fears the harsh judgment of society and believes that they have grest power over him, his happiness, and his life. He even admits that he has “seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid.” On a literal level, he is afraid of death, but on a figurative (and perhaps more relevant) level, he is afraid of rejection, of social death.

Towards the end of his monologue, he says “I grow old… I grow old…” In this repeated phrase, the meaning of this poem comes clear. Life and time rushes by as he sits back and thinks, falling further and further away from reality, action, relationships, and experience. He is like the “lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows”—he only observes the world, never engages in it. In his last, desperate attempt to find life in his life, by eating peaches and rolling his trousers up, fantasy elements (the mermaids) find their way in, and the fact that he has no true, real escape from his musings becomes clear. If life is spent in watching, thinking, and musing, analyzing and questioning, life is not life at all. His insecurity and fear bind him like the chains of paralysis, locking him inside his own mind, never to experience, well, anything tangible at all.