EXPLORING THE BOUNDARIES
THE COLD
The year is 1882. A crew of four hardy men travels forty miles north from the white settlement of Grand Rapids to complete one of the first land surveys of Minnesota’s north woods before the onslaught of winter. Equipped with canvas tents and staples—pork, beans, flour, and dried apples—the crew members camp for a month among towering virgin white and red pine, surrounded by desolate swampland, while snow and cold wind blow through the November air.
For reasons unknown—was it the severe cold? the blinding snow?—the crew makes a huge mistake in its mapping of the six-square-mile territory between Moose and Coddington Lakes, plotting nearby Coddington to be a half mile farther northwest than it actually is. The result is that 144 acres of virgin pine are recorded on maps and in history as being underwater and, thus, this area is left unlogged by the lumberjacks who come and harvest the timber of the northern forests. For years, the “Lost Forty” remains a blank on every map and atlas.
The year is 1988. One week in January, temperatures drop below zero for several days. Batteries freeze; garages and gas stations fill with stranded vehicles. Wrapped in a down parka, I walk the mile to work in my Sorrels, fierce wind and snow blowing into my face. Moisture freezes under my nostrils as I breathe, and I wrap my long wool scarf more tightly around my head. I am finalizing efforts in court to move my three children from Minnesota to California legally after a divorce, and I imagine the weather conspiring against me. Tired of winter, I long for a kinder environment and for spring.
DESERT
The year is 1949. Paul Bowles publishes his novel The Sheltering, a harrowing account of a disenchanted husband and wife who set out to the Sahara, trying to escape the boredom and isolation of their synthetic lives back in New York. In a culture where they have no place, deceived by impulses that lead them in separate directions, they drift further apart and deeper into the landscape of the desert. The third and final section of the book starts with an epigraph from Kafka:
