It is an intriguing
prospect. John Daniel secludes himself in a cabin in the wilderness along the Rogue River in western Oregon. The mountain pass will close up with snow behind him, and from November 20 until April 1 he will be left to his own resources.
Why would a man do this? Well, for one thing, John Daniel is a poet. For another, he wants to use the solitude to write about his father; the material hasn't been coming together for him, and perhaps in the quiet of the Rogue River winter, he will see his father more clearly. And Daniel wanted to meditate, to go deeper into himself.
That's 134 days of aloneness. Daniel had promised his patient and loving and tolerant wife Marilyn that he would call once a week and leave a brief message on the answering machine, to assure her that he was okay. But he didn't want to speak to her, nor to anyone else. He wanted to maintain his deep solitude. He packed in a lot of food to get him through the winter, and he tended a winter garden to augment his supplies - and harvested at least what the turkey and the other critters didn't take. He took some fish from the river. He had a supply of wood to chop and split for the cabin's stove. He had the constant sound of the Rogue itself, behind the songs in his head. He had the comfort of the cabin. A French Provincial formica table and the "Route 66 Distinguished Chair in Creative Writing." A big pad of paper. A sharp pencil. Himself.
This is an interesting and intriguing experiment, and Daniel largely succeeds in what he set out to do. He was without any contact with the outside, no radio, no TV, no incoming phone calls. He maintained his solitude, though he admits he had a constant hit parade of songs playing unbidden in his head. He had the mornings for meditation, the afternoons for chopping wood and fishing and such. He had the nights for writing.
And write he did. He scratched out a total of 274 penciled pages over the winter. The book about his father got wound up in the journal of his experience there along the Rogue River. Rogue River Journal: A Winter Alone* is one part Franz Daniel, John's father; one part experiment in solitude; and one part memoir and self-assessment. John Daniel's own story becomes necessarily entwined with his father's, and also braided into the journal of his experiences in his solitude.
Franz Daniel was a union organizer of some reputation, one of the tough guys who could withstand pistol-whippings by thugs. Yet he was also a tough father and an alcoholic husband. By the end of his life, Franz was separated from his wife, John's mother, living in Missouri with three of his sisters, attending AA meetings a couple of times a week, taking a leading role in the local Unitarian congregation, and serving on the local utility board. Part of what Franz's son needed to explain to himself was how it came to this. That's what one thread of the book does.
The second thread - the report on his experiment in solitude - is brisk and consistently interesting. Daniel's days found their own pace. Though he thought perhaps the winter of solitude might make him a morning writer, that didn't happen and he didn't force it - he continued putting pencil to paper at night. You might think all the solitude would invite undue navel-gazing, and that we'd hear too much about what was going on inside the author's head and not enough about what was going on beyond the cabin walls - fortunately, Daniel held himself in check.
In coming to understand his father, Daniel had to come to understand himself in relation to his father. And that is the third strand of the book, an exploration of the John Daniel who knew his father. And it is in this area that I found the book's only weakness. Like many of us who enjoyed our time in the 1960s, John Daniel enjoyed his. Perhaps overmuch. He used (misused) some hard drugs seriously. And then his discussion of drug use and his attempt at justification sound a little shrill to me. "Let go of it, John, and go on," I want to say. Yet in the sweep of the book, this is a minor flaw.
I am envious of Daniel's winter of solitude, truly envious. What a remarkable experiment. I come away from the Rogue River Journal wanting to tramp myself into a similar experiment. And that's a good measure of a book, isn't it - does it take you someplace you would never have thought to go?
Let me end here by allowing John Daniel the last word, for he earns it. This passage is also the last paragraph of the book, pulling everything together for us, if we let it:
Our lives have flowed from exploding stars, from tides of time and gravity beyond our ken. Nothing in Nature can tell us our story, can explain why today some die while others live on, or why we die at all, or why we live. Never asking or choosing, creating itself out of snow and rain, the river gathers all that touches it and finds its way. In surging falls and deep green pools, in chutes and riffles and silent swirls, it bears us on through winding passages of grace and fury, until once, in a stab of sun on streaming water, the entire aching beauty of being comes clear. And the river - the good, green, terrible river - flows on.
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* John Daniel, Rogue River Journal: A Winter Alone. Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005; paperback, 2006, $16.00. More information: www.shoemakerhoard.com .
Wonderful appreciation, Tom - I'm a little envious too, and you've made me want to read John's book, not least of which for his struggles in writing about his father. Have you seriously thought of trying a long period of solitude yourself?
Posted by: beth | November 06, 2006 at 07:05 PM