I became Wild on the Way to Solla Sollew

When thinking of stories with which I associate wilderness, I find it pleasing that a Dr Seuss novel floats to the surface of my mind. Pleasing because it is quite an offbeat example of wilderness and adventure storytelling. Maybe the tale structure of the novel is relatively classic, but the Seussian illustrations and unmistakeable rhythm make it original. Our rather stressed-out fuzzy yellow beady-eyed creature-hero sets off to find a better life in unknown lands. He leaves his home in the Valley of Vung and encounters many peculiar and creepy creatures along his journey, in search of Solla Sollew, where they never have troubles, at least, very few.

The creature-hero (what name can you give to these Seuss animal-people?!) is driven by the hope of finding a better place to make a life, and in doing so undergoes an epic journey through fantastical landscapes. This notion of seeking a new place to call home, or reaching a promised land, is what creates so many captivating stories, real and across the arts. In Solla Sollew, as in so many other tales, it seems that two lessons are learned; the destination you reach can turn out to be different to your expectations, and the journey itself is your teacher.

This story is all about wilderness for me. The wilderness is twofold; in the experiences and in the environments. In the first instance, the key is that the creature-hero has encounters which are beyond his control. He is attacked for example by other creatures from concealment, and initially chooses flight as his defence. In nature, quick response is the difference between living and dying. The combative instinct buried in us comes to the fore as we try and regain control of a situation and protect ourselves. I think this discovery and utilisation, even refinement of this protective instinct is so notable in Solla Sollew. The hero is hurt physically, emotionally, suffers from exhaustion, lack of comforts, confusion, entrapment, and disappointment. The response from the hero to his surroundings varies with each page and new challenge, whisking the reader along with him. After he eventually reaches the mystical wondrous paradise that is Solla Sollew, where they never have troubles (at least, very few), he finds the door to the city is barred by a mischievous creature in the lock. He can either choose to go on seeking, or choose to take his newly gained wisdom and return to the Valley of Vung.

In the second instance, the wild is represented in new lands previously beyond the borders of the hero’s and the reader’s imaginations. The incredible Seussian illustrations take us from bare rocky deserts to claustrophobic tunnel shafts, to exposed haunted peaks and glorious shimmering cities. The landscapes are so skilfully represented that a reader has enough to go on to imagine the lie of the land, but can fill in those blank white backgrounds with the wild lands from their own minds:

Figure 1: There seems to be one path, and it looks long, and lonely. From I Had Trouble In Getting to Solla Sollew, by Dr Seuss (1965)

The illustration which has really stayed with me over the years is the tunnel shaft, with the multitude of creatures in different forms all rushing through. The cacophony of noise and work and the frightening darkness and sensation of being swept along and completely out of control just leapt off the page and grabbed me as a child. I think the effect is amplified by the fresh air and peace and serene, glorious beauty one imagines the hero feels when, on the next page, he comes out of the tunnel into the flowered landscape by the river. There is a sensation of complete relief, which comes from the change in environment. The illustration isn’t on this page – find it in the book!

Eventually, after the promise of a land without troubles comes to nothing, the hero adopts a wilder nature himself. The obstacles we so often encounter in Nature can become guidance when viewed differently. He absorbs the strengths of his foes and turns it upon them with that new-found combative instinct. I have read that the book is about, rather simply, facing up to your troubles. But to me, that doesn’t count the extraordinary richness and influence of the journey through places that were previously unknown. Through experience and failure, it is possible to learn how to behave in different environments. Wilderness can teach us this in a way civilisation and control cannot.

Had he journeyed differently, he would have found another solution perhaps, another ending. But he becomes wild in the end. He takes the fearsomeness, the decisiveness and the self-reliance of wild creatures home with him. Seuss gives his creature-hero inner peace when he is able to decide to give his troubles ‘troubles with me!’

To make a huge conceptual leap from Solla Sollew, I could say that there is a suggestion in the book that pleasure in self-determination and self-reliance is coupled with experiencing and embracing wilderness. It is why in real life we secretly suspect that those wild creatures on the tundra, the moor, the wind – they are happy. They have found it. Because how could you be so completely in what you are, so much a part of your environment, and not be completely at peace, in being wild?

That is another big think for other posts!

Figure 2: Nature is on a big scale, and there are many obstacles. From IHTIGTSS by Dr Seuss, (1965)

  Figure 3: Uh-oh! From IHTIGTSS by Dr Seuss, (1965)

Fear and Mount Beauty

I write this reflecting on the way in which as a student I understand and learn through components, as I am currently studying natural science. And yet so much of my cultural experience determines my scientific understanding, and therefore the same phenomena is experienced differently by every other person, subject to their own powerful feelings and conditioned responses.

One particular emotion makes me think about this with regards to forests, and that is fear. From my limited experience and perspective, part of human tendency to suppress nature; to use and dominate it; cultivate it, is riddled with fear and apprehension of its exact nature to be uncontrollable and wild. Even if we cut and thin, plant and nourish and shape the wood, the experience of being in there, among large living things which conceal, create darkness and bar our way, in turn cultivates a little fear in our cores. This is the wilderness within ourselves - we can try to master it but it is very difficult. It can spring surprisingly, and it has a powerful effect. It is wilderness against nature. An ongoing part of our relationship with woods and forest as humans is fear.

Last year, I was in the Alpine town of Mount Beauty, a small village in the state of Victoria, south-eastern Australia. It is a rural town, built on the Kiewa hydroelectricity scheme in the forties, and now home to tourists and adventure seekers as well as farmers and retirees. Truly nestled in the shoulders of the Bogong Alps, on the hill road up to Falls Creek mountain resort, you are surrounded by gum tree forest. Facing north-west, you look out over the valley floor and see rural splendour; blue smoke hanging over forested hillsides, tilled land on the flat, and homes and farmsteads calmly being. Behind you to the south-east, your gaze ascends through the gums and acacias to snow-tipped hill shoulders.

While taking in the visual satisfaction was splendid, it was the combination of senses on the walk which I cannot forget. I was alone. I came off the road and followed some of the paths up through the bush. I was never off a path, never more than a mile from the road, and often had at least a 120 degree angle view of the rest of the valley at my back. Yet for most of the time I was walking, apprehension was developing in my gut. My own unusual quiet allowed for the noise of the bush to sink in. I began to feel my nerves switching on when I realised I was out of sight of anybody else, concealed by huge gums and paper barks. I was meandering through the trees and bushes, and in turn they were swallowing me. I paid attention to the movement and repeated appearances of white butterflies along the path, and looked nervously up and through the trees. My self possession ebbed slightly as I noticed the crushed and flattened plants where roos had crashed through the bush, exactly wherever they wanted to go. My environment was not within my control, and not even within my ability to fully anticipate. Therefore my level of fear was rising.

My friend told me of her time in Nigeria, and described a time where she made to go out of the compound where she was staying for a wander at the edge of the woods nearby. Her hosts told her explicitly, 'no'. No one goes there. You stay at the compound. It is inexplicable to have a desire to go to the woods. What was the reasoning for this? Witches. There are witches that live in the forest. This was the common belief of the entire community, impressed upon all its members. Occasionally the forest-dwelling people were spotted, and sometimes arrested for witchcraft. It seems entirely appropriate for people of many cultures that witches live in forests; by association with each other, both witches and forests are to be feared. Both can have unpredictable and undesirable effects on a person.

The sanctuary of the Australian road and of the Nigerian compound illustrate this battle of senses in our relationship with forests. The often-referenced fight to control fear is reflected by our fight to dominate forest and nature.

As I write this post and log on to Twitter, by strange coincidence, Paulo Coelho has just tweeted "The fact that the forest is silent doesn't mean it is safe." I'm not certain about the silence of forests but I'm certain they shouldn't be safe.

Peering into the wood

Peering into the wood
Stillness, and light

And murk. Was that?

Movement.

Green browns, and colour darkens

The furthest trunks blur, or flicker, or something

Reality, the known, the near
Anchors the thought

But like shadows in the wood

On the edge of sight
Are stories

Landscape Handshake

     An engaging scene occurred on a recent episode of QI, which made me think about landscapes. Each person around the panel turned to the person on their right and shook hands with them, telling them somebody famous whom they had previously shaken the hand of. So one might say "David Beckham" or "Ian McKellen", the idea being that, somehow, the glory and reverence attributed to that handshake was passed on to the current shaker. In that way, people on the panel felt a connection with somebody in whom their lives they had never met, or even been in close proximity to, or who had perhaps died before they were born.

 In a similar way, our landscapes connect us to creatures and times of a distance greater than we could ever otherwise bridge. Landscape is the handshake to the cultures and wildernesses of the past, and forward to the unknown. We mould a little of it now, by step or sow, but that same little may also have been moulded by Mayans, or giant reptiles, or prehistoric fish swimming prehistoric streams.

 I recently heard a story of a road trip through the southern states. A comically nondescript sign on the long road said "DINO TRAX". The trippers took the turn, anticipating little. And in the dusty, sun baked ancient land, manned by indigenous peoples, huge Tyrannosaurus claw-prints punctuated the terrain. Immovable. From another age. And as clear as the visitors walking all over them, their own miniscule imprints in the dust serving to strengthen the wonder at the colossal being there before. The deliberate Indians, explaining the history of the region, offset the curiosity of the episode. One land-tied culture explaining another, several million years later, on a bit of mineral just the same; maybe a little drier. How naturally weird. 

 This landscape handshake is perhaps also demonstrated by the fossil towns in Eastern Morocco. The tourist (you, or me) is dropped by in-league bus drivers to their preferred fossil emporium. Polished ammonites abound; made into bowls, necklaces, tables - striking, functional and another curious juxtaposition. Remnants of ancient life shaped into things I can wear around my neck in this century, warming them up to life-temperature with the heat coming from my chest. 

 Then you step outside into the bright yellow light and black shadows. You casually look at the tools and machinery used for carving, shaping and polishing the treasures from the rocks in the Atlas and Anti-Atlas. And behind you, leant up against the wall, is it - the showstopper.

 A gigantic slab with trilobites immobilised forever in its rigid lattice, but looking as if they are swarming all over the rock, just as they were, two hundred and fifty million years ago. The Muslim fossil emporium owner steps out with a bottle of water, and he shakes it out over the rock to make the things glisten. The tourist looks up and out across the old dry landscape to the distant mountain slopes... thoughts swarming now too.

 Someone might walk for several hours through a national park or reserve or even a wilderness, and reach a notable feature. It could be a tall and looming granite pinnacle, with scratches. It could be a pile of dry dusty gravel. It could be a rough circle of old tree stumps. It could be a grey cliff-top seat, worn smooth with sitting. They are intrinsic to the landscape and they are the messages left in it ... Hi! We were here once too!