David J. Backes's Blog: The Singing Wilderness

November is my least favorite month. Yes, I love Thanksgiving; it's my favorite holiday. But I judge months mostly by their weather, and here, a short walk from the western shore of Lake Michigan, November is a lousy month. The days increasingly become overcast, and temperatures drop into the 40s and 30s, so that when the rains come, we get a brutal damp cold.  
When the cold rains pour out of the dreary skies I long for the temperature to drop into the 20s or lower. I'll take a good dry freezing snap any day. Let the rain turn to snow and the snow turn to dry crystals instead of the wet heavy stuff we so often get during winter's shoulder seasons. Besides, bitter cold usually comes with sunshine.
That said, I will go out on a limb and rank the months from my favorite down to the bottom. Down to November. Your mileage may vary, of course, and I probably rank them a bit different today than I did forty years ago: the weather and I have both changed. 
Anyway, here we go:
1. October is the best month. Hands down. It always has been, in my book. High temps run from, oh, upper 50s to low 70s--my favorite temperature range. The days are often sunny, the leaves turn their most spectacular colors, and the earthy scent of decaying leaves in the woods is wonderful.
2. September. The first half of the month is likely hotter than I'd prefer, but the second half is usually great, and its proximity to October probably boosts its reputation in my list.
3. August. Frankly, August is too hot, and so I'm surprised by putting it in this slot. I guess it shows that factors other than weather can significantly affect my ranking. In this case I suspect it's memories: August has so often been a time for family trips, not only as a child but as a parent, too, seeing the world through the eyes of my children. It's also the month my wife and I were married. And since nearly my entire life has been lived by the calendar of the school year, August has a certain sentimental value: a new year is about to begin.
4. May. Next to Lake Michigan it takes a long time for spring to really arrive. Get away from the lake and it clearly begins in April, but for us spring comes in fits and starts: we all have fits until it starts. And it usually doesn't do much more than tease us until May. The month still has its downside, as we remain jealous of those to our west who are warming up much more than we are. But spring is finally here. We can say it out loud. Besides, it is a month of birthdays: mine, my brother's, two of my children, and two of my grandchildren. My parents also were married in May. A cake month.
5. December. Surprised? I love Christmas. And I love when the weather turns cold enough to put an end to those miserable cold downpours of the bleakest month I shall not name in this paragraph. And I love the first snow! I love it even more now that my wife and I have given up shoveling and pay others to do it. I can just enjoy it once again, like I did as a little child.
6. January. Good thing I live in the North, huh? We get our most bitter cold in January and early February, and one of my favorite things is to take a walk crunching through the snow in the park and down to the beach on a bright blue frigid morning. When you combine that with the calendar, January seems like a month of clear thought and new beginnings.
7. April. Maybe it is the cruelest month for us by the lake, because it constantly teases us with thoughts of spring only to slam us with a snowstorm. But it also is the month when the first wildflowers begin to appear, and so it is a month of hope.
8. June. Spring is arguing with summer, so there are quite a few pleasant days but also stormy ones. In many ways June is the real mystery month here: it doesn't have a consistent personality. It often has pleasant temps, but mosquitoes make you pay for it.
9. July. Hot. Too hot. When I was younger I loved that; fifteen years ago I probably would have ranked July ahead of December. But I can't take heat like that very well anymore. It can literally make me ill. So I am glad when the shade is cool enough to sit out and read, or when my wife and I can take an evening walk, but too often the heat is limiting these days.
10. February. Winter has lost its appeal after two months, and spring seems a world away. But I like groundhog day!
11. March. This month has weather that is similar to November: dreary, damp and cold. But it's reputation is better because spring is on its way. Eventually. Somebody saw it somewhere.
12. November. I need not ever mention it again. But I probably will.

 This morning my publisher gave me sad news. As with so many independent publishers, the economics have proven impossible despite a valiant effort over the past decade. It's just not sustainable for him, so he's giving up on this dream and will have to start anew with something else.

For me it's more of a dream deferred. I'm a published author with six books behind me, but Listening Point will be my first novel, if I can find a publisher. Writing fiction has been so much fun, and I was really looking forward to seeing it in print next June. Now, instead, I will have to start searching all over again. And this time it is likely to be much harder.

Some independent publishers don't require authors to have agents, but the vast majority of books published in the U.S. are under imprints of just five major publishers. Soon to be four, if the courts allow one of the five to take over one of the others. And they require agents.

I have to admit, I have had such an easy time as an author compared to most. All my manuscripts have been accepted, and all on my first or second try. Sigurd Olson would be shocked and envious! But I've always had a good idea of which publisher would be perfect for my topic and manuscript. I had that initially with my first novel, too, but now I just don't know.

The reality is rough: just one in a thousand fiction manuscripts finds a publisher. Since I already had one for this manuscript, I suspect my odds are better, but getting past the initial gatekeeper to even have a chance will be the hard part. Agents and editors are absolutely swamped by proposals and manuscripts. It's even worse than usual now because during the pandemic a lot of editors have quit their high-stress jobs. Other editors have had to add to their own workloads the contracted book manuscripts left by the departing editors, so they have all the reason in the world to reject quickly any new project that comes to their attention. If your proposal survives all of that and gets a contract, it typically takes two or three years for it to make its way to publication. So, instead of seeing my novel in 2023, the best-case scenario is probably 2025.

But that's getting ahead of myself. I need to begin researching the publishing market and literary agents in particular. They each advertise whether they are accepting queries, and if so what genres they represent. Listening Point is not genre-specific, and could easily be misclassified in a way that works against me, so figuring out how to market the book in the right way to the right agent is key. It often takes authors more than a hundred attempts before they land an agent, if they ever do land one. So I'm anticipating a long process that will require a lot of trial and error and not a little bit of luck. Fingers crossed. 

This has been our best fall in years. October has been glorious. The colors peaked about a week ago, before I started this blog, but I shared a few photos and reels on my Instagram and Facebook accounts. The bright red maple leaves have mostly fallen since then. The sugar maples, birches and aspen still flash their yellows when struck by the filtered rays of the autumn sun, but their leaves have been falling, and those that remain are darkening; the once-spectacular sight now appears a little threadbare.

I love the subtle colors of late fall. But of all of them, I especially love what happens to the beech trees. Their yellows of early fall have turned to a beautiful smoky orange. I spent an hour or so with them this afternoon, taking in the earthy scent of decaying leaves, the sound of them crunching under my feet, and the touching beauty of beeches as they prepare for winter.

What is "the singing wilderness"? It refers to several different things, all at once.

It is the title of a 1956 book of nature essays by Sigurd F. Olson that became a bestseller and launched his career as an author.

It will be the title of the third book in a series of novels I'm writing, the first of which, Listening Point, will be published in June 2023 by Riverfeet Press.

It also can stand as the overarching name for that series. And that's because "the singing wilderness" points to a way of seeing and a way of being that is sorely needed in these troubled times.

Sigurd Olson used to tell me that no two people see things the same way. To write, then, is to take something that might be quite familiar, and express it through the writer's unique blend of experience, creativity and insight. That's what I hope to do here, as well as in my books. I'm taking his "singing wilderness" way of life and expressing it for today, based on my life experiences, creativity and insight.

I'm Sigurd's biographer. I'm his estate's literary representative. I want to honor his memory as much as I want to express my own twist on the "singing wilderness" way. But more than that, I want to help you recover the truth of our oneness with nature. To help you discover the power of wonder. To encourage you to spend time in silence and solitude, somewhere outdoors. I trust in what the experience will do for you. You will grow more aware. Feel more alive. You will find wholeness. You will know peace.

The singing wilderness way will help you begin to satisfy a hunger that no amount of material striving can suppress.  And if enough people discover this way and live it, our society may begin to break the chains of a way of life that in the long run threatens all life.

But first we need to get a sense of why Sigurd chose "Singing Wilderness" as the title of his first book, and as a simple way to express his entire worldview.

wilderness

To Sigurd, the “wilderness” part of the title highlighted the essential wildness at the heart of all reality. It included large wild expanses of land, but also much more. He wrote about locations in and around his small town of Ely, Minnesota, even his own backyard. As he said, "Some can find their wildernesses in tiny hidden corners where, through accident rather than design, man has saved just a breath of the primeval America." He continued:

I know of a glen in the heart of a great city park system, a tiny roaring canyon where many seeking solitude and beauty can find release. It is dark in there, and damp, and in the heat of the summer it is cool. Ferns and lichens and liverworts cling to the rocks, and there grow flowers that thrive only in the shadows where the air is charged with mist. The water swirls through this canyon as it has for thousands of years, and the sounds are the sounds of a land far removed from civilization.

A highway runs within a hundred yards and cars pass almost overhead, but the rocks and trees screen it from view and the only evidence of traffic is a vague hum that blends with the whisper of the wind and the music of rushing water. There, if a man wishes, he can regain in a swift moment the feeling of the wild, and steal, for a brief instant, respite from the noise and confusion of a big city. There, if he has perspective, he may recharge his soul.

 

singing

As for “singing,” to Sigurd it conveyed a sense of relationship that doesn't come easily to many. In our culture, descriptions of nature are dominated by the sense of sight and the picturesque. Sigurd's title expresses what his friend Sam Campbell described as “that elusive melody to whose rhythm all nature moves.” For Sigurd it also implied mystery and joy, the joy of connectedness.  And as he fleshed out his manuscript early in 1954, he wrote in his journal:

If each thing I write will somehow have this illumination, this glow, this transcendent beauty, the feeling of having touched the absolute, it will be enough. I can do this by bringing in somehow my feelings for the primeval, the origins of things…the sense of wonder, awe, oneness with all life and the universe itself, [and] the childlike quality, soon lost, of being part of that greater life.

THAT is the real spirit in which I use the “singing wilderness” concept as the title for this blog as well as the title of the third novel in the trilogy I am writing. It points to an awareness, a perspective, and a way of life. A way of seeing and being that is even more important now than it was when Alfred Knopf published Sigurd's book and it became a bestseller.

 I want to try blogging again and see if I can avoid the problems I have had in the past.

Actually, my first blog, which I called New Wood, lasted around five years. But it began to feel forced the final two of those. I felt like I had to post every day and accompany each post with a good cover photo. Finding the right photo was frequently harder than writing the actual post. 

In 2015 I tried again with a blog I called Gathering Runes. I was doing more with photography then, and chose a Wordpress theme that emphasized pictures. I had fun with the photography aspect, but found myself ending up in the same rut, only a little more artistic. So I stopped for a bit and then restarted with a news-themed Wordpress site I called The Earthkeeper. I wound up writing about too many things I wasn't passionate about, combined with the same issue of always seeking appropriate copyright-free cover photos.

Several years ago I tried a fourth time, using the same name I'm using now, only with a magazine-style Wordpress theme rather than a blog. I had fallen into the same trap yet again. It was closer to my heart in content, but still I had put too much pressure on myself to produce frequently, with that same old combination of article and interesting cover photo.

To make matters worse, I was getting back into book writing after years of being focused on other things. I had begun working on A Private Wilderness: The Journals of Sigurd F. Olson for the University of Minnesota Press, and brainstorming ideas for my first novel, Listening Point, which Riverfeet Press will publish next June. I couldn't justify putting so much time into a blog that was less important than the books. So I shut it down.

So why am I starting one up again, especially since I'm writing novels? I think the best answer is that sometimes I just feel like writing something different. I've never really written about writing, for example, and I'd like to try that. And I want a good way to jot down flashes of inspiration that come to me as I walk along the bluffs looking over Lake Michigan, or as I read a book, or in some other way. And I thought maybe a blog would give me that space as well as encouragement to get things down before I forget them.

So I'm back using the same Blogger space (Blogger is owned by Google) that I used when I created the New Wood Blog all those years ago. I hope to avoid the pitfalls of my first four attempts, all of which arose from my perfectionist tendencies and the underlying fear of failure or--worse--disapproval. I aim to studiously avoid perfectionism this time around. I will be perfect at it! ... Ummm ... I will allow myself to write posts without photos (unless I immediately have one or so in mind and at hand). I frequently will write simply as the words come to me, making for a more personal blog rather than a polished one. And I will allow myself to write posts of even just a sentence or two, if that's what comes to me in the moment.

All this, I hope, will make this fifth attempt at blogging a sustainable one. It can be a creative outlet for me. And if anyone finds anything valuable in any of my posts, then perhaps--as with my books--this blog can be a source of hope in these challenging times.

Listening Point: A Novel is on schedule and ready for pre-orders. You can earn a 10-percent discount by pre-ordering direct from Riverfeet Press. The book will be published in June 2023.

I first posted about the book in February, and you can find good background information there, but here again is the plot in a nutshell:

As the climate crisis fuels mass migration and social unrest in the 2060s, Andrew Hochevar, a young priest in northern Minnesota, has a mysterious, powerful encounter one hot August day at Sigurd Olson’s Listening Point. The experience upends his traditional understanding of God, the Church, and his own calling. It also propels him along a spiritual journey that brings healing to the sick, puts him at odds with his bishop, and threatens a growing movement of white nationalists.

It’s a fast-paced story about the importance of “listening with inward ears,” as Sigurd Olson put it. And now that Riverfeet Press has set up a page for the book, it is starting to seem real. I’m excited to see it go through the editorial process and final cover design process and get it into people’s hands!

Take a walk with me through part of my listening point. No narration, just the sounds around me and 33 minutes of 4K film.

I'm a writer, and I spend several hours most days writing/researching/planning what to write. I enjoy dabbling in music and photography, but until recently I would never have even thought of creating a YouTube channel.

The pandemic changed that, with a boost from aging legs and icy winters. About this time last year my wife and I bought a treadmill to use during winter days when it is too slippery or otherwise nasty to take decent walks in the neighborhood. I like to watch something while I'm walking on the treadmill, and I discovered there are tons of YouTube videos that are simply walks, shot from the perspective of the walker. No narration, just high quality (not always) video and the surrounding sounds. I have playlists that let me walk along in a variety of places around the world, from Egypt to China to Italy to the Americas. Some are shot in large cities, others in tourist attractions and others in beautiful natural areas. It makes exercise pass quickly, and also lets me see places I've never gone to as well as places I love.

It was following along in places I love that gave me an idea. Someday--a long time from now, I hope--I no longer will be able to walk around my neighborhood and the gorgeous park that borders it along the Lake Michigan shore. I have known this area my entire life. If age forces me to move elsewhere or makes it impossible to take the kinds of walks I can take right now, I will really miss the familiar sights and sounds of a lifetime.

So I decided to get a GoPro camera and start making my own walking videos. It took months to put that plan into action, as it involved not only getting the equipment but beginning to learn how to use it and having to buy and begin learning software to edit it, and I wasn't going to let all that get in the way of my writing. But by the start of November I was ready to try, and made my first video, a walk through my neighborhood. This one, through my favorite portion of Grant Park (just a short walk from home), is my second.

I see another potential use for these kinds of videos, too: perhaps they can be useful for people who are struggling with memory issues. Maybe being able to follow along on a walk through a place they have loved will have a positive impact.

I created my YouTube channel initially so that I could easily play my videos on the TV when I walk on the treadmill, or just for fun. But over the past month I've thought about possibly making other types of videos for the channel, too: short videos of parts of the park or neighborhood with some narration, for example, such as talking about the spring wildflowers, or memories associated with a particular spot. Perhaps I'd include short videos from other places, too. And perhaps videos where I talk about aspects of writing. We'll see. I'd be happy to hear suggestions!

If you enjoy the video, please click the "like" button and consider subscribing, too. Subscribing on YouTube simply means that when I post a new video it will show up among the recommendations when you open YouTube. The more people who subscribe, the more likely it will be that other people who are unaware of the channel will see one of these videos pop up on their list of recommendations.

I have a long way to go to learn how to do anything more complicated than the kind of video shown here, which requires almost no editing, so it may be a while before I put up other types of videos. But it is fun to try new, creative things!

A Private Wilderness: The Journals of Sigurd F. Olson is in production and on track for its June release. I have seen the proof, and am more excited than ever. Even though the proof was in pdf format, it made the book seem more real to me because I finally got to see the the whole design. It is going to be a beautiful book.

Sigurd’s journals, of course, are the heart of it, but I think a lot of people will be drawn to the content by way of the photos. There are 74 of them, if I remember correctly, spread throughout the book. That’s more than three times the number of photos used in my biography of Sigurd, A Wilderness Within. The photos aren’t just of Sigurd and his family. Many photos depict other people and scenes that fit with Sigurd’s nearby text. The vast majority have not appeared in books before. Only three of the photos of Sigurd, including the cover photo, were used in the biography.

I especially love how Kristian and the University of Minnesota Press designed the start of each chapter. If you open up the book, the first page of a chapter will be on the right. To the left you’ll see a gorgeous full-page photo.

I supplied several of the photos, but my editor, Kristian Tvedten, poured lots of time and love into searching digital archives and contacting individuals to assemble a truly great collection that presents what amounts to a photographic cultural history of Sigurd’s time and place. Remarkable.

Last week I already did my first interview about the book. It was a lot of fun. When it comes out next month I’ll share the link.

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A quiet war rages at Goodreads. I enlisted a couple of weeks ago, when I created my author’s account. Yesterday, I entered the fray.

The Goodreads War isn’t a controversial one. Pretty much everyone who enters is on the same side. That’s why it’s such a quiet war. The war is between döstädning and tsundoku: Swedish death cleaning and the stacks of books we own but have not (yet) read.

It’s not much of a fight.

HOW THE WAR WENT DOWN

Yesterday, I downloaded the app. Looking at my profile page I thought, “I’m an author. I should show that I actually read books too, and not just write them.” So I entered my first book. I can’t even remember which book received the honor, because suddenly the battlefield appeared and I was operating on adrenaline and pure reflex.

As soon as I entered a title, the Goodreads generals would present me with a list of similar titles for inspection. “Yes sir!” I would say, and my trigger finger would begin swiping left, looking for targets. When I’d find another book I’d read in that list, I would pull the trigger and enter the book into my profile page.

That would set off the generals, who would issue another order, which I would quickly obey.

The battle went on endlessly. My trigger finger got sore and I switched hands. Turns out I’m ambidextrous when it comes to books.

Three hours later–yes, you heard that right–I had picked off 224 books that I had read and remembered, without even looking at my bookshelves or opening my Kindle.

TEMPORARY TRUCE

Fortunately, dinnertime brought a temporary truce. And I didn’t enter more books later, either. I figured I had put in enough time to at least earn some respect as a private in the Goodreads War. But there still was work to do before bed: I had to prepare digital shelves for all those books!

The Goodreads generals know how to keep the war going. As I worked my itchy trigger finger, swiping left, I discovered books I had not heard of that sounded really good. I added eleven of them to my “want to read” list, and I could have added far more. The Swedish death cleaners howled in horror.

Last night, as I lay in bed, I knew that the war would never be a close one. I have been known at times to donate or sell books from my collection, but I keep getting new ones to fill those spaces, and more. In the battlefield of the Goodreads War I have decisively put down any rebellious Swedish death cleaning of my bookshelves, real and digital. The victory belongs to tsundoku.

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A raven feather lies on the top of the desk in my writing room. Another one stretches across a display on the table where I usually pray in the morning.

They have special meaning to me. They are symbols of mystery and of a kind of connectedness that reaches way beyond both raven and me. They also represent two particular moments of such connectedness, and a path taken because of those moments.

Ravens have long represented the spiritual dimension of reality. To the Indigenous peoples of North America they have been seen as a symbol of the Creator, or of spiritual transformation. They also have been portrayed in the role of trickster. That Creator/trickster set of roles hints at the troubles humans have placing trust in the Great Mystery.

A raven was the first bird Noah is said to have released from the ark to search for dry land. The prophet Elijah was cared for by ravens during a time of great hardship. A number of saints and sages are associated with ravens.

I chose to use images of ravens throughout this website as a way of highlighting the connections between nature and healthy spirituality that are at the heart of my writing. That will become more apparent in the future, I hope, as a raven plays a key role in the novel I’m currently revising. If all goes well, I’ll send it off to a publisher when I’m done and it will find a home.

The raven feather on my writing desk is one I picked up in front of Sigurd Olson’s writing shack several years ago when I stayed overnight at the house. I am best known for my biography of Sigurd, and have immense gratitude for him and the entire Olson family. I’ve got a new collection of Sigurd’s journals coming out next spring, and I’m very excited about it.

Now that I have a new book coming out–my first in years–and have other book projects underway, I realized it’s time to heed the advice I’ve long received and create my own author’s website.

Of course the bulk of it is static content; it’s the blog that will receive the most updates. I’ve blogged before, but focused on a fairly narrow range of subject matter. I suspect this one will be much more diverse. But I’m content to let it develop organically over time. I keep getting all kinds of email about marketing my blog, and something called SEO. Personally, I’d rather listen to the raven. It’s always worked before.
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