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Woman, Alone …walking alone […] has enormous spiritual, cultural, and political resonance. It has been a major part of meditation, prayer, and religious exploration. It has been a mode of contemplation and composition from Aristotle’s peripatetics to the roaming poets of New York and Paris. It has supplied writers, artists, political theorists and others with the encounters and experiences that inspired their work, as well as the space in which to imagine it and it is impossible to know what would have become of many of the great male minds had they been unable to move alone through the world. Picture Aristotle confined to the house, Muir in full skirts. Even in times when women could walk by day, the night – the melancholic, poetic, intoxicating carnival of city lights – was likely to be off limits to them, unless they became “women of the night.” If walking is a primary cultural act and a crucial way of being in the world, those who have been unable to walk out as far as their feet would take them have been denied not merely exercise or recreation but a vast portion of their humanity. – Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust
In a strange twist of fate, the Gray Knob caretaker decided to leave her job for a more lucrative rafting position, and Cammee Campbell was hired to take her place. This made us the first all female staff for the RMC camps during the summer, but it also meant that the daughters of consecutive caretakers from the 1960s were caretaking together. Thus, I spent an awful lot of time my first summer thinking about what it meant for me to be caretaking as a woman, and how my position differed from my father’s. I was young and fairly naïve, but I read the news and watched movies. I knew exactly what sort of vulnerable position I was in: a young, trusting woman alone in a mountain camp. But my naïveté kept me mostly unafraid. Bad things wouldn’t happen to anybody in these mountains. And yet, when my grandmother Bunny gave me pepper spray to carry with me, I did. Everyday, everywhere. I never carried pepper spray in the city. Caretaking, I only experienced fear at night. Walking back to Crag from the Perch or from dinner with Cammee, the slightest rustle of leaves started my heart racing. The many times I ran into Spruce grouse walking between the camps, I would have to stop myself from nearly fainting. I got to the point that I would walk around the cabin at night to try to teach myself not to fear – after all, having read the logs of past caretakers and visitors to Crag, night hikes seemed like something of a rite of passage. And yet, I still couldn’t enjoy them alone. I have since figured out the source of my various fears of night at Crag. Unlike my father and his fear of the giant wolf dog during a thundershower, my fears were of an entirely human nature. Everything I had ever read and seen suggested that as a woman, the night was a frightening time to venture out. Alone as a woman should be frightening, but especially alone at night. This wasn’t some sort of Victorian era fear; it was real, fueled in part by the fact that some of my friends still participated in take back the night walks. And there I was, at times utterly alone and totally vulnerable, caretaking Crag. Whatever danger I was actually ever in during my time caretaking, I’ll never know. But, by seizing the opportunity to caretake, I gained a vitally important experience to the rest of my life. Sure, I barely qualified as a fully formed adult, but it was my time at Crag that laid the groundwork for my studies of landscape art, and formed the foundation of my confidence. I was free to meander about by day or night, occasionally afraid, but always dreaming, thinking, or just meditating on my surroundings. Considering my experience of the real and imagined dangers of caretaking as woman, I’ve often wondered if I had a daughter, would I allow or even encourage her to caretake? I think I’d have to consider this, again from Rebecca Solnit: “There’s a massive history of writers, poets, musicians, philosophers, physicists working out their ideas while walking, and so making places to walk is making places to dream, imagine, and create, a relation to the shaping of others that is perhaps more direct than any other medium. Virginia Woolf thought up her novel To the Lighthouse ‘in a great, involuntary rush’ while walking around Tavistock Square.” Could I possibly deny a daughter my experience? Would I, perhaps, deny the world another To the Lighthouse? Certainly not!
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I was certain
that I was going to hate caretaking my first night at Crag as
the summer caretaker. I was freezing and terrified of the following
night – the one I would be spending without the comfort
of my father to provide me with entertainment, encouragement,
and general good spirits. I wasn’t a stranger to being alone
as an only child, but I had realized that I maybe wasn’t
prepared to be as alone as I was going to find myself. As with
summer camp and college, it took about three hours alone in this
new environment before my conviction that I would hate it dissolved.
I resolved to clean the cabin. This adventure warmed me up, introduced
me to my new space, and became a daily habit – the morning
cleaning, usually with few if any guests around. I was stuck
in a cloud for a few days that first week, the weather was cold
and wet, and I cleaned the cabin a lot, even though I hadn’t
had any visitors yet. I’ll never forget my first visitors
for enduring the cold wet with me, and reminding me that my job
was, in fact, totally enviable. They were Tony and Laurie and
they were up from Boston. I realized as the three of us drank
bottomless cups of tea and cocoa that they had to go back to
the city, but I - I had all summer in the woods and could wait
for perfect weather to go out on mountain adventures.