Memories of Place
Or Not
About a year ago, I visited Moab, Utah, and went hiking in the Fiery Furnace at Arches National Park for the first time in 25 years or so. During my nine years of living in Moab, I probably hiked in the Furnace close to 100 times, mostly leading guided tours as a park ranger. If you haven’t been to the Furnace, it’s a labyrinth of narrow canyons, sandy washes, and sandstone fins, unlike any place I have been. On that hike, we were with four other friends, three who had hiked there many times and one of whom had been a ranger with me, remained, and led far more tours than I.
About half way through the Furnace, my friend Andy (the ex-ranger) and I had a similar thought. “We took people through here? What were we thinking?” The route is not a simple walk. You have to squeeze through and over narrow passages, descend and ascend steep slopes, and cross over small openings. (Mind the gap.) None are that hard but all have the potential for an unpleasant injury, and we often had people who were not necessarily what one would call terribly fit. I have no recollection of ever thinking about the challenges when I lead the tours.
I chalk this up to the obliviousness of my youth but I have also become whimpier as I have aged. What seemed easy or undaunting at 25 is much less so at 59. I was surprised in the Furnace by the physical challenges of the walk but what most stood out was the mental change, that I didn’t remember the route. I am sure that if you had asked me when I was ranger, if I would ever not know where to go in the Furnace, I would have scoffed, yet another sign of the cluelessness, and arrogance, of my younger self. (Not that I am saying that I am terribly wise now just wiser than then.)
But I also wondered if something else was going on. Back in the day, when I was leading these tours so often and being concerned about the group, the tour became rote, where I didn’t have to think about where I was going. As happens when you do some physical activity over and over again, the route had become embedded in my synapses like muscle memories. Three decades later most of those synapses had been broken. It was humbling to realize how my mind worked, or in this case, didn’t. Interestingly, the areas in the Fiery Furnace that I did remember were locations I had explored with friends, that we had “found” ourselves. They were generally more physically challenging than the tour route. Were those memories more deeply embedded because I had had to concentrate more on what I was doing or because I found them more interesting?
But not all my memories were as misplaced as I was in the Fiery Furnace. I was pleased that I could recall the names of the rocks layers (Duh!) and plants’ common and scientific names. And, that recall was almost instantaneous. Lithospermum incisum (puccoon). Coleogyne ramosissima (blackbrush). Pinus edulis (pinyon pine). Was it because I had written about them in my first book A Naturalist’s Guide to Canyon Country, because it was information that I took pride in knowing, or more intrinsically part of who I am, as a naturalist and geek about names such as these?
As I have gotten older, I have been fascinated to encounter my memories of place, of what sticks and what has been dropped. These experiences are yet another reason I like to return to locations I have previously been to, knowing that I will see, hear, and remember them differently than on a previous visit. And, I hope I find new things to remember, and most likely, to also forget.
By the way, in case you are interested, and I am sure you are, the name Fiery Furnace references three guys in the Bible, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Apparently they didn’t want to bow down to the image of a guy with an even more fantastic name, Nebuchadnezzar (the name also used to refer to wine bottle that can hold 20 normal bottles of wine), so he upped and chucked them into a fiery furnace. They survived and the king realized the futility of relying on fire to further your cause (perhaps he turned to drinking to repent his sin and liked big bottles…(I cannot lie)).
Hey, I will be at the downtown branch of the Seattle Public Library on Saturday, April 20 at 2pm with my co-author Liz Nesbitt. We’ll be talking about our book Spirit Whales and Sloth Tales: Fossils of Washington State.
One of the best responses to my previous newsletter about Monkey Puzzle Trees was this one. “I finally tracked down a female tree in Centralia and (not very) stealthily jumped out of my car and gathered up some seeds from the sidewalk. See attached! Very exciting. Now to wait a few decades....”
Went thru the Furnace at 63, and was not sure I could do some of the tricky stuff. There and later in hiking in the Grand Canyon, I just decided that if other novices could to what looked so scary, well, so could I. Apparently, that worked. One last: 'chock' vs 'chalk'. Time to revise vocabulary? Thanks for your wonderful nudges to go see...
Thank you for this post. I enjoyed reading it and how you connected up the dots so to speak, of your memories. I think you could give a class on how to strengthen one's memory by paying attention to the details! At the same time, I could relate to the curious way we remember some things and drop others. I have a very detailed memory of walking along Alki beach one morning perhaps 35 years ago. It was a nice late spring morning, and I was killing time before going for a job interview. Why I should remember that morning and the feel of the air and light... I have little idea. I only am happy that I do.