Into Woods

by Bill Roorbach

  In Ohio, the immigration was largely German. No one there had the slightest trouble with my name (except that Nederlanish double “o”). But in Ohio people had trouble picking out who I was from the clues I gave: long hair, mustache, little beard (an imperial, or soul patch), beer belly: I’m read as a redneck or hillbilly. In Maine, I’m obviously a crunchie, which is a hippie (the etymology of the term having to do with granola). In New York, I might be taken for a construction worker, which is often what I was there. In Norway (during my brief tenure in Oslo playing music), I was taken for an American. In Paris, speaking French, I was taken for Norwegian. One loses sight of one’s identity, place to place.

  There you are, but different.

  All these pages to say: I quit my job at Ohio State. Gave up tenure, gave up perks, gave up probably the best creative writing job in America. But Juliet and Elysia and the fellows and I are home. Home in Maine. And here, yes, we are recalling how cold the winters, how far the museums (but also how close New York, and Boston, and Montréal). We are home, we are home. Home in the bosom of friendships, among people who need to know the sea is near, who must climb a hill, dive in a pond, eat blueberries by the fistful.

  These are peculiar thoughts: that it’s one’s parents who decide where one is from; that Juliet and I will be the ones to say where Elysia is from. And funnier yet to realize (Juliet and I looking at each other across the dinner table after a good visit to old home New York City) this: we may have more moves in us, may really need a city pole, may need a year in Europe, may need a break in winter. But the kid will have to go to school. And her parents will have in some degree to take advice from the grounded among us, from Scott Russell Sanders, for example, who says: Stay put.

  My hammock in Maine. I swing in a gentle breeze that smells of the ocean, that smells of the White Mountains. It’s air I’ve known a long, long time, a place that feels right. Just there, Mount Blue. Familiar clouds, building higher. Over here my garden. The house with its thousand projects, right there. My new study in the sugar house, Juliet’s new studio downtown, both of us having moved to make room for Elysia. Our kid. Our junk-filled sheds. Our woods. Our stream. Our many paths. Our many friends. Maybe we’ll stay. Maybe we will.

  Are we home?

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to teachers: Philip Lopate, who got me writing essays in the first place; Frank McShane, who nudged me toward journalism; Joyce Johnson, who made me understand that memory approached honestly can aspire to art. Thanks to editors who are friends: Colin Harrison and Barbara Hanrahan especially. Betsy Lerner, too, my agent and old pal. And thanks to other friends—a list I better not even try to start—thank you all, especially those who find themselves snapshots in this album. (And thanks to the reader for forbearance: I’ve changed some names and some distinguishing characteristics to protect the privacy of certain people pictured here.) Thanks to the MacDowell Colony, heaven on earth. A special thanks to Maureen Stanton, who read many of these essays in draft and gave cheerful, smart encouragement just when I needed it. Thanks to Kristen, Beth, Rosalie, Madeline, Olivia, Isabella, Florin, and John, for endless inspiration. Thanks to Desmond and Wallace. And most of all, and always, thanks to Juliet, and now Elysia. Lentior.