The experiences of the everyday, the unknown or an unexpected second chance of seeing something old as new again are at the heart of this exceptional collection of essays in Todd Nelson’s newest book “The Land Between The Rivers.”
An educator and a writer for much of his life, Nelson does again what he did in his first collection of essays, “Cold Spell.” He reveals the beauty buried within life experiences. Nelson’s 35-year career in teaching, including six years as a school principal, lends a “helping hand” to his craft of storytelling. He has been published in numerous publications such as the Ellsworth American, Bangor Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer and on Maine Public. He and his family live in Penobscot.
This collection of 65 essays covers a myriad of purely Maine experiences and are clear evidence of the cumulative impact they have had on his life. It is a life not of abstraction, but one that needs nourishment, as when opening a window to inhale the season’s change while letting out a deep, long breath held from within the soul.
In the opening essay “The Gate,” Nelson reminds us how life continually changes. A walk down a dirt road or path leads one into both the familiar and unfamiliar. The days are measured by the weather, the day’s shadow hearkens youthful remembrances. We understand a walk anywhere is necessary. It is a new beginning.
“The white wooden gate and fence posts are my standard against which to measure the day’s weather; cloud cover, fog, sunshine or gloom, the gates stand solidly open, attendant, a color scale. Like Frost’s mending wall, they start my daily conversation with the bird calls I’m learning to identify, and the shy does and fawns that seem to hide and wait for my arrival.”
In “Once More to the Stream,” Nelson pays quiet homage to famed essayist, E.B. White while reflecting on his own trip back to a beloved camp with his 14-year-old son. Like White’s “Once More to the Lake,” Nelson’s journey is one that is both physical and emotional. Feelings are pulled outward. They then become memories that float like condensation bubbling its slow creep over a tumble of river rock downstream to somewhere, to nowhere.
“The woods were lovely, dark, and deep: Moose, bear, eagle country. As we moved further into the forest, farther from paved road and traffic, our trip took on the sense of journey away from comfortable, known realms and toward the challenge of unfamiliar paths and feelings. In this return to an old haunt of mine, we would both encounter new territory.”
The title essay of the collection is also the last story. “The Land Between the Rivers” is a bookend of sorts. Both the first and last essays are time-stamp markers for a reader to quietly observe. Perhaps to add a resonant thought to the semblance of the whole collection or to allow each reader to peruse their own thoughts about a beginning and an end along a dirt road in their own life.
This particular essay led me by the hand down into my soul, to restless childhood memories of my own life, while reading what Nelson remembered of his. It indeed is a seasonal transition that takes hold and does not let go. Still, it requires one’s acceptance to see the seasons for what they are, to embrace them with what they hold.
“Memory is a trout holding steady midstream. It awaits food, inspects floating possibilities, then, rising to a wriggling fly, leaps and swallows and finds itself wriggling on a hook. The adults were moving around outside my field of vision.”
As Nelson states in his opening “Note to the Reader”: “I am an education writer, a rural writer, a local writer, a transcendental writer like Thoreau, and a writer who stumbles upon a good opening line and allows it to unfurl and lead me on.”
Nelson’s writing truly is all of that and much more. Stumbling upon and unfurling his moments, he does quite well, and I as a reader eager to follow along, have the bumps and bountiful smiles to prove it.
The Land Between The Rivers
By Todd R. Nelson
Down East Books, 2024, hardcover $24.95