A Week in Door County - Solo

As near as I can recall, I cooked up my residency at Write On! Door County in November, when I was in the process of putting together a new collection of essays. Door County would be a great place to focus my thoughts, I said to myself,  and put the finishing touches on this thing. On the strength of the recommendation of a friend who had stayed there and was actually on the board and the graciousness of director Jerod Santek, I was given a slot in early May.

As it turned out, by the time my week of solitary scribbling and polishing arrived, the book I had been working on, All the Things You Are, was done and back from the printer. (In fact, you can buy a copy here. Better yet, come to the reading at Magers & Quinn on July 11.) Not a problem. I would devote the week to developing new ideas and gathering new impressions.

The Write On! facility is actually a suburban rambler set on a very large parcel of semi-wooded land in Juddville, a wide spot in the road on the plateau a few miles south of the much larger bayside conurbation of Fish Creek. One of the most beautiful views in the county greets you from the highway as you sweep around the corner from Juddville down the hill toward Fish Creek with the bright blue waters of the harbor glistening in the distance and the green trees of Peninsula State Park just beyond. Several signs along that curve say No Stopping or Walking, but I was tempted on one occasion to stop and take a picture of the woman who had gotten out of her car ahead of me and was holding up her cell phone toward the bay just under one of those signs.  

Juddville itself consists of an Italian restaurant housed in a bungalow, a pottery studio, and a chiropractic office, each of which occupies one of the corners formed by the intersection of Juddville Road and Highway 42. In short, Door County in microcosm. The Write On! center sits less than a quarter-mile inland from that intersection. It's a spacious home and there's a nice wooden table (butternut?) in the kitchen looking out toward the fields and woods through three tall French doors. I would often look out those windows and say to myself, What am I going to do now? Then I would pour myself another cup of coffee and continue jotting notes in my journal or leafing through a copy of Door County Living.

Reading, Writing, and Rambling were my three Rs. I felt duty-bound to make the center serve as something more than a crash pad for touring the countryside, and I did my best to "apply" myself, but as the days passed I became a little disconcerted by the fact that whenever Jerod stopped by the office (also located in the house) I happened to be out gallivanting.

On the other hand, one of the attractive features of the center is its setting in the midst of a bucolic landscape endowed with five state parks, hundreds of miles of shoreline, several islands accessible by ferry, and numerous county parks and wildlife preserves.

A year or two ago the center succeeded in purchasing an old chicken coop that had been used by Norbert Blei, the "oracle" of the Door County, as a writing shed, and they moved it to a secluded spot on the property behind a bank of pines. I wandered out that way under gray skies on the first morning of my stay and  liked the coop immediately; it had far less floor space than the house and a more rustic, intimate feel. A little stack of Blei's books was sitting on a table, and a few of his Native American knickknacks were sitting on shelves here and there.

"So here I sit in Norbert Blei's chicken coop," I wrote in my journal, "which he used for a writing shed, I think. I like it out here, though I might not last long. The heat isn't turned on, so I guess it's 45 degrees, the same as outside. The switch on the fuse box is turned off, but it seems a little presumptuous to fiddle with it." 

   

One afternoon a few days later, once the sun had come out, I went out to the shed again. The sunlight had warmed the room considerably, and I jotted several lines in my journal at that little table before I noticed that five or six wasps had also been aroused by the afternoon rays. I found it difficult to "dig deep" while also looking up every few seconds to see where the wasps had wandered off to.

But back at the house I did bear down from time to time. An example:

Reading the intro to Vargas Llosa's Making Waves, the editor notes that Vargas Llosa applauded Bataille's defense of literary associations with "obsessions, frustrations, pain, and vice," and his description of the literary vocation as a quest for sovereignty.

Is that actually true? Perhaps to "get published" gives one a sense not only of self-worth but of superiority. After all, the reader adores the writer; the writer seldom knows the reader. The writer has a well-formed "body" outside himself, the reader wants to leave himself behind and enter into literature.

On the other hand, the writer is susceptible to feelings of neglect. He has put himself "out there" and no one seems to care or even notice. Far from being adored, he suspects that readers are unimpressed, or privately even derisive.

In short, the sovereignty of the writer is only a sovereignty over himself. And such a position is only possible if the writer is convinced he's said what he wants to say, rather than something else entirely.

If others take an interest, it's a connection, an added bonus.

I found myself discussing these things with Peter Sloma, the proprietor of Peninsula Books in Fish Creek, a few days later. Peter faces this issue (if it is an issue) from the opposite end. "People come in every day. I could fill my entire store with self-published books if I wanted to," he said. "But just getting something into print isn't enough. It's just the beginning. You've got to market it. Get it reviewed. Develop a reader-base. It's not easy."

He was preaching to the choir, of course. Playing the devil's advocate, I brought up the example of Michael Perry, a natural-born storyteller with a vast fan base who does makes it look easy. (I was unaware that Perry spends quite a bit of time with friends out on Washington Island.)

Peter's shop is open seven days a week, and as far as I can tell, he runs it almost entirely himself. Watching the pedestrian traffic for months on end, He's come up with a few insights into the rhythms of life in Fish Creek.

"The foot traffic shuts down at 5 p.m.," he told me. "Everyone goes back to their cottage or motel, heads out to dinner, then on to a show or some other entertainment. I tried staying open late for a few months but it was a bust."

Our conversation moved on to the market for old maps, the rise and fall of various invasive species from round gobies to phragmites, and the art gallery in Sturgeon Bay where I was scheduled to give a talk at the end of the week.

(to be continued)