Inspire, Fall 2006

I t is June 2. My arms full of children, I crouch in a 10-seater Cessna Caravan and ready myself and six others for the flight across Kodiak Island, Alaska. Every summer since 1978, I have left my winter island home for our fish camp, where my family and I commercial fish for salmon. We will fly 60 miles over wilderness, mountains, glaciers, and fjords to a mile-long island with a population of eight — our family alone. This place has no roads, cars, or electricity, except what we generate ourselves, and days will often pass there before I see a human being other than my children. Our only contact with the outside world is a quirky, on-again, off-again radio-phone. When I am not fishing or tending children, I make my way down to a shed that sits on pilings over the Gulf of Alaska waters that beat time and tide against the foundations of my dwelling. I am surrounded by mountain and ocean wilderness that sucks the breath out of all who first see it. Out my window, I can see bald eagles and peregrine falcons stirring the winds; sea lions, otters, and whales cruise by in their own currents; volcanoes steam on the horizon. It is here that I write — poetry, essays, nonfiction. I could not have chosen a geography or two occupations — fishing and writing — more freighted with the folklore of self- sufficiency, rugged individualism, and fierce independence. These clichés happen to be real life for us. We built our own house and dug our own well; we fish by hand. Like a latter-day Adam and Eve, we dress and keep our own island world. For a writer, the romantic images are equally accurate — the author in pensive solitude, breathing in rarified inspiration from the lap of undefiled creation, the numbing din of popular culture thousands of miles away. But I would give it all up in an iambic heartbeat. I know exactly what I am missing. As an undergraduate at Cedarville University, I joined with faculty, students, and friends in the pursuit of integrating faith, art, and knowledge. How do we make every thought, every artistic expression captive to the Lordship of Christ? How do we redeem a language so fractured and bent it no longer references a recognizable world? We harnessed ourselves together in asking questions like these and in our attempts at answering them. We spoke the same language. We were many, yet we were one. Since then, in my teaching career, I have created numerous writing workshops and learned that community is far more than people gathering in the same room to share and perfect their work. There were carnivorous groups, out for the hunt and spill of blood. Happy social groups, united in dodging the hard work of truth. Complainers who plotted subversion. Cheerleaders who thrilled to every trite, tripping phrase. The alchemy to produce writing groups where iron sharpens iron is elusive at best. This brings some comfort to me as I sit, writing, during the months of my fish camp exile. I worry that solitude will lapse into solipsism and wish for fellowship around words, literature, poetry, faith. A few select journals and magazines assuage this ache and remind me I am not alone. But thankfully it is not enough. My need sends me further, to the final source of all community — the Word itself. It is here that the hardest work begins. In the shed that serves as my prayer closet and writing studio, I open the Scriptures and enter a swirl of mysteries I cannot parse: Word and world, logos uttering forth cosmos, the aspirating spirit rattling the tongue of holy writ in my ear. This other world, these words, undo me. In their company, A Voice in the Wilderness by Leslie Leyland Fields ’79 16 Fall 2006