Carving Memories

After I attended the Becoming an Outdoors Woman conference in Halsey National Forest two years ago, I bought myself some nifty tools for navigating my new outdoorsy world.  Granted, I still live mostly indoors, but I like knowing that--if needed--I could now make my own waterproof matches, properly bandage a simple wound or locate a cleverly-hidden token on a geocaching adventure.

When I was making all those post-conference purchases, I also thought long and hard about buying a decent Gerber utility knife--something I had never even heard of before sleeping in a 28-bed bunker with a surprising array of outdoor-hungry, occasionally pungent Nebraska women.  But I never did buy one.

And now, this morning, I wish I had bought that knife, because I really feel like I should be notching the trunk of an old  tree with a list of all the firsts and lasts that have filled me these past few months.  I imagine that, in ten years, my fingers would appreciate running through a knotted, pulpy river of personal recollections, helping me to remember this particular chapter in my life.  And that Gerber knife would've helped them do just that.

Instead, today I am left to imagine myself gripping that "lightweight anodized aluminum handle" and working my way up the trunk of said tree, leaving behind proof that I was here and there were some stories that mattered very much to me. Four of those notches, in particular, would garner my fingers' attention:

•First, they would find a deep, long gash, made in a surprisingly singular motion, marking the 28-year-arc of my mostly happy life as a journalism teacher.  Tucked inside that narrow, carved gorge would be a hundred memorable stories told in adolescent scrawl, each one jarring loose a young voice that needed to be heard.

•Just above it would be a fresher, clumsier scar exposing still-green wood.  Within it is the story of my newest chapter, as school librarian, one that is still writing itself.  This, too, I imagine, would feel good to my fingers--a hopeful, story-filled lineation not yet complete in its journey.

•The next notches--the oldest--are neither graceful nor smooth, each disrupted by knotted burls that force my knife to find a new path.  These are the arcs of my life as mother and daughter, each precious and complicated and beautiful in its own mysterious, jarring ways.  Less sure than the others, these clumsy paths tell my fingers that they have found my main storyline, the one that writes all the others.  And so, my hand rests here, on this imperfect place, and soaks in all that it means to have been Jane Holt, way back in 2015, when my knife was so busy documenting these momentous days.

You can understand, then, why I have visited the great digital Amazon this morning, my eyes rolling over all those Gerber knives, my head in a hundred different places.