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A Memoir of Wayfinding
by Lynn Darling
Book Reviewed by:Combining the soul-baring insight of Wild, the profound wisdom of Shop Class as Soulcraft, and the adventurous spirit of Eat, Pray, Love: Lynn Darling's powerful, lyrical memoir of self-discovery, full of warmth and wry humor, Out of the Woods.
When her college-bound daughter leaves home, Lynn Darling, widowed over a decade earlier, finds herself alone - and utterly lost, with no idea of what she wants or even who she is. Searching for answers, she leaves New York for the solitary woods of Vermont. Removed from the familiar, cocooned in the natural world, her only companions a new dog and a compass, she hopes to develop a sense of direction - both in the woods and in her life.
Hiking unmapped trails, Darling meditates on the milestones of her past; as she adapts to her new surroundings, she uses the knowledge she's gained to chart her future. And when an unexpected setback nearly derails her newfound balance, she is able to draw upon her newfound skills to find her bearings and stay the course.
In revealing how one woman learned to navigate - literally and metaphorically - the uneven course of life, Out of the Woods is, in the words of Pulitzer-prize winning author Geraldine Brooks, "a marvelous book... both a compass and a manifesto for navigating the often-treacherous switchbacks of the second half of life."
Darling is most certainly a writer’s author, giving out words such as evanescence and synecdoche, which are just a joy to read. But there are also many times when it’s impossible not to scream at Darling to stop dallying about and get on with it, especially in the latter half of the book, when she describes a course she takes in navigation; when she explains learning about using a compass in order to, ultimately, find her way without a compass. She’s an Author! These are Sentences! Yes, they’re beautifully-written sentences, but they gum up the works. Darling's long-windedness inspires the desire for a lit firecracker to be inserted into the book in order to speed it up at times...continued
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(Reviewed by Rory L. Aronsky).
Many Woodstocks come to mind when reading Out of Woods, Lynn Darling's memoir about her move to Woodstock, Vermont. The first is, of course, from the legendary Woodstock Festival in 1969, which was actually held in Bethel, New York after the towns of Wallkill and Woodstock refused the request for a permit. But there are many others. Here are glimpses of some Woodstocks in the United States, including Vermont's:
Woodstock, New York was founded in 1787 when people moved in large numbers from cities into the Catskill Mountains. It became the premier space for arts, crafts and music in 1902 when Ralph Whitehead, Bolton Brown, and Hervey White created the first artists' colony there, bolstered by its creative energy and its proximity to New ...
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Dani Shapiro, author of Devotion
What do we do when life unfolds in unexpected ways - which is to say, when life unfolds, full stop? We cave, or we persevere. We grow rigid and numb, or, like the inimitable Lynn Darling, we come to know ourselves, with courage and a beautiful, stumbling grace.
