Shanna Imaginary Wilderness

In this post I will compare the hiker to the writer. Each are free, each rely, each know not what lies ahead. In The Writing Life, Dillard says writing a book is "life at its most free" (Dillard, 555). The hiker is also free to hike where he wants, when he wants to, regardless of circumstance. However, the hiker must rely on signs in nature to warn him of possible dangers ahead. The writer must rely on imagination, ink, and whatever they learned as far as style, grammar, etc. In Wilderness as Axis Mundi, Redick says "A wilderness [is] ... an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain" (Redick, 2). The world of imagination is much like the wilderness then. The imagination is somewhere "untrammeled by man, where man is a visitor who does not remain," though many wish they could. Like the wild, the imagination is different upon every encounter. Perilous at times, imagination can lead to fearful places, ones which can be much more frightening than reality. What lies just over that hill, just beyond that forrest, can be as much of a mystery as what will fill the pages of a blank book. What the end of a journey will hold, or the end of a book, must be left entirely to the imagination.