{"id":36256,"date":"2018-12-20T06:30:47","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T17:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=36256"},"modified":"2018-12-17T21:39:16","modified_gmt":"2018-12-17T08:39:16","slug":"to-the-wilderness-i-wander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2018\/12\/20\/to-the-wilderness-i-wander\/","title":{"rendered":"To The Wilderness I Wander"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The hut on the edge of forever<\/p><\/div>\n

In 2013, when I was completing Daughter of Blood<\/em><\/a>, a friend gave me the use of her fishing hut, a very generous gift since it gave me writing time away from the everyday interruptions of “life, the universe, and everything”.\u00a0 (Including the interwebs, which provide the Great Distraction of our age, from email and search engines to every version of social media imaginable — spot the Luddite! \ud83d\ude09 )<\/p>\n

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The edge of forever<\/p><\/div>\n

A hut conjures up images of something very basic, but in this case the terms is synonymous with a “crib” in the very south of NZ, or a “bach” in most other parts of the country. When I lived in Sweden it would have been a “sommar stugan” or “summer cottage”, while my Japanese sister-in-law tells me that the correct term there is “bessou.” So rest assured that the accommodation is not too<\/em> basic.<\/p>\n

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Wild south, with wild life<\/p><\/div>\n

This particular hut is located at the mouth of one of Canterbury’s distinctive braided rivers in an environment that is very wild south, similar to last week’s post<\/a> of the same name. Since 2013 I have returned there as often as “life, the universe, and everything” and other pertinent aspects of time-space allow because it is a great environment for writing.<\/p>\n

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That’s a seal, on the beach<\/p><\/div>\n

All of which made me think of the phrase “to the wilderness I wander”, which comes from the traditional ballad, Tom O’ Bedlam’s Song<\/em><\/a>. The poem is a little like Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah<\/em>, in that it has almost as many verses as there are people to add them on, but I featured a fair representation of the total as part of The Tuesday Poem a few years back<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The two stanzas that seemed particularly apposite to an author who goes to an out-of-the-way spot to write Fantasy novels are those that also feature the phrase, “to the wilderness I wander”<\/em>:<\/p>\n

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“Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end”;
art by Peter Fitzpatrick<\/p><\/div>\n

“With a host of furious fancies<\/dd>\n

Whereof I am commander,<\/dd>\n
With a burning spear and a horse of air,<\/dd>\n
To the wilderness I wander.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
By a knight of ghostes and shadowes<\/dd>\n
I summon\u2019d am to tourney<\/dd>\n
Ten leagues beyond the wild world\u2019s end,<\/dd>\n
Methinks it is no journey.”<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

The final two lines, “Ten leagues beyond the wild world\u2019s end, Methinks it is no journey”<\/em> sum up the whole process of immersing myself in the world of the WALL story.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, when the story is fighting back, it also feels as if, “I summoned am to tourney.”<\/em> \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2013, when I was completing Daughter of Blood, a friend gave me the use of her fishing hut, a very generous gift since it gave me writing time away from the everyday interruptions of “life, the universe, and everything”.\u00a0 (Including the interwebs, which provide the Great Distraction of our age, from email and search […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,10,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funstuff","category-general","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36256"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36265,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36256\/revisions\/36265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}