The motto of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) is “Leave
no trace.” A permit is required to camp
and canoe there and guidelines are provided for minimizing the human impact on
this wilderness area in northern Minnesota close to the Canadian border. Outdoor enthusiasts, as well as
environmentalists, are fiercely protective of this natural preserve, “the largest remaining area of uncut forest in
the eastern portion of the United States” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_Waters_Canoe_Area_Wilderness).
Most recently
“Renewed proposals for copper and nickel mining in northern Minnesota has…been
a source of tension. Mines would be situated south and west of the BWCAW upstream
of the wilderness and within its watershed, leading to concerns among
conservation groups that surface runoff could cause damage to the area. In
December 2016 the federal government proposed banning mining for 20 years while
the subject was studied. The new administration cancelled the
study in September 2018, clearing the way for mining leases in the national
forest.”
Mindy Mejia’s
recent novel, Leave No Trace, does not directly address the land use
disputes of the BWCA, but it does make an understated plea for the preservation
of wilderness areas. The wilderness
theme has a long history in American literature, dating back to William
Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation: “What could they see but a hideous and
desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men?” These early colonial
narratives morphed into the nineteenth century frontier novels by James
Fenimore Cooper and Catharine Maria Sedgwick, who borrowed from earlier
American “captivity narratives” (https://yourbrainonbooks.blogspot.com/2010/02/narrative-of-captivity-and-restoration.html).
Not only does
Mejia’s novel harken back to the wilderness theme, with its contrast between
nature and civilization, but also to the captivity narrative, in which European
settlers recount their experiences being captured by Indians. In Leave No
Trace, however, civilization is the enemy, nature is the source of
restoration, and the systems of law enforcement and mental health treatment are
the captors, who prevent the narrator, Maya Stark, Assistant Speech Therapist
at the Congdon mental health facility in Duluth, MN (those in the know will
find the name of this facility hilarious), and her patient, Lucas, from
tracking down Lucas’ father, Josiah, who has disappeared deep in the BWCA.
Which brings us
to the theme of disappearance, not by captivity, but by choice. Josiah and Lucas Blackthorn had escaped into
the BWCA wilderness ten years earlier, after Josiah had been arrested for obstruction
of justice in Ely, MN, a gateway to the BWCA. Mejia underscores this theme by
drawing parallels among the fictional Josiah and historical instances of
voluntary disappearance, such as that of Agafia Lykov ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agafia_Lykova)
and Ho Van Thanh (https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/08/09/210477419/father-and-son-coaxed-from-jungle-40-years-after-vietnam-war). In addition, Maya’s father, operator of a
salvage tugboat on Lake Superior, has received a grant to search for the lost
“ghost ship,” the SS Bannockburn, a Canadian freighter, that (involuntarily) disappeared
on Lake Superior in 1902 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Bannockburn). In another parallel, one of the orderlies at
Congdon refers to Lucas as “Tarzan.”
Other forms of
“disappearance” occur in the novel.
Lucas’ mother had disappeared from his life when she died suddenly of an
aneurysm; Maya’s mother had abandoned her and her father when Maya was a
child. These parallels, as well as a
budding romantic attraction, bond Lucas and Maya, as together they scheme to
escape the mental facility to go in search of Josiah.
Having lived in
the BWCA with his father for ten years, Lucas, now nineteen-years-old, had
suddenly reappeared, caught breaking and entering into a camping outfitter
store in Ely. Violent and uncommunicative he is committed to Congdon. Though he
is violent toward her at first, Lucas eventually connects with Maya and she
with him. Maya learns that Josiah is sick;
Lucas had left to get help but is arrested and confined at Congdon before he
could get back to his father. Finding
Josiah and getting him help is Lucas’ mission; with Maya’s help he is able to
succeed, though, in the end, Josiah finds another way to disappear.
Maya’s journey
into Lucas’ past takes her on a journey into her own past. It turns out they share, not only the loss of
their mothers, a history of law-breaking, and of mental health treatment, but
also a history that neither of them knows about.
The tangle of
coincidences in their pasts is barely believable, but despite an unlikely plot,
the themes of disappearance, of being lost and found (or in the case of the
Bannockburn, not found), of captivity and restoration, of recovery and
redemption resonate powerfully.
And the BWCA
wilderness is not the only one in the novel where people can disappear; there
is the wilderness of personal history, of social alienation, of mental instability,
in which one can get lost, but from which one can also find truth, human connection,
and mental health.
Maya’s mother had
been a geologist, and the rocks of the BWCA become part of the setting and the
story. Agates, a type of volcanic rock, become a dominant symbol in the
novel. Maya’s mother had taught her: “The
Earth took violence and decay and made agates…Agates can only form when
something in you is destroyed, when the hollows of grief or depression can
never find the light, and the sediment that accumulates inside them is dense.
Their power changes you.”
However “hideous
and desolate,” however “full of wild beasts and wild men,” however violent, however
capable of destruction, the wilderness has the power to create beauty,
strength, and preservation. As Henry
David Thoreau wrote, “In Wildness is the preservation of the World…From the
forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind.” And such
is the underlying message of Leave No Trace. There is healing value in exploring both the
wilderness without and the wilderness within.
And such is the
value of preserving the wildness of the BWCA and other wilderness areas.
In the end Maya
and Lucas seem to make peace with civilization and find some semblance of
balance between it and the wilderness.
The fate of our planet may depend on the ability of all of us to find
such balance.
