Leave No Trace

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.