Lynn Darling explains in the introduction the genesis of why she wrote Out of the Woods: A Memoir of Wayfinding:
"I was forty-four when my husband died and fifty-six when my daughter entered college. I was getting old, and I didn’t know how to do that. So many people seemed to do it badly, and yet every once in a while, I would see something in the eyes of an old woman that intrigued me—a kind of triumph, a knowingness. I wanted to know where that look came from. I wanted to gather the tools that would enable me to grow old with grace. (Location 96)

She creates for herself a “metaphysical” list of tasks she needs to accomplish for this next portion of her life: “get sense of direction; find authentic way to live; figure out how to be old; deal with sex; learn Latin.” This is a wonderful way to introduce her memoir of a certain time in her life while she overcame certain hurdles and challenges. Not only does her daughter, Zoe, leave for college, but Lynn moves out of New York City to an eclectic, ramshackle house in Woodstock, Vermont.

Lynn shares her struggles with her solar power system, getting a puppy, making friends with her new neighbors, walking in the woods, fighting cancer, gaining her sense of direction, and making peace with her choices. This is her honest reflections of where she feels her life is going and how this journey of self-discovery veered off in a different direction once she was diagnosed with cancer and underwent treatment.

Since I can identify with Lynn in several ways (although by all outward appearances not in similar ways at all) I appreciated the struggle she found herself in and the steps she took to deal with her new situation. It is hard to see your children move on and no longer need you. It is also hard to deal with changes in your life as you age. I think Lynn is right when she contemplates charting this new course and decides "Perhaps in the end that is what wayfinding amounts to: learning how to allow for accident, and make way for blessing." (Location 119) Almost all of us can find ourselves wounded in some way and seeking the blessings that are also there, amidst the pain and accidents.

Very Highly Recommended

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of HarperCollins via edelweiss for review purposes.

Quotes:

I chose the house in spite of its warts but because of them, because the house’s cranky unfinished state reflected my own. One life was over and another was beginning, and I was no longer any of the things I had been, no longer young and not yet old, and because I had to figure out everything all over again, everything—from where to live, to how to dress, and who (or even whether) to love, because I had no idea of what to do next, and the middle of the woods seemed the best place to get one. I thought that I would see things more clearly from a place that had no part in my past, the way you climb a tree to get a perspective on the surrounding terrain, to put a name to the strange country into which you have wandered. I moved to the house at the end of the road to make a new home, a new life, and it was only later that I would see that I had gone to ground, the way an animal does, because I was wounded and beaten and in need of retreat. (Location 65)

Growing old meant inevitable loss, yes, but that wasn’t all it meant. Perhaps there wasn’t anything to be done but to live through this time, to take possession of my grief, to claim sovereignty over my own sadness. (Location 1543)

Who was this woman who was no longer lashed so tightly to the world of men; what did it mean to be finally getting old, to live alone, to be invisible in a way that I had not been since I was a teenager? I was nervous, but I was excited as well. “You only begin to discover the difference between what you really are, your real self and your appearance when you get a bit older,” Doris Lessing said in an interview in Harper’s in 1973. “ (Location 1637)

We were lying: my mother had never been happy for more than twenty minutes at a time. She ran on fury and worry and the neediness that children who have never been properly loved carry with them for the rest of their days. (Location 2876)

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Enjoyed this memoir about a middle-aged woman "finding herself" in solitude. I can relate to what she called her "Fortress of Solitute fantasy," wherein she "would wander the country with only my dog for company, and I would write great things that no one would see, and be at one with nature" (66.) The people she meets along her new life journey are thoughtfully and kindly described, a point that seems important to mention because she is so hard on herself throughout the book. There are rather odd silences in the book as to where her daughter was during the time she struggled with a health crisis, and she describes a near perfect marriage and parenting experience (though admitting to a newfound freedom during the college years) which almost seems trite at times. On the other hand, so many memoirs these days are so raw and brutal it is nice to have a more filtered reflection. By the end, she decides that "getting older is largely a matter of getting over yourself, of stepping out of your own way, the better to see the world through a wider lens than the narrow preoccupations of self had ever provided." This is a refreshing memoir, and would be particularly enjoyed by women of a certain age. ( )

My kind of book exactly - quiet peaceful writing, though Darling was dealing with the death of her husband and departure of her only daughter to college. Reminded me a little of May Sarton's "Journal of a Solitude," without Sarton's irascibility. Took off half a star just because at the beginning it was a bit too journalistic, quoting research and sources. ( )

I love these types of memoirs - woman of a certain age exploring. I also love Vermont and being outdoors so this worked on many levels for me. ( )

This reminded me of Thoreau's "Walden" but from the perspective of a modern, middle-aged woman! The author moves from New York City, to an isolated house in the woods of Vermont. "I moved to the house at the end of the road to make a new home, a new life, and it was only later that I would realize that I had gone to the ground, the way an animal does, because I was wounded and beaten and in need of retreat."

And so begins her tale of her time alone in the woods where she tries to come to terms with her past, her losses, her loneliness, her age, her uncertain place in the world! "I was drowning in the past, the artifacts of loss fossilizing around me by never letting go of anything, no matter how trivial. I was dismissing the future allowing it no room in which to unfold."

"There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror the broken places we find within."

"The solitude in which I loved had given me the room in which to unfold my cramped and crumpled thoughts and fears, to give them space to walk about and sort themselves out."

and so they do. "I went to the woods to run away, to begin again, to become a strange and fabulous creature: my true self."

By the end of the book, she has figured alot of things about herself, even survived breast cancer.

This isn't the book for you if you want a lot of action, but if you like profound introspcetion and lovely language then dig in!!! ( )