Lost Song

When I saw this morning that I had missed the news of Gary Paulsen's passing earlier this week, I took some time to mourn him,  listening to some interviews from last spring when he published his memoir, Gone to the Woods. I realized that although I've read at least 20 books by him, I had never heard him speak, and I was surprised by how soft his voice was. Not weak, no, just not as gravelly as I imagined it Having seen his picture, bearded and gruff, on the back of so many books these last 30 years. 

And then I thought how many times I had heard my own voice reading his words out loud, and I searched to see if there were any audiobooks of his that he had narrated himself. There were only three-- Woodsong, Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northers, and My Life in Dog Years, all of them non-fiction, all of them about time spent outdoors with his dogs. 

I had read them all, but there was an excerpt from Woodsong in one of the sixth grade anthologies that I used with my students for years, and so I downloaded that recording and started to listen. I had forgotten how awful the beginning is, purposefully so, to make a point about what Paulsen thought he knew about nature and how wrong he turned out to be. Somehow, hearing the account of the wolves and the doe they chase down in Paulsen's own voice, was even worse than reading it; his sorrow and trauma come through so clearly.

I listened to a few more chapters and then I paused the recording. I could have lost myself all day in the woods of Northern Minnesota, but I knew I shouldn't. I had papers to grade and chores to do.

Years ago, my mother saw that Gary Paulsen was doing a reading near her home in the Twin Cities. She knew of my fondness and admiration for his work, and so she went to get a couple books signed as a surprise for me. When she and her friend got to the front of the line, Paulsen laughed as he took the books. "You girls seem a little old to be fans," he teased them.

In fact he and my Mom were born less than a month apart, and he was 82 when he died on Wednesday. The two of them lived long, full lives, but the world seems a lot emptier now that they are gone, and I miss them.