Pages from the notebook that Ailsa Ross left on a bench on a quiet path just near the town of Jasper, Alta.Supplied
Ailsa Ross is the author of the novel Hovel.
On mountaintops all over the country, you’ll find summit registers in which hikers log their names, the date and maybe leave a sentence or two about the conditions on the peak. Sometimes people leave tender notes, but they’re rare. People tend to be tired, once they reach a mountaintop. Most just want to sit down and eat their sandwich.
Still, a few years ago, I wondered what would happen if summit registers were placed not on mountaintops but mountain bottoms, where people tend to just be going for a meander instead of a big hike. It didn’t take much effort to find a blank notebook and pen in a drawer at home and find out.
Early spring seemed like the right time to do this: with the wind still a little cold, the deer still grey rather than cinnamon red, but a feeling of renewal in the air, with the sun now rising early, and the pine needles beginning to shine like glass.
I wrote a note on the front page of the empty notebook:
“This notebook is for anything you’d like. You can share poems, pictures, laments, desires, stick figures, dried flowers, regrets, questions, jokes, the names of your favourite birds.”
I zipped the pen and notebook up in a sandwich bag, then left them on a bench on a quiet path just behind the town of Jasper, Alta., where I was living at the time.
The next afternoon, going back to the bench to see if anyone had written in the notebook, I tried not to get my hopes up. That was good, because no one had left a message.
I left another note:
“What is your favourite birdsong?”
I went away for the weekend and tried not to think too much about the notebook. But when I got back to town, I found two new notes. One read, “the common loon.” The other, “sparrows.”
An entry from the notebook.Ailsa Ross
After that, I could not rein the answers in. People were drawing flowers. Strangers were playing games of noughts and crosses with each other, new X’s and O’s scattering over the pages across the days. Someone called Robi wrote, “Robi saw a cat!” Someone called Pebbles wrote, “Pebbles was here!” I felt I was seeing something of the human heartbeat of the woods.
When I told a friend about how surprisingly popular the notebook on the bench was, she said it sounded like an analogue version of the community-watch app Nextdoor. When she described the kinds of messages that were left on such an app – complaints about parking, about kids playing – I thought it sounded like the opposite of the community notebook.
It sounded like using such an app would give me the feeling of shame I had the day my dog stopped to urinate on my neighbour’s perfect lawn. I’d not been paying attention to what she was doing. I’d been lost in a daydream. Suddenly coming to, the transgression the dog and I had made brought to mind Sartre’s keyhole thought experiment. In it, a person is fully absorbed in looking through a keyhole when they suddenly hear footsteps. They realize they are being watched. They realize they are an object in another person’s world. That feeling is not a good one. I felt haunted by shame for the duration of the walk, and found I missed the daydream I’d previously been immersed in.
The act of daydreaming is a skill downplayed in the modern world. It’s seen as being unproductive. Yet according to Wouter J. Hanegraaff, professor of History of Hermetic Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, the imaginative state engages a particular sense of being in the world, one that leads to a more transcendent understanding of the universe.
I think that’s why I instinctively placed the community notebook away from houses, on a relatively quiet path just behind the town. I knew it had to be in a place where people could really feel at peace, and maybe even daydream for a while.
As the seasons went by, the notebook took on the atmosphere of a house party. As heartfelt notes increasingly began to be left, it felt like that moment at a gathering when the energy has shifted down a notch, when most people have gone home, and those who remain are getting a little reflective among the low lighting and empty wine bottles. As someone who has never been able to organize a successful party in their life, seeing that atmosphere enter the pages of the notebook was more than exciting.
I recorded one note from a stranger which felt especially tender:
“I’ve been feeling very sad lately. For small reasons and some unknown. This is my first walk since the snow hit. I convinced myself to get out my PJs and watch the sunset. I missed this community notebook in summertime. Discovering it today feels like serendipity. I am committed to getting outside more this season. I won’t allow myself to slip into a snowy sadness. Thank you for this.”
Then they drew a small heart.
One day, the same acquaintance who’d asked if the community notebook felt like Nextdoor asked if I’d ever want to meet the notebook’s contributors in person. The insinuation was that a “real” community could be established.
I thought about that question for a long time. I wondered if I was being a coward, because I felt no pull to do this. I wondered if I enjoyed, too much, the feeling of being close to strangers without the awkwardness of meeting them in person. Then a stranger wrote in the notebook: “What a lovely thing it is to feel so close to people I’ve never met.”
I knew my answer then.