B O O K OF W A L K S
The Lost Pond is a wilded sanctuary space in Massachusetts. It includes long, meandering trails, a kettle hole, and a quaking bog. A section of the surrounding woods was recently remediated, because of its proximity to the (now closed) town dump. When our beautiful, vibrant son Lucas unexpectedly died in his sleep in 2017, we walked these paths in solace, and made a provisional shrine in the adjacent woods with sticks and flowers.
I began inviting people to walk with me through the trails of the Lost Pond in 2019. The invitation was not for an ordinary walk, it was to join me on an audio-walk I made in collaboration with my musician friends. It involved walking while listening to geo-located music, sounds, and song, along with live storytelling and trail guiding by me. I guided this audio-walk hundreds of times, with all kinds of walking companions, through all kinds of New England weather. It became a repetitive grief ritual for me, pressing my feet over and over into the soft, well-worn ground of mourning.
The Book of Walks operates like a walk itself, with a poetic recounting of some of the most memorable walks over the first 2 years. It simulates the path we walk, and acts as a spacious grief meditation for the reader.
Designed by John Kramer, this book is a beautiful object. Inside the cover, you’ll find a hand-painted map of the woods, stitched binding, an insightful essay by sculptor Jill Slosburg-Ackerman, a QR code to access the 25 minute audio, and stunning images by the photographer Kelly Davidson and Elijah Mickelson. Text and other imagery by Deb Todd Wheeler. Edited by Tessa Day.
Proceeds from the sale of this book go to support the vital works of The Children’s Room in Arlington, MA.
"In the otherworld of in articulable grief, Wheeler was drawn to the Lost Pond sanctuary, 30-some acres surrounding a kettle pond in Brookline Massachusetts. There she walked, losing herself on the paths, by the bog, under the trees, by the flowered shine shrine that's emerged from the Earth from her son Lucas. The wilderness of grief, its heaving irrationality, the way it widen comments, deepens, clarifies the connection with all things, puts one at the edge of civilization, on the outskirts of the tame and fixable, and this is the place where Wheeler was.
In text and image Radio Silence: Book of Walks is a memorial, an elegy, a “walking lament”, an exploration of absence and presence. She wrestles with the biggest questions that we can face: “how to be so afraid, and still keep moving”;” what is loving distance?”; "does this help?" Lost Pond becomes a habitat for groundlessness and Wheeler writes of an anger that feels “sacred, holy, elemental, dangerous”. The project shows what's gone – a person, the future, as you knew it – and what's still here, whispering, drumming, weeping, singing in a language we don't know we know. The volume exists in a different pitch, and echoes in the ear (and deeper in than that) long after an encounter with it."
-Nina Maclaughlan, Boston Globe, New England Literary News
“RADIO SILENCE Book of Walks has a stillness to it. It’s like a capacious stopping point, a place where it’s safe to feel your way into the crannies of loss and love.” -Cate McQuaid
