North Woods

Now 75, Teale lives a reclusive life in the north woods. After he falls and fractures his leg, a nurse tends to him. A Portuguese immigrant, her name is Ana: “She was fifty-four. Temporary was what the daughter told her. Temporary assistance in matters of everyday life. House a bit run down too, could use some tidying up” (163).

Ana is shocked by the rundown state of the house and the man, who appears deathly ill. As she cares for him, she notices scars that indicate Teale attempted death by suicide in the past. Over time, she cleans the clutter and restores him to health. The artist is grateful for Ana’s care and companionship. When he’s strong enough and winter ends, they walk the property: “He spoke of the woods, the trees, the spring birds. It was like being with a child, all this naming, like being with Adam, and all she had to do was listen and he was glad to speak” (166). Their friendship grows, and Ana falls in love with Teale. By June, she arranges to have painting supplies sent to the north woods, and he begins creating landscapes again.

Once winter returns, they take turns reading. One day, Teale asks Ana to fetch a book from the house’s library, and she discovers a packet of letters tucked behind it. She reads Teale’s correspondence with Nash and learns his secret. In January, a letter addressed to Teale arrives, and Ana opens it. She’s shocked to realize that Teale must have written to Nash recently, and the letter is the author’s reply. In it, he agrees to come to the north woods home to rekindle his romance with Teale: “The short answer is Yes. I would love to come. I await only your response to tell me when” (170).

Ana pauses to consider her dilemma. She decides against telling Teale about the letter: “The decision simple. Once, long ago, he’d erred and then lost everything. Now he had her. Would need her in the end” (171). She destroys the letter and never tells Teale about it. When he dies, he leaves Ana the house. One winter’s day, she can’t bear to keep these secrets any longer, so she goes out to the woods and digs a hole in the earth. Then, she whispers both her secret and Teale’s into the ground and covers the hole with dirt.

This interlude is yet another song composed by the grave sisters. It’s an ode to December and speaks of the way that winter holds everything in its frozen grip:

And seizes now the very cold:

The glass bulb cracks, the mercury spills.

As even sunlight turns to ice

While Time itself goes quietly still (176).

At the beginning of the 20th century, a sham medium named Anastasia Rossi is summoned to the house in the north woods to conduct a séance. Anastasia is an experienced practitioner who has been in business for 30 years. She doesn’t really believe in the supernatural but is skilled at reading people and faking trances. She’s cynically aware that she’s staging dramas for her patrons and is well paid to indulge their credulity: “The kind of circus mystic that a certain class expected. But there was an honesty to such a costume, for it made clear that what would happen was, on a fundamental level, theatre” (182).

The current owner of the Teale property is a wealthy button manufacturer named Farnsworth. He bought the property from Ana and expanded it. His intention is to convert it into a private hunting lodge for wealthy gentlemen. In honor of the now-endangered mountain lion, he names the place Catamount Lodge and even harbors the ambition that President Teddy Roosevelt might stay there to shoot some of the remaining wildlife. Farnsworth is proud of the animals he has killed thus far and has their heads mounted on every wall. He tells Anastasia, “Look at the walls around you. White-tailed deer. Black bear. Bobcat. Moose. Each one of these animals was taken within these very woods” (183).

Farnsworth’s dreams of a sportsman’s paradise are threatened by something his wife experiences. Compared to her bombastic husband, she’s a frail, timid creature. After much coaxing from Anastasia, she reveals that she has witnessed the ghosts of two men cavorting with one another. She can’t bring herself to describe their activity as sodomy: “The word. The word for what they were doing. It rhymes…with…pottery…with bonhomie…with psalmody” (188). Mrs. Farnsworth is so distraught by this disclosure that Anastasia decides to postpone the séance to the following evening. Before the event, she carries on a sexual dalliance with Mr. Farnsworth, who thinks his wife is mad and ghosts don’t exist. Anastasia doesn’t believe in ghosts either but pretends she does to maintain her credibility.

When the séance begins, Anastasia is shocked to see the apparition of two men. Although unknown to the Farnsworths, they’re Teale and Nash, who resumed their love affair after death: “Anastasia, terrified, transfixed, could see a pair of half-formed beings, one of pure white light and the other of a thousand shifting colors. Tumbling, playful, luminous creatures” (201-02). The Farnsworths see them too, but the figures vanish without speaking. Then, another figure appears. For the first time in her life, Anastasia channels an authentic message from beyond. She doesn’t know the man, but the text suggests that Charles Osgood has appeared: “The light and words entered her. ‘He asks,’ she said, ‘what you have done to his apple trees’” (203).

The year is now roughly 1915, and the narrative shifts to a description of the spread of a fungus that attacks the chestnut trees in the area. Chestnut blight is claiming all the mature trees of the species along the east coast, eventually including those in the north woods: “And so, until now, this forest has been spared [...] In the spring, the leaves are soft and green, with hints of russet. They are thriving when the inoculum sets down” (209).