January 3, 2006 (2)

On the Fine Sport of Fjording

Some who have never participated in the sport have remarked on the apparent irony of going fjording in southwestern Georgia. “There are no fjords in southwest Georgia,” they might protest, or “you hillbilly, the word is ‘ford,’ not ‘fjord.’” To these misguided people I suggest a moment’s imaginative contemplation guided by the beacon lights of luminaries John Steinbeck and John McPhee.

Steinbeck, in Travels with Charley, understands that a journey’s need for a destination is purely formal. He writes,
In Spanish there is a word for which I can’t find a counterword in English. It is the verb vacilar, present participle vacilando. It does not mean vacillating at all. If one is vacilando, he is going somewhere but doesn’t greatly care if he gets there, although he has direction. My friend Jack Wagner has often, in Mexico, assumed this state of being. Let us say we wanted to walk in the streets of Mexico City but not at random. We would choose some article almost certain not to exist there and then diligently try to find it.
Where you’re going may not matter nearly so much as how you fail to get there. The word “destination” should be read with care, or at least an open mind.

John McPhee imparts similar wisdom about the futility of semantic formalism to the reader of Coming into the Country, a book about McPhee’s canoe trip in Alaska. I cannot quote McPhee exactly, but when describing his packlist, McPhee mentions his snakebite kit. He writes, approximately, “Of course, there are no snakes in Alaska. But what if one should suddenly appear? One would not want to be unprepared. My snakebite kit comes from Lynchburg, Tennessee.”

A destination may not mark the end of a journey and a snakebit kit may be wholly unrelated to reptilian venom. Language is not so simple. Language is a Miss to be studied, understood and revered. A speaker should learn her rules, although she is complex and ever-changing, and master them as best he can. But although language requires attentiveness, she demands interpretation. Sometimes the rules of language change and what were once canonized boundaries may be disregarded and the speaker may reach delicately, or boldly, beyond etched lines so long as the result is mutually pleasurable to speaker and listener. Sometimes ford may become fjord. Invention is as important as lawfulness. A speaker using only the sequences and techniques of his predecessors leaves an unsatisfied partner.