Chapter 3 Summary and Analysis

This chapter begins with the author's description of an isolated cabin she once inhabited in order to concentrate on a book she was working on (see "Objects/Places - The Island on Haro Strait"). The specific focus of her description is her narrative of how she learned to chop wood - initial mistakes (witnessed and commented upon by Doe and Bob, a pair of amused neighbors) followed by the realization that she was focusing on the wrong thing. She learned, she writes, to aim for the chopping block and not the wood. Doing so, she suggests, would get her through the wood, rather than just on its edges.

The second part of this chapter describes in some detail the often seemingly bizarre, sometimes even ritualistic, lengths to which the author went to prepare herself and/or to avoid actually writing what...