By Perri
We are still kicking around Florida, visiting with family and trying to be helpful. Not much adventuring to report. Nothing too crazy or brave either. (Unless committing to a few months in Florida and a change of residency counts… which it totally could). In this post, I thought I’d share a different side of our adventure: Our “Found Object” collection and the art/poetry collaboration it sparked.
Collecting… Van Life Style
Though we rid ourselves of a whole house full of stuff and live in 77 square foot van, we have been collecting things on the road. Surprising, right? There are boxes of rocks in our cupboards (small boxes…mostly), coasters from nifty restaurants and microbreweries, many (many!) maps, and a constantly changing pile of used books that move on to new homes as they are read.
But that’s not all we collect. We have a fascination with found objects.
When you live every day on public land, frequenting campgrounds and riverbanks, parks and rest areas, you find a surprising amount of random stuff: toys, tools, fishing gear, hats, socks (so many single socks!) And we’ve been collecting these as we go, though mostly in pictures: a “Found Object Photo Gallery” in our shared drive.
Objects Hold History
It’s a strange little project, I’ll admit, but an engrossing one. Objects hold history, after all. They are placemarkers for the stories that make up our lives. This is why it’s so hard to off load those chatchkes that gather dust on the mantel, the baby clothes and grade school Valentines, the danty heirloom dishes that belonged to your grandmother that you will never in a million years use. It’s why it was hard to give all that stuff up to take to the road.
Our found objects hold the memories of the places we’ve been. But they also spark our curiousity. We imagine their stories. Some seem obvious: a well-loved toy left behind at a rest area. Some are mysterious: a single rune stone found on a remote lake shore, or a set of brass knuckles discovered way out in the high desert of central Wyoming. Part of the charm (or horror) is that we will never really know.
A Collaboration
I mentioned the Found Object collection to our daughter Micah, an art student and designer, and she proposed an interesting collaboration. Together, we created a zine, combining her art and my musings.
Originally, I planned to write a piece of short fiction for each found object, but that was too much for Micah to screenprint, so we settled on poetry. I’m almost embarrassed to admit how all-in I was on this project. It was so much fun, and it got me reengaged with creative writing, a passion I’d abandoned over years of parenting and working and scrounging for money and time.
In this post, I thought I’d share a bit of our zine
Finding Meaning
So there you have it. Our random collection of found objects was repurposed as art and poetry. It wasn’t hard to find meaning in all the lost things. And I feel like I learned a lot about myself in the process. In fact, I am eager for more: more projects, more collaboration, more poetry and art.
Maybe there’ll even be a short story about those brass knuckles someday!
What a fun read! I often think of all the stuff I see on the ground as trash, or crap. Reading this reminds me of not only the places that I too have explored, but also the potential interesting stories behind all the things that people ha e left behind. Not that it makes it any better, I’m a leave no trace kind of guy, but it reminds me to imagine all the other people who have explored before me.
Thanks, Kyle. I appreciate your response! It’s true that most of the stuff we find along the way are litter, pure and simple. But some of these things are intriguing… and some are useful too. We once found an awesome re-chargeable flashlight… use it all the time a year later.