This is how I find refuge. Saturday, migraines were threatening, but Rob and I took off for Six Mile Creek, found a rock far downstream from the teenagers frolicking under the falls, and hung out. We lay in the sunshine, we made out on the warm rock, and, when things got too hot, we sat in the just-below-tepid water and cooled off.
You can't float in Six Mile Creek. While it smells of sulfur, it isn't nearly the salt dish that comprises the Great Salt Lake. And yet, in reading Terry Tempest Williams' Refuge, I am reminded of all the ways that I have found nature to be my haven when the world feels like it's going mad.
So many parts of this book call to me. I recommend it constantly, and this semester, I've assigned it to my class.
Rather than open with a series of questions, I want to to open with a series of quotations from the book.
I don't know what your reactions to the book are going to be, so I'm simply going to point out to you those moments of prose where I stopped reading and had to think for a while.
Tell me what made you think. What you thought. What you want this book to do for you.
And let's, as always, chat.
I want to emphasize that I don't always agree with the passages that I cite: but I recognize that some of them are provocative enough that entire discussions could take off simply from them.
---
Most of the women in my family are dead. Cancer. At thirty-four, I became the matriarch of my family. The losses I encountered at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge as Great Salt Lake was rising helped me to face the losses within my family. When most people had given up on the Refuge, saying the birds were gone, I was drawn further into its essence. In the same way that when someone is dying many retreat, I chose to stay.
--
We spoke of rage. Of women and landscape. How our bodies and the body of the earth have been mined.
"It has everything to do with intimacy," I said. "Men define intimacy through their bodies. It is physical. They define intimacy with the land in the same with the land in the same way.
"Many men have forgotten what they are connected to," my friend added. "Subjugation of women and nature may be a loss of intimacy within themselves."
---
It is strange to feel change coming. It's easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to accompany it like birds flocking before a storm. We go about our business witht the usual alacrity, while in the pit of our stomach there is a sense of something tenuous.
These moments of peripheral perceptions are short, sharp flashes of insight we tend to discount like seeing the movement of an animal from the corner of our eye. We turn and there is nothing there. They are the strong and subtle impressions we allow to slip away.
I had been feeling fey for months.
---
I know the solitude my mother speaks of. It is what sustains me and protects me from my min. It renders me fully present. I am desert. I am mountains. I am Great Salt Lake. There are other languages being spoken by wind, water, and wings. There are other lives to consider: avocets, stilts, and stones. Peace is the perspective found in patterns. When I see ring-billed gulls picking on the flesh of of decaying carp, I am less afraid of death. We are no more and no less than the life that surrounds us. My fears surface in my isolation. My serenity surfaces in my solitude.
---
The cancer process is not unlike the creative process. Ideas emerge slowly, quietly, invisibly at first. They are most often abnormal thoughts, thoughts that disrupt the quotidian, the accustomed. They divide and multiply, become invasive. With time, they congeal, consolidate, and make themselves conscious. An idea surfaces and demands total attention. I take it from my body and give it away.
---
Tonight I watch the sun sink behind the lake. The clouds looked like rainbow trout swimming in a lapis sky. I can honor its beauty or resent the smog in this valley which makes it possible. Either way, I am deceiving myself.
These are all thoughts that have stayed with me. We can pick up on one of these, or talk about what has affected you. Either way, I'm eager to explore this extraordinary book with you all.
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Comments
Along with that sense of solace comes a commitment to saving that land so that my children, my grandchildren, my kin, will be able to find the same solace.
And yet, I'm reminded that the earth is not here to be my personal playground. It's here for all of us. We all have a responsibility to it, and truth is, if we wind up destroying our habitat so that we die off as a species, some other species will take over, the earth will renew itself, and we'll be the ones who miss out.
I did write to Terry Tempest Williams, and dropped the two names of her author friends that I know (Tweit and Pyle), and suggested that she contact you so that you could interview her for OS. I hope that somehow she finds my email and connects. What a treat that would be for you and for us.
So much of what she writes resonates with me, for example, the passage about how she can "feel change coming." I've never put that feeling into words before. I've probably never told anyone about it. But I can "feel" that too.
I so relate to the "idea as cancer" metaphor, particularly after my 9 or so months here on OS. I can see when fellow writers "catch" the germination of a seed of thought and take it to one if its glorious conclusions. I also see when we focus too long on an idea or word and it becomes toxic. I think the difference happens in perhaps milliseconds not even minutes, and is something we all have to watch out for.
I hope someone else comments, or else it will be just us, which is fine with me. Terry Tempest Williams is probably the best writer I've been introduced to this year, and that was by you.
denese
I am here - a little late but have been thinking about the book all day. As I said in an earlier comment, my mom bought me Refuge when we went together to hear Terry read from it at an environmental fundraiser. Her inscription in the book (which I will have sitting next to me next time I comment so I can copy it for you) means as much to me as anything she has ever written.
Many of the quotes you have selected above are ones that I have written down in my journal. As I re-read the book this past week, I totally thought of you, Lorraine, when I read that exact passage about rage. I struggled, as I looked at my loving husband, to fully agree with the idea that men define intimacy only as something physical. I believe that is probably the case for many but I hate the idea of that as a blanket statement for all men. I do believe my husband is as intimately attached to the physical environment as he is to the physical body -and am I. But I love the line "Many men have forgotten what they are connected to." It feels true to me, but again, I think it feels true for many women as well in our culture.
I agree with Denise about really responding to the idea of being able to feel change coming -and I recognized my own self in the action of ignoring that feeling.
There are so many layers to this book for me. It is one of the most profound things I have read. I hardly know how to comment except to say that I think her interweaving her journey with her mother and that of the bird refuge was brilliant, and painful, and magical. If I could meet only one author and spend time with them, it would be her.
"Melissa,
This book comes to you through the love of your Mother, in the name of Women and the healing grace of the Earth.
Refuge.
Fondly,
Terry Tempest Williams"
She has probably signed a lot of books in a similar way, but it feels like she wrote that just for me.
Mamoore--the whole quotation about men and the environment--I threw that in there because it's provocative, but it's not something I necessarily agree with. It actually, forgive me for this, of something that Machiavelli wrote in his THE DISCOURSES about the relationship between men and the earth.
Thank you, Denese and Mamoore for commenting on this remarkable book. Tomorrow morning, I'll have more to say, in hopes that other people will have joined the conversation.
One of the questions I contemplate tonight is whether we can have a book club here, whether we are all too busy, or whether we have just chosen books that have not been "popular." I know that Shaggylocks didn't get a lot from TINKERS, either.
Just stuff to think about.
I'll tune in tomorrow Lorraine. Maybe something surprising will happen?
denese
I too have always seen and used nature as my solace/refuge/guide throughout some rough times. I find incredible peace knowing that life continues all around me and completely oblivious to the drama that unfolds and has unfolded in my life at various stages.
First chance I get I will be seeking out this book. Thank you Lorraine for suggesting it and sharing as many passages from the book as you have. With Denese saying "It is such a wonder for anyone who has an affinity for deep ecology, feminism, spiritualism... [yes I believe this is a word] and family topics and issues" there is much here that intrigues me. It is a timely topic for me as well. My mother has been ill. I have taken on a sort of matriarch role in the family and this after being fairly depressed and adrift.
Too bad there are not more who are entering into the discussion but perhaps it is early yet? It would certainly be interesting to hear the male perspective.
I have often thought that the connection between humans and nature is simply different in the western U.S. than in places that are more populous and less wild. Nature is more of a force, and there's no illusion that it has been or ever can be tamed. (Destroyed, perhaps, and that's a tangent I don't want to take now.) Nature here isn't something we visit, or even a place we inhabit; the relationship is far more elemental.
I disagree somewhat with TTW about men defining intimacy through their bodies, compared to the way women do. I think of the casual but infinitely deep physicality of some women with their children, and the shallow sexuality that some men substitute for real intimacy. While my husband and I share a love for the outdoors, I suspect that, most often, he tries to conquer it and I merge with it. Because he is a gentle, cerebral person and not, at heart, a conquistador, I am inclined to think that inclination plays out much more strongly in other men. Perhaps, too, we women often feel more because we allow ourselves to be touched.
My father is a birder, and birding is the activity we share, the language we use (in our very delicate and geometrically acute intimacy) to allude to real issues. He raised me as a naturalist, taught me to see physical relationships clearly and objectively, and, through them, to understand the interconnectedness of everything in the world. A birder absorbs a great deal of information almost unthinkingly — size, shape, color, markings, tail length, bill shape, leg formation, wing angle, habitat, flight pattern, and so on — and by piecing all that together comes to some (admittedly imperfect) understanding of the life of that creature. Those skills can be extrapolated very successfully.
Likewise, especially in the West, birds and humans (and every other living thing) do share habitat concerns very visibly. In the 25 years we have lived here, I have watched how climate change has affected migration patterns, breeding schedules, range limitations, and so forth. I have watched southern birds extend their ranges both northward and upward; I have watched mountain birds disappear entirely from this region because there is no higher terrain to claim. At the same time, I have watched land that once supported subsistence agriculture either become completely barren or be taken over by invasive flora.
Climate change is far from the only force at work. Human encroachment for housing, mining, logging, oil and gas, and even recreation has changed the landscape immensely. The land fights back and often wins. All this week I have watched from my office window as the smoke from a wildfire created huge thunderclouds above it. Tonight, I can smell that smoke, although the fire is more than 30 miles distant and the wind is blowing away from me. I know, intimately, the land that is being stripped. It is being altered, and my relationship with it must shift as well.
I realize I'm too tired to write well tonight, but I want to touch on one more point. The complexities of the relationship between humans and radiation should not be reduced to linear form. Here, we are all downwinders. (Ich bin ein ...) We all know people whose families took quilts out onto the mesas to sit on while they ate their picnics and watch the mushroom clouds to the west and south. We have all known people who were uranium miners, millers and truckers. We know that the dangers of radon exposure in the mines were purposefully hidden. We know that the government has dragged its feet on administering RECA funds, dragged them so long that those who should have qualified are now dead. We have all watched what they have suffered. Now we see the price of uranium rising and interest grow in reopening the mines and building new mills. We see the terrible choices that will be made between poverty now and potential debilitation later. Decay is not just a metaphor here; it is a visible reality. Defining ourselves in relationship with it makes sense to me, here. It may not to those of you who are more safely buffered from the physical world.
dlschubenn, if Lorraine's quotes and comments intrigue you, you will love the book. And probably her other writing as well.
Highlonesome, I think you touched on some of the really powerful visions of this book. The idea of being a downwinder and watching those mushroom clouds as a family activity is terrfiying. Your response to it comes from a level of experience I don't have but I feel your passion about this issue even when you say you are too tired to write well.
My mom is a casual birder, a watch out her window while she eats breakfast or gaze into the sky while she rests in her Wyoming yard kind of birder. But she has the same passion for birds that TTW does and maybe that is one more reason I love this book. My mom was diagnosed with Parkinsons in June and I think that made Refuge harder for me to read this time around. It isn't cancer, but it is going to make the end of her life a different vision than what any of us had ever imagined. She will eventually have to move away from her beautiful 70 acres in the foothills of the Big Horn Mts. because life there will be too hard. She said she wants a few more years to enjoy it if she can, to absorb it. It is only a little death, in the scheme of things, but a powerful one because she has lived alone there for 25 years and that land is her soul.
I hope that even if people haven't commented here, that more have taken the time to read this book. I will try to check in throughout the day. As for the future of the book club- I have noticed many people are on OS much less often in summer. Maybe it will pick back up again when we are all hibernating?
You may not know that I grew up on the west coast, just north of Seattle. Despite living in the shadow of some of the most magnificent scenery, my parents were not naturalists in any way. They loved their walks on the beach, but heading up into the mountains to hike never crossed their minds.
Those things I learned in the company of friends. Not only what it is to climb up to 8 or 10 thousand feet, and see the world from that perspective, but also to start to learn to identify what plants, trees, birds I was looking at. I've written about this before, so don't want to bore anyone.
Ironically, when I moved out here to the east, it was like discovering some part of myself that I hadn't known was missing. Deeply resentful at first (how dare you call those things mountains?), I have come to love the rolling hills here above Cayuga's waters.
And, because I'm out in the country, I'm frequently kept company by birds I never saw out west (turkeys, indigo buntings, cardinals, all kinds of woodpeckers, catbirds, etc.) and by plants I have had to learn the name of.
And I am filled with anger now, as I was back then, when I realized that the west was a dumping ground. Whole swathes of eastern Washington with enough radioactive waste buried underneath it to poison the earth for generations. Abandoned uranium mines. Clear cuts. (I FUCKING hate clear cuts). Erosion. All the shit that we did out there. (Did you know that in Seattle, they flattened an entire hill and dumped it into Puget Sound? Denny Hill no longer exists)
I don't buy the argument about men and nature, by the way. Most of the people who have taken me into the dark, high woods and mountains have been men, sharing with me the thing that makes them hum. I don't hang out with men whose idea of interacting with nature is to drive their ATVs or snowmobiles through wilderness. I hike. I take photographs. I pack out my trash.
So, lots to agree with you here.
I wish my students had had these experiences, sometimes, but it's why I have them read about this stuff, look at photographs, even sometimes watch movies. I have a "dream course" in which I would take my most motivated writers out west for a week and just let them experience a landscape that will blow their minds.
In my case, I'm a nature autodidact.
I've noticed all the typos in the essay, and will do my damndest to fix them, pronto.
Thank you so much for contributing to this conversation.
I have a thousand different thoughts on the book, the passages cited here, and the discussion in the comments. It is killing me that I don't have more time to participate right now.
One brief comment though - I have also been reading a book by depth psychologist and wilderness guide Bill Plotkin, and one of his central tenets is that intimacy with nature is a fundamental requirement for true individual and collective wholeness (engaged, authentic adulthood and spirituality) which is required for genuine lasting societal change. So yes, our loss of connection and intimacy with nature is at the root of so many of our modern ailments, both as individuals and societies. I am fascinated at the ways in which the ideas in these two books are intersecting - talk about synchronicity!
There is a lot of fodder for discussion here - I would love to keep it going.
Hazel, the reason I loved this book so much is that I know the dis-ease that can happen from being disconnected from "place". Fifteen years ago we moved to Louisiana from the West where I was born and raised and had a very close relationship to nature, and it nearly killed me. I won't go into the grisly details but after panic attacks and depression at year two and a total freak out about six years ago, I finally recovered to almost my full pre-move self. I did go to some wonderful therapists/life coaches that helped me tremendously, but I wish they had read Refuge and other similar ecologist/authors such as Bob Pyle and Susan Tweit that talk about the relationship of an individual to the land and how that equates to health, but they didn't. So the advice I got was that I should get over wanting to "get the hell out of Dodge" (which they said was a natural instinct but one that focused on a false problem or need) and focus on the issues that were causing my distress, namely, I think my lack of self development and focus on my husband's development.
Years later, I think this was bunk and I do think that moving back to my heart place would have alleviated my distress and allowed me to recover, rejuvenate and achieve some equilibrium from which to be myself..
I don't know if I'm making any sense. I just wanted to say that being introduced to this book by Lorraine was like "coming home" and I'm deeply grateful for it.
denese
Ms. Williams is particularly insightful in describing the natural world and how it relates to her life, her family and her friends, but mostly women in those areas. I think that it is the combination of these insights that makes such a connection with women. Much of what she writes about are the 'Sense of Place' or 'Politics of Place', descriptions of the changes in the people, flora, or fauna of the beautiful places she has lived. Her passion in those descriptions is what most captivates me with her writing.
In the discussion so far, there is some discussion of how men fit into the picture. It is essentially a woman's book, so I do understand how men might read it, not agree, or not find much to identify with, just as some men's books might hold little interest for women - and that in general, not in particular. Just as I don't agree with Ms. Williams' characterization of all men wanting to subdue Nature. I believe these generalizations and truisms from the past have little relevance in today's world for either men or women. It is much more complicated than that.
I have lived most of my adult life in wilderness areas. I've watched them change in my lifetime, watched the demise of huge glaciers, the loss of permafrost in the Arctic, and the motorization of much of the West and North. I watched my father die of pancreatic cancer, a doctor whose mother died of diabetes. It is difficult for me, so I don't think it is particularly a gender issue, but a human one.
I have read the book twice in the past 18 years
I met Terry many years ago when she was working at the Teton Science School in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Her first book, The Secret Language of Snow, was excellent, and every book thereafter has had a tremendous amount of passion for the land, creatures, wild nature, and for the people who live in these special places. This past winter another friend wrote a book about living in a 'place': Monticello, Utah. The book is Trespass, by Amy Irvine, the neice of one of my best friends. I again identified strongly with the book because we were born and raised in Salt Lake City, and we have both moved into rural areas of the state where we may or may not fit in. It's a book about not fitting in, but might appeal to a similar audience for its 'Politics of Place' and her love for a place, this time in spite of her relationship to the community.
For us, "work" that is connected to place would be the ideal. It's just never materialized for us. I think there has to be a book or a conversation about how work takes us away from "place", and how that's hard to resist, particularly for men, who are brought up to believe they are the 'bread winners' and therefore are hard pressed to follow their hearts and go to their perfect place, and instead, follow the money.
Anyway, Ralph, he would agree with you.
denese
Denise,
How interesting that you met in Tok. That is a small world; hardly anyone has ever been there, let alone worked there. What river were you on? It seems I know everyone in the state, so I'm always interested when I see someone from Alaska. I'm in Jackson Hole Wyoming this week for a reunion with old park rangers doing a short documentary on a rescue we did years ago. But I go to Colorado every winter to house=sit for friends, ski, and climb. Maybe that's why I love Terry Tempest and her works. The rise of the Great Salt Lake was a natural phenomenon, but a huge disaster to many people. The roads, lands, and farms in a huge area were inundated; enormous pumps tried to take down the lake level to keep I-80 out of Salt Lake open. Yet this disaster was particularly horrible for the author. And it came at a very stressful and emotional time for her. It made me think about what other literature relating to natural disasters and human loss have been written, such as from Huricane Katrina and New Orleans, or the dust bowl days in Oklahoma, or the great Galveston flood, or the rise of the Mississippi river at times in the midwest, inundating whole towns. It is such a touchstone for great writing, drama, and history. Nice that Terry connected it and made it memorable for us.
I met Terry many years ago when she was working at the Teton Science School in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Her first book, The Secret Language of Snow, was excellent, and every book thereafter has had a tremendous amount of passion for the land, creatures, wild nature, and for the people who live in these special places. This past winter another friend wrote a book about living in a 'place': Monticello, Utah. The book is Trespass, by Amy Irvine, the neice of one of my best friends. I again identified strongly with the book because we were born and raised in Salt Lake City, and we have both moved into rural areas of the state where we may or may not fit in. It's a book about not fitting in, but might appeal to a similar audience for its 'Politics of Place' and her love for a place, this time in spite of her relationship to the community. The rise of the Great Salt Lake was a natural phenomenon, but a huge disaster to many people. The roads, lands, and farms in a huge area were inundated; enormous pumps tried to take down the lake level to keep I-80 out of Salt Lake open. Yet this disaster was particularly horrible for the author. And it came at a very stressful and emotional time for her. It made me think about what other literature relating to natural disasters and human loss have been written, such as from Huricane Katrina and New Orleans, or the dust bowl days in Oklahoma, or the great Galveston flood, or the rise of the Mississippi river at times in the midwest, inundating whole towns. It is such a touchstone for great writing, drama, and history. Nice that Terry connected it and made it memorable for us.
I met Terry many years ago when she was working at the Teton Science School in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Her first book, The Secret Language of Snow, was excellent, and every book thereafter has had a tremendous amount of passion for the land, creatures, wild nature, and for the people who live in these special places. This past winter another friend wrote a book about living in a 'place': Monticello, Utah. The book is Trespass, by Amy Irvine, the neice of one of my best friends. I again identified strongly with the book because we were born and raised in Salt Lake City, and we have both moved into rural areas of the state where we may or may not fit in. It's a book about not fitting in, but might appeal to a similar audience for its 'Politics of Place' and her love for a place, this time in spite of her relationship to the community. Southern Utah is also dear to my heart, since my mother was from Panguitch, Utah. I've read all of Ed Abbey's works; I'm reading Desert Solitaire for the 4th time right now! Years ago I wrote three essays for a book that Terry wrote, called NEW GENESIS. I was honored to have been a part of the book. The West and its writing is particularly fascinating for me.
Whoever started this OS Bookclub should be congratulated for picking REFUGE. Maybe the forum should go on for a few more than just August 5...I almost missed it, and maybe others did, too. Perhaps it will catch on more, since I only stumbled onto it by chance a few weeks ago when you picked the next book. Now I'm going back and reading TINKERS. All the best to the organizers!!!!
I don't think of Refuge as a woman's book. It's why I chose that provocative quotation there--so that people would argue with her and with me that it's not a woman's book. I think she wrote that in a moment of despair, and given the other books of hers that I have read, her relationship with her husband is as tied to the land as she is.
I also love Gretel Ehrlic. Her Solace of Open Spaces spoke to me so much right after Yves died.
This semester, I'm teaching a book I don't particularly like, but I want my students to see nature from another perspective. So, I'm going to have them read INTO THE WILD. Any comments?
Other books that my students have loved are CONFESSIONS OF A CRACKER CHILDHOOD, about growing up in a junkyard in Georgia and developing a deep love for the woods and for nature.
I read Stegner years ago. ANGLE OF REPOSE still ranks as one of my favorites. I love Nancy Mairs.
There's a great essay in the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS--online and free--by Michael Chabon about growing up exploring the wilderness outside his backyard.
I could go on and on. And I will. But I need to eat.
And yes, no reason to think that we can't continue this conversation as people read and want to comment. I'm delighted to see so many people show up.
The Chicken Saloon was our hangout.
We can PM if you want more information.
Ralph, that's not a jab at you, not at all. I definitely want to read your thoughts. I'd just like to be able to say, "This is my relationship" and have that stand alone.
Lorraine, have you read Ivan Doig's fiction?
I'll have to go through my books when I'm more awake and comment more, but I love this discussion.
I'll have to go through my books when I'm more awake and comment more, but I love this discussion.
Another favorite from my shelves...Barry Lopez. I also have a huge anthology of Montana wriiters called The Last Best Place which contains many of those we have mentioned.
Walking Nature Home by Susan Tweit
and
Sky Time in Gray's River by Robert Michael Pyle
Susan is a friend I met through blogging and her blog: http://susanjtweit.typepad.com/walkingnaturehome/
Her book describes how she healed herself from a debilitating disease through her love of place/nature and through the love and support of her husband. She lives and writes in Salida, CO.
And Bob Pyle happens to be a famous Leperdopterist I met through Susan. She and I were discussing Rich's and my trip out west this summer, and when I told her I couldn't see her in CO, and told her where we were going instead, which in part was Gray's River, WA, my mother's hometown and where her Swedish homestead still stands, Susan introduced me to Bob, who has made his home there for the last 30 years. Bob writes about his love of Gray's River and their people, many of whom are my mother's Swedish relatives and how that place changed his life, as "place" often can.
I have Annie Dillard's books sitting on my nightstand.
denese
How's the skiing? I would be game.
Bob and Susan know Terry and they often teach together.
denese