Wandering Home

Wandering Home by Bill McKibben

Another in my Wilderness Studies reading list. I have to say, I enjoyed this much more than I anticipated. It is McKibben's account of a walk he took from his home outside of Middlebury, Vt., to his home in the Adirondacks of New York. So it's a rich guy going for a walk.

But McKibben has some interesting things to say on this walk, particularly about wilderness and its definition. After a rumination on snow geese, for example, he writes, "If we're going to talk about wilderness...we ahve to face the truth that it's a little hard to separate out the natural and the artificial, a little hard to figure out exactly where we're planting our feet" (68). Exactly. I appreciate an author who is more about questions than answers.

Part of what keeps the book interesting is the cast of characters with whom McKibben makes his march. One portion of the hike he completes with the founder of the magazine Earth First!, a militant pro-wilderness publication. After years out west, this individual found his wilderness in the east: "I'd been in Tuscon five years. I was starting to really miss fresh water..I have the Eastern forst in my bones...wilderness [is] not just a Western thing" (79).

So maybe that struck me because I am in the midst of the eastern forest and often find myself pining for Western wildlands. But it strikes me, too, because I think it strikes to the fact that this elusive thing we call wilderness is really just a construction of our own minds. Wilderness is where we find it.

Case and point: In early August of this year, I was out on a pre-dawn jog on the dirt roads above our house. I was preoccupied and before I knew it I had stumbled on a steepish downslope, my shoulder had connected rather perfectly (or imperfectly) on a rock, and I was screaming in pain. In the suburban neighborhood where I'd grown up, my howls surely would have elicited some response from someone. But not here. I was in the woods. And they weren't woods that would fit the definition of wilderness in the Wilderness Act of 1964, But that didn't bring anyone to my rescue. So I started to walk out, every step sending a jolt of very strange pain up my arm.

To me, wilderness has always had a tinge of danger to it; it was a place where I wasn't in complete control. And it turned out, that place was far closer to my home than I thought.

The Solace of Open Spaces

 

The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich

This slim volume is a continuation of the Wilderness theme that has been dominating my reading for the past few months. It contains a series of essays, more or less chronological, from a New York City transplant to the western side of the Bighorn Mountains.

I was drawn to the book because of its title. That solace mentioned is certainly something I have felt many times during my wanderings out west. That the book was set in one of those stomping grounds was a happy accident I discovered in its first pages. It was pretty great to be reading about familiar places -- Shell and Sheridan, for example -- that I'm hoping to visit next year.

But knowing those places also made it hard to read. There is always some discomfort in reading someone else's description of a place you love. In this book, that was compounded by the author's citified background and with the authoritative way she writes about the place. She seems to insist that her truths are the truths of the land, which makes me suspicious. For example, after complaining of the way culture has romanticized cowboys, she writes, "Because these me work with animals, not machines or numbers, because they live outside in landscapes of torrential beauty, because they are confined to a place and a routine embellished with awesome variables, because calves die in the arms that pulled others into life, because they go to the mountains as if on a pilgrimage to find out what makes a herd of elk tick, their strength is also a softness, their toughness, a rare delicacy" (53). Seems to me she's replacing one romantic vision with another -- and no romantic vision can be particularly accurate.

In the end, though, it was a passage near the end of the book that wound up coloring the whole experience for me. It came as the author was describing a sacred Native ceremony she had been invited to attend. After being approached by some young males, she writes, "...they flirted with me, then undercut the dares with cruelty. "My grandmother hates white tourists," the one who had been eyeing my chest said. "You're missing the point of this ceremony," I told him. "And racism isn't a good thing anywhere" (114). Her response to this situation strikes me as incredibly tone deaf and ignorant. First, she was a white tourist. But more importantly, the author participates in the Great American Myth of Racism, which is that it consists of actions and words. It's not. Racism is a system, one that creates institutions that privileged one group of people over all others. It's pretty clear that Native peoples are not the beneficiaries of American institutions. There is a reason that Ehrlich can easy move from New York City to Shell, WY, where she is free to write about a culture she barely knows, but Native populations have a hard time making the transition from the Spokane Indian Reservation to Spokane proper. Erhlich's comment in this situation demonstrates how unaware she is of her own privilege, how little she understands the role of race in our country, and how much she is willing to ignore about the past to celebrate the present moment in which she finds herself. How can we trust someone so willfully ignorant about such a fundamental fact of American life?

The Monkey Wrench Gang

The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey

This year I'm launching a new elective at my school called Wilderness Studies. In addition to helping students deepen their thinking about wilderness, I'd like to connect them with literature about the outdoors. So many students read Hatchet and love it -- but never find another outdoorsy book they connect with as much. I read this one back in college, and thought it might be a good option for students.

The best part of the book, in my mind, is its opportunity for catharsis. It tells the story of three New Mexico strangers who meet on a raft trip down the Grand Canyon and who are drawn together for their disdain for modern encroachments into wild lands. So they decide to take action. They topple billboards, sabotage road-building equipment, and blow up bridges, all the while brilliantly evading their hapless pursuers. Their dream -- and I won't reveal whether they reach it -- is to topple the Hoover Dam, thus restoring Glen Canyon to its original beauty and rewilding the Colorado River. It is wonderful to see people fighting against modern consumerism and laziness and thoughtlessness and arrogance in such a brazen, successful way. I myself would love to blow up Rte. 107/12 between Pittsfield and Bethel and return the White River Valley to its wild state. What fly fishing it would be! Hayduke lives!

But I will say Ed Abbey has some strange ideas about wilderness. For the characters, and one can only assume Abbey himself, wilderness seems to be a place of unbound recreation for them. After all, they declare their love for littering roadsides with beer cans. Why? They don't like the road. And yet they love roads, as long as they are rough enough to keep their pursuers at bay but not so rough as to prevent their passage. It seems like a pretty selfish view of the wilderness.

The nail in the coffin for the book, at least for its inclusion in the course, though, is the way Abbey writes about the lone female character, Bonnie. She is, throughout the book, treated as an object. Abbey mentions her looks nearly every time she mentions her: "She looked lovely that morning: fresh as a primrose, the large violet eyes bright with exuberance and good humor, her mane of hair fragrant and rich, brushed to the gloss of burnished chestnut, glowing with glints of Scots copper" (165). Right. There is even a moment in the book when Hayduke rebuffs Bonnie's advances because he wants to ask Doc his permission to begin a relationship with her. As if Doc owned her. And all the while Bonnie knows these men are more or less bumbling idiots, she just can't resist them. She is definitely a figment of Abbey's imagination, his dream of a woman irresistibly and unquestionably drawn to his curmudgeonly self. I couldn't put the book in front of students without lots of discussion of this serious flaw in the book. And since these book clubs are meant to be more or less self run, that wasn't happening.

The Poet X

 

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

This coming-of-age novel-in-verse tells the story of Xiomara, who is struggling to find her voice in a home and a world that doesn't seem to want to hear it. Her notebook becomes her outlet as she turns her feelings and frustrations -- at the way men seem to think her body is theirs and at the way her mother's  religious devotion leaves so little room for doubt or questions -- which she turns into poems. Eventually, Xiomara's relationship with her mother comes to a head. On the one hand, the conflict numbs Xiomara and causes her to shrink away from her world; on the other, it gives her a kind of what-have-I-got-to-lose freedom that allows her to open up about her writing.

I remain conflicted about the trend in YA literature to write novels in verse. It seems too...easy? It would be more compelling, I think, to mix poetry in with other forms of writing, which might help better mirror the moods and experiences of the characters. Maybe that's just me. That said, this is quite a compelling novel. It brings up important issues and has a plot that keeps the reader deeply engaged. If only things didn't wrap up so neatly at the end...

Piecing Me Together

Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson

Like The Hate U Give, this book explores the perspective of a young black woman in contemporary America. Also like that more famous book, this novel features a ripped-from-the-headlines assault by police upon a young black person.

Of course, the comparison is, at the outset, unfair, a sign that the perspective provided in Piecing Me Together is too rare; it is the same impulse that compels reviewers to compare any novel by a Native American to a work by Sherman Alexie or Louise Erdrich.

Then again, the parallels between the books are real. Piecing Me Together tells the story of Jade, a young black woman who lives in an underprivileged section of Portland, Oregon. Like the main character of The Hate U Give, Jade is straddling two worlds: She has a scholarship to a fancy Portland private school but lives in North Portland, where she maintains her only true friendships.

But there is something I found more compelling about this book. Where the inner turmoil in The Hate U Give is precipitated by the main character witnessing police brutality, the racism Jade encounters is  much more "subtle" -- that is, easier for the white characters in the book, and perhaps the reader, to overlook. The rage Jade feels at the racism around her is simmering long before a police beating of an unarmed black woman boils it over. In this sense, the story is more universal, just like Jade's response. She does not, like the main character of The Hate U Give, face a high-stakes moment of truth in which she must choose to stand up for what is right. Instead, Jade faces the choice most of us face. She can easily do nothing. No one would fault her for it or even notice. Or she can try something. Of course, she chooses the latter. And she does it through art. In this way, Piecing Me Together sends the message that we all can do something to stand up for the rights of all people.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

On the surface, this surreal mystery is about a man's search for his wife. Toru Okada, who recently quite his low-level job at a law firm, wakes one day to find that his wife, Kumiko, has left him. Ostensibly, the book is about Okada's attempt to find her and win her back. But I think the book is really about Okada's search for himself -- really, for all of ourselves.

The wind-up bird of the title seems to refer to the fact that our lives are not really of our own choosing. We are like a mechanical animal, walking through life according to the a plan set in motion by some invisible hand. Okada explains, "This person, this self, this me, finally, was made somewhere else. Everything had come from somewhere else, and it would all go somewhere else. I was nothing but a pathway for the person known as me" (262). Another character, sent to convince Okada to give up his efforts to get his wife back, builds on the theme:  "The name is Ushikawa. That's ushi for "bull" and kawa for "river."Funny: the more I hear that, the more I feel like a real bull. I even feel a kind of closeness whenever I happen to see a bull out in a field somewhere. Names are funny things, don't you think, Mr. Okada? Take Okada, for example. Now, there's a nice, clean name: 'hill-field' I sometimes wish I had a normal name like that, but unfortunately, a surname is not something you're free to pick...They say a name expresses the thing it stands for, but I wonder if it isn't the other way around -- the thing gets more and more like its name" (428). Again, the key idea here is that the character has little choice in who he is, how he acts, or what he becomes. Finally, from a veterinarian in Japan's colonial outpost of Manchuria: "Not that he was a passive creature; indeed, he was more decisive than most, and he always saw his decisions through...He was certainly no fatalist as most people use the word. And yet never once in his life had he experienced certainty that he and he alone had arrived at a decision. He always had the sense that fate had forced him to decide things to suit its own convenience. On occasion, after the momentary satisfaction of having decided something of his own free will, he would see that things had been decided beforehand by an external power cleverly camouflaged as free will, mere bait thrown in his path to lure him into behaving as he was meant to" (509-510). Murakami seems to bring in Manchuria to point out the toll this way of thinking wreaks on the world. The battle between Japanese, Russian, and Chinese forces for control over the area result in untold horrors, carried out by people whose actions are unquestioningly carried out when they are "ordered" by superior officers.

It is this predictability in the world's actions, the fact that it is determined by the winding of a spring, allows certain people the ability to peer into the future and divine its events. Several of these figures pop up throughout the novel, including an old soldier named Honda and two sisters, Malta and Creto Kano.

But if the world is run like a wind-up bird, it begs the question: Who is doing the winding? Not these diviners -- and not anybody good. One of these people seems to be Okada's brother-in-law, Noboru Wataya, who seems to have the ability to wind, unwind, and rewind people to give them new personalities and behavioral patterns in order to serve his own purposes. It is with Wataya that Okada finally has to do battle to get Kumiko back. He does it by retreating underground, to a dried-up well on a neighboring property. There, in complete blackness, he is able to leave the "wind-up world" and enter the shadowy labyrinth where the winding happens. Okada explains, "Eventually, though, silence descended and began to burrow its way into the folds of my brain, one after another, like an insect laying eggs. I opened my eyes, then closed them again. The darknesses inside and out began to blend, and I began to move outside of myself, the container that held me. As always" (445).

Spoiler alert: Okada wins. Which complicates my thinking about Murakami's world view. Is he saying that we really don't have free will, that we are all subject to a fate determined by someone or something else? Or is he saying that this is true for those of us who don't stop to consider those forces that are trying to manipulate our identities, those who never hear the call of the wind-up bird? Okada's victory seems to point to the latter, to the idea that these dark forces can be overcome if confronted. But it takes work to find them.

The Library Book

The Library Book by Susan Orleans

This is ostensibly the story of the 1986 fire that ripped through Los Angeles' Central Library, but is really about much more. The book's 30 chapters alternate between three different perspectives. In one, Orleans tells the history of libraries in Los Angeles, helping to explain how the Central Library came to be built in the 1920s and its near-demolition in the 1970s and 1980s after years of neglect. Another focuses on the fire itself and the search for the person who set it, which investigators finally believed to be Harry Peak. Finally, Orleans sprinkles in short vignettes about the librarians who work at the library.

The history of Central Library was more fascinating that I thought it would be. One forgets how recently Los Angeles sprung out of the desert. A library -- not a standalone building -- was first opened in the place in the late 1800s. I was surprised by how progressive its head librarians were from the get-go. They seemed on a mission to reach out to the community from the very first, hellbent on upending any elitist pretensions people might have about who should have access to information. There were several characters as well, chief among them Charles Lummis, who appeared in Los Angeles in the 1880s to take a job at the LA Times. When he was hired, he was working in Ohio. Rather than take a train to LA, he decided to walk, capitalizing on the choice by writing a weekly column on his adventures that made him famous even before he arrived in his new town. His notoriety, and his sex, earned him the job as LA's librarian when the board decided to let go of the highly competent individual in the position because she was a she. That she, Mary Jones, did not go away quietly, instead fighting what became known as the Library Wars for her position. She lost. Lummis was fired, lasted a few good years and then was himself let go.

The story of the fire was also more interesting than I might have suspected, particularly in light of new approaches to arson investigations. Apparently, it used to be, and still is in some places, best practice to call something arson if no obvious other cause could be found. That is, if it could not be definitively proven that a fire was started by wiring or a faulty appliance or some such thing, it was declared arson. Unfortunately, investigators were often relying upon faulty assumptions when looking for the origin of a fire and so often overlooked the real cause of a fire. For instance, it used to be assumed that a fire burned the hottest at its origin. But that is apparently proven not to be the case. So now there is a national movement to free people wrongly convicted of arson. One man was in prison for the murder of his daughter for a fire he never set. This has impacted thousands of people. I had no idea!

There is a reason, though, that the book is not titled The Los Angeles Library Book, for all of these perspectives are really a chance for Orleans to explore the role that libraries have and will continue to play in our lives. Often thought of as mere lenders of books, libraries, particularly those in big cities, are in fact much more than that. Orleans focuses heavily on the role that libraries play for disadvantaged populations, particularly the homeless, for whom Central Library and thousands like it are a haven, a source of entertainment, and, in some cases, a way to connect to vital social services. In the end, I think it is this connection that Orleans argues that libraries, and the books within them, provide. They connect people to each other, to writers, to information and ideas, and, in the case of Central Library, to art. As Orleans closes, "Even the oddest, most particular book was written with that kind of crazy courage -- the writer's belief that someone would find his or her book important to read. I was struck by how precious and foolish and brave that belief is, and how necessary, and how full of hope it is to collect these books and manuscripts and preserve them. It declares that all these stories matter, and so does every effort to create something that connects us to one another, and to our past and to what is to come."

Neverwhere

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

In this book, Gaiman brings to life a world "underneath" the world we walk around in every day. Londoner Richard Mayhew encounters London Below one day on his way to dinner with his fiance, Jessica. They come to a girl who is clearly in distress and, over Jessica's objections, Richard brings her back to his apartment to help her recuperate. Little does Richard know that the girl, Door, is from London Below and that his contact with her banishes him from London Above -- that "normal" London he is used to -- and send him to London Below, which Gaiman explains is made up of souls who "fell through the cracks". Once there, Richard manages to find and join Door, who is on a quest to avenge the murder of her prominent family, all the while trying to go back to his old life. Along the way, he encounters all sorts of strange creatures and, of course, learns much about himself.

Gaiman clearly had fun creating London Below and imagining a world turn on its head. That makes it fun for the reader. And even if the plot is a little predictable, Gaiman nevertheless does a great job of keeping us wanting more. It's a world and a story to get lost in, and sometimes that's exactly what you want from a book. And there is something of a message: It seems to be that there is much fun and adventure to be had outside of the type of robotic life that Richard has at the beginning of the book. Our failure to find them might just be a failure of imagination.

Cold Mountain

 

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazer

Set in the waning days of the Civil War, this story is told from two, alternating perspectives. Inman is a Confederate soldier who, after suffering a wound at Petersburg and witnessing the horrors of war for nearly four years, decides to leave his hospital bed and journey home before he can be sent back to the front. He is driven by the hopes of reuniting with the other character, Ada, with whom he sparked a brief relationship before heading off to war. Despite leaving the fighting of the war, Inman's journey is nevertheless full of danger and violence. Instead of dodging bullets from Union guns, he now has to avoid the Home Guard, a group of wealthy planters and other men somehow exempt from military service who have made it their mission to capture -- and kill -- any and all deserters from the army who cross their path. Meanwhile, Ada has tribulations of her own. Her father recently died, leaving her penniless and with a mountain farm that she has no idea how to manage. Enter Ruby, who is as savvy and underprivileged as Ada is clueless and (formerly) rich. Together, they begin to put the farm to work and make plans to survive the coming winter.

I originally picked this book up because I'd heard of the movie version and because it bore a National Book Award medallion on its cover. Generally, the award is a sign of a great book. I'm not sure this was that. It was certainly engaging and drew me in, but, as many other critics have pointed out, the pace of the story is s-l-o-o-o-w. The book probably could have been a hundred pages or more shorter. And, oddly, the climax of the book, which comes very near the end, receives very little ink. It was odd that the moment the entire story built to passed so quickly. It made the ending seem abrupt, as if it were an afterthought. That said, I always find this period of history to be intriguing, and this one taught me something. I hadn't realized the extent of the terror of the Home Guard, which seemed in many ways like a prototypical KKK. If you're in the mood to return to the 19th century, this book will bring you there. But you could easily skip it and not miss much.