Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Retrospective Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2000 The al nguage of trees Melanie Dylan Fox Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Fox, Melanie Dylan, "The al nguage of trees" (2000). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 14440. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/14440 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Retrospective Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The language of trees by Melanle Dylan Fox A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Major: English (Creative Writing) Major Professor: Sheiyl St. Germain Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 2000 Copyright ©Melanie Dylan Fox, 2000. AU rights reserved. ii Graduate College Iowa State University This is to certify that the Master's thesis of Melanie Dylan Fox has met the thesis reqijirements ofIowa State University Signatures have been redactedforprivacy m DEDICATION For eveiyone who has helped me understand and translate the voices, memories, and stories ofthe sequoia forest. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS PRELUDE 1 THE FIRST WORDS 7 GIANT FOREST. 20 THROUGH A FIRE'S EYES 36 COMMUNION 50 URSUS AMERICANUS: THE IDEA OF A BEAR 68 NIGHTHIKING 88 RECOGNIZING BEAUTY 1Q2 APPENDIX A. MAP OF GIANT FORESTAREA 120 APPENDIX B. BEAR MANAGEMENT PLAN EXCERPT 122 REFERENCES 125 V ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The encouragement and assistance of a nimiber ofindividuals has been essential in the completion of this project, and I would like to express my sincere gratitude for their continued support. First and foremost, I wish to thank Dr. Sheiyl St. Germain, Chair of my graduate committee, and my writing tnentor. Her unwavering patience and expertise have guided, directed and focused these stories, and her wisdom has shown me the unbounded potential of the nonfiction genre. I would also like to thank the other two, important members of my thesis committee, Dr. Neil Nakadate, for his careful attention to my work and for encouraging much-needed brevity, and Dr. Nancy R Coinman, for her genuine interest and helpful comments. I am extremely grateful for all ofmy committee members' time and effort in sharing their knowledge and insight. I would like extend warm thanks to Maiy Swander, Tony Ardizonne, and Dr. Elizabeth Minerva, whose beliefin my academic potential has afforded the wonderful opportunity for graduate studies at Iowa State University. My thanks also go to the Graduate College, the Graduate Student Senate, and the Department of English faculty and staff, for their ongoing financial support and the chance to complete this project. I further thank Dr. Michael Mendelson, Susan Booker, and Dr. Jim Colbert, for allowing me to leam and draw stories from my participation in the BiologicalEducation Success Teams academic learning community. Throughout the writing process I have been especially grateful to Scott Russell Sanders for the creative inspiration I have found in both his written work and in his kind, encouraging words. VI Creating the foundation for these essays would have been a monumental task without the research assistance ofsevere important individuals. I would like to thank Jill Oertley, former Wildlife Biologist with the National Park Service in Sequoia National Park, for providing substantial information about the park's black bear populations sund for patiently answering my every question. I also thank Dr. John Downing who helped clarify my research ofMidwestern freshwater mussels, and Mark Tilchen, Director ofthe Sequoia Natural History Association, for allowing me to reproduce the Giant Forest map included in this collection. I also wish to extend thanks to my friends and family, whose support continues to inspire and encourage me. I am grateful to all my parents, Margo and Gerry Parker, Peter and Betteanne Seabase, to my brother, Bryan Czibesz, and to my in-laws Helen and Joe Fox, for believing in the importance of my experiences and my translation of them. Warm thanks also go to Bryan Czibesz, Sherri Usius, Rebecca Green, Martin Oliver, and fellow creative writers at Iowa State University, for graciously reading early drafts of several of these essays and for providing their insightful suggestions. I express special thanks to my friends Heather Cross, Carrie Bates, Derek Trlica, Brendan Ferrer and Jena Peterson, for the strength their long-distance encouragement and advice have given me. And most importantly, I reserve the utmost latitude for my husband Jake, for his support and kindness as he has listened, read, and given generously his time and energy to guide me through this entire process. PRELUDE Bloomington, Indiana, late spring 1992,1 packed up all ofmy possessions and drove across the United States in a battered, green Volkswagen bus. I'd finished college there the previous spring, and since then had been working a "real job" with a small, educational publisher. On a whim, my friend Rachel and I had applied through the mail to work for the summer with the concessions company in Sequoia National Park, California—a decision that would turn my entire life upside down. Within five weeks of receiving our job offers, we signed contracts to work in a place we'd never seen, said goodbye to our Midwestern friends and our families, and suddenly found ourselves in an unfamiliar place halfa world away. The thought ofmoving out west had long been tucked away in mind, like a pleasant daydream I occasionally remembered, but actually following through was something I'd never before considered. On a superficial level, having a job waiting for me justified my leaving; I could escape my glorified secretarial job, escape spending eight hours a day under the same fluorescent officelights, and instead live and work in a beautifril place in the mountains. On a much deeper level, going to Sequoia that first season was the beginning of a long-term relationship with the park, an experience that has afiected me profoundly. Beginning in 1992,1 returned to Sequoia eveiy year when winter shifted into spring. During the 1996 season, I became restless, my thoughts filled with persistent questions about myfiiture. As much as I loved being in Sequoia, I needed to make a life-changing choice between two incompatible options—Cleaving to pursue a graduate degree in creative writing, or continuing the seasonal, transient life in the park I'd come to Iniow so well. Almost four years have passed since the night I drove away from Sequoia for the last time, glancing over my shoulder and trying to memorize the trees as their shadows faded into the nighttime forest. I now live two thousand miles away, my graduate degree is nearly complete, and my life little resembles the one I led in Sequoia for many years. Still, memories of the park and my seasons there linger, clear and strong images in mymind; mybrotherand manyofmyfriends still return to the park, season after season. I have searched for a way to preserve the memory ofSequoia—^the place I still-consider "home"—while learning to appreciate the landscapes where I now live. I've also struggled with my choice, with leaving behind my gypsy-like life in the park in favor of graduate studies. After looking out my cabin window every morning at the giant trees, the transition into the plains and plowed fields ofthe Midwestern landscape was an awkward one. Despite the fact that I'm building a future, a writing career, which would have been impossible in Sequoia, my ties and longing for the forest and mountains there are still strong. Sequoia was the single place I'd lived longest since leaving college. It's a landscape I know more intimately than any other, a comfortable, familiar place that has the power to evoke a sense of belonging in me. The distance ofseveral years has given me clearer perspective on my seasons in the park, and has allowed me to finally begin writing about them, to work through and understand what Sequoia has meant and continues to mean to me. Perspective has led me to write this collection of essays. Before beginning this collection of essays, I'd never really experimented with creative nonfiction before, and wasn't siire how to begin to describe an experience like my seasons in Sequoia. How to condense and translate five seasons* worth of experiences and people which all held meaning in my life? I simplyjumped right into the first essay, "Nighthiking," typing from memory, fi*om the powerful images so clear and distinct. When finally pausing to rest after a long time, I realized that I'd written eight pages without stopping. For the first time in my life, I ^^te wholly intuitively and fi'om a place inside I didn't know existed. From the first essay came all the others, finally allowing me to re-create the sense ofthe places I loved and missed so deeply. In writing these essays, I've begun to unravel and understand my experiences in Sequoia. What I hope for in my writing is to create a sense ofplace strong enough so that readers can know what it feels like to stand far out in the quiet forest, surrounded by immense and overwhelming sequoias, and smell the damp, rain-heavy earth in the summer. These essays have been created with that goal in mind—^to render the place and people so tangibly that the reader forgets, for a moment, the distance ofwords on a page.