Writing Nature 2010 Decay, Comma reduction linocut from the Underfoot series by Sherrie York Contents Dear fellow members of the Glenbrook, Crestone, Blue River, and Rocky Mountain Land Library ESSAYS 3 Spawning in Mud by Ana Maria Spagna communities, 12 On the River with Birds by Marybeth Holleman At the Blue River Writers Gathering, we have gathered 14 Cows Kill Salmon by Ellen Waterston around the campfire in the forested darkness. The first 17 Climate and Ice by SueEllen Campbell thing we do is to call out the names of the writers, 19 Writing While Not Writing by Rowland Russell scientists, and visionaries past and present who’ve 24 Salmon Watch by Scott Sadil inspired our own efforts as nature writers. I love this 28 Tricksters and Line Curvers by Ian Ramsey ritual, love that everyone is nearly anonymous in the 29 Meanings of Life by Kim Stafford 30 The Necessity of Celebrating the Miraculous darkness. Some of the people around the fire are old by Bill Sherwonit friends, some I have just now met. But now, each of us 33 A Song, Waiting by Kim Stafford appears as only a glimmer of firelight from the eyes, and a voice rising into the night. POETRY 6 Roost by Amy Minato Because we are nature writers, writing from the long 9 In the Garden, Early May by Marybeth Holleman reach of natural and human community across time and 13 to a northern spotted owl by Jerry Martien place, we also invoke the names of other-than-human 15 Inversion of the Food Chain by Amy Minato creatures. Cougar, lobaria, spotted owl, varied thrush, 17 Mating Season by Amy Minato Coho, cedar. Whether around the campfire, or in our 19 Beginning by Anita Sullivan poems and essays, we interweave the names of humans 20 Stone by Anita Sullivan and other inspiring creatures. 22 Two Birds by Susan Zwinger 24 Morning after the Nor’easter by Barbara Thomas Writing Nature is another of our campfires, another 25 After Drought by John Calderazzo story-telling place. Whatever we do in celebration 27 Wet Land by Barbara Drake and defense of the Earth—in our teaching, writing, 29 Agriculture by Bill Siverly protesting, advocating—we return again and again to 32 Lookout Creek by Bill Siverly 34 for Charles Goodrich and Clemens Starck the campfire, to the calling out of names, to the poems, by Jerry Martien essays and stories that are the voices of the land, the gleam of firelight in every creature’s eyes. RECOMMENDATIONS 3 Recommended: Siesta Lane It has been a pleasure to serve as an editor for this year’s 8 Recommended: Drowned Boy edition of Writing Nature. I know you will be delighted, 12 Recommended: Finding Beauty in a Broken World inspired, challenged, provoked, tickled, and fortified by 13 Recommended: The Blue Plateau these poems, essays, artwork, and book reviews. Next 18 Recommended: Jomon Reflections year the baton of editorship passes to long time Glen 23 Recommended: Crickets and Katydids, Brook members Rowland Russell and Fred Taylor. Concerts and Solos and Cedar They’ll be keeping us all posted on community news and 31 Recommended: Lost Mountain future submissions for Writing Nature. ART Thanks to Ann Martin and Jeff Lee of the Rocky 5 Pastel Painting by Sarah Rabkin 10 Nature journal entry from Margy O’Brien Mountain Land Library for once again electronically 11 Nature journal entry from Margy O’Brien composing this beautiful journal. And also thanks to 16 Sketch by Sarah Rabkin them, Writing Nature has a new web home. You can find 33 Drawing by Sarah Rabkin PDFs of this issue and last year’s issue, post comments, make suggestions, or call out other names: http:// ANNOUNCEMENTS landlibrary.wordpress.com/writing-nature-journal/ 35 Drawing on Nature 35 Community News Blossoms, and best wishes to you all, 35 Workshop on Teaching about Climate Change 36 Recent and Forthcoming Books Charles Goodrich 2 ANA MARIA SPAGNA Recommended by… Don Witten Spawning in Mud The rain began the day I was laid off for the season. If the day had been clear and sunny, I would have busied myself with our unfinished woodshed, climbed up on the roof to tack nailers in place, say, or set mill slabs against the back to keep snow from sifting in. As if snow were a possibility. We’d been without a trace of precipitation for seven months, so long that it seemed, genuinely, like we’d never see storm clouds again. On trail crew, we’d stopped carrying jackets. At home, we’d stopped covering our tools. On that day, rain streamed down, silver and continuous as mercury, puddling around a tangle of extension cords in the dirt, while I sat indoors drinking coffee and watching it fall. The truth is I hadn’t just been laid off; I had asked to be laid off. The weight of that unfinished woodshed hung over me like the dense wildfire smoke that, by October, had barely begun to dissipate. For fifteen years my partner, Laurie, and I had been building and building all over the North Cascades of Washington state: at work on trail and more recently at home on our own cabin. By the time the woodshed came along, we’d about had it. We’d managed to take little weekend stabs at the project; weíd poured footings and peeled poles. Then, inevitably, my back would go out. I’d lay on ice. I’d try to stretch. Siesta Lane: One Cabin, No Running Water, and Then I’d go to work, where the satisfaction of unglorious a Year Living Green by Amy Minato labor was eroding. So I drained the gas from the This writing is poignant and beautiful. I read the chainsaws in the trails shop, and for the first time ever, I first 100 pages in one sitting, and now I’m slowing asked to be laid off early, ostensibly to work on the shed. down, savoring all of this, like a fine cup of tea in Now there it sat, roofless, while it rained. And rained. front of a December morning fire. When I finish, I stepped out the door barefoot and tried to coax I will turn back to page one and start again. This the cat, Daisy, out past the jamb. Forget it. All that book is 33 1/3% Henry David Thoreau, 33 1/3% noise! All that water! Sometimes, during a summer Annie Dillard, 33 1/3% Anne Lamott, and 100% thunderstorm, we might get an hour of raucous Amy Minato. There you have it—a 200% book! This is pure poetry, insight, humor, and love of life spattering, enough to draw streaks across dust-coated and language. Savor this short chapter entitled leaves of maple and thimbleberry. This time the deluge “January”: was for real. Greenness everywhere was rinsed shiny clean, fresh, and, in a way, foreign. I stood on the porch, “I look out and see the oak, pine, meadow, and hills. I sit on the deck and want to stay forever and I felt like when I was a suburban kid in Southern gazing at the grass swaying and the mountains California on the “It’s A Small World” ride at Disneyland turning deeper blue. Listen carefully because floating into a rain forest where tinsel hangs from the that’s the whole story. The grass, those hills, that ceiling and recorded rainfall competes with monkey howls stare, with time filing her fingernails beside me.” and tropical birds squawking. I half-expected to hear a Every chapter is a gift. This book has made me macaw, but I only heard rain, and after a while, through reflect on my own life, how I interact with the continued on page 4 earth, with my fellow travelers, with myself. 3 continued from page 3 “The water’s getting pretty high,” I’d been free to give in to it. We she said. “It might flood.” cheered when trail bridges washed the trees, I thought I could hear out; if it meant more work for the river. No, I told myself. It Flood? I thought she’d lost her us, so be it. Nature wins! we’d couldn’t be. mind. say. And we believed it. The river Though not officially designated All summer the threat of a not only had more might than as such, the Stehekin River is, more catastrophic wildfire had cast a pall us, I figured back then, but more or less, wild. It is undammed and over the valley. Ferns browned up right, too. Once, when I worked largely unmanipulated for the and bowed over. Twigs snapped in Canyonlands in Utah, a visitor twenty miles between the glacier- under Vibram soles, and we had knocked at my door in the fed headwaters and the place, a mile winced. I’d spent so much dread middle of the night to tell me from the boat landing, where it on wildfires that I’d forgotten about a rattlesnake she’d seen in the spills into Lake Chelan. Because of completely about floods. Besides, backcountry. Someone should do that, and because of the steepness, after that 100-year flood eight years something about it, she said. The closeness, and snowiness of the back, didn’t we have a 92 year hiatus park belongs to the rattlesnakes, I mountains that feed it, the water coming? said, and I shut the door. For many level fluctuates wildly. In spring, “Come on,” she said. years I believed something similar snowmelt from the mountains can about floods.