Galvin James - The lands wild music : encounters with Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Terry Tempest Williams, and James Galvin

THE LANDS WILD MUSIC

THE
LANDS
WILD
MUSIC

Published by Trinity University Press San Antonio, Texas 78212 www.trinity.edu/tupress

Copyright 2005 by Mark Tredinnick

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Original cover design by Erin Kirk New
Book design by BookMatters, Berkeley, California
Cover illustration: Dawn in Tuscany, iStockphoto.com/Peter Zelei

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Tredinnick, Mark.

The lands wild music : encounters with Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Terry Tempest Williams, and James Galvin / Mark Tredinnick.

p. cm.

SUMMARY: A lyric reflection on the nature of landscape and its power to shape the lives and syntax of men and women. Examines the work of American writers Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Terry Tempest Williams, and James Galvin, looking at how their landscapesthe Cascades, Long Island, the Colorado Plateau, and the high prairies of the Rocky Mountainshave shaped themProvided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references (p.).

ISBN-13: 978-1-59534-093-1

1. American literature20th centuryHistory and criticism.2. Landscape in literature.3. Lopez, Barry Holstun, 1945Criticism and interpretation.4. Williams, Terry TempestCriticism and interpretation.5. Matthiessen, PeterCriticism and interpretation.6. Galvin, JamesCriticism and interpretation.7. Place (Philosophy) in literature.8. United StatesIn literature.9. Wilderness areas in literature.10. Nature in literature.11. Setting (Literature) I.Title.

PS228.L36T742005

1615141312/5432

For Henry Thoreau, who came at the start,
and Henry Tredinnick, who came at the end

Contents

Blue Plateau, New South Wales

BARRY LOPEZ

McKenzie River Valley, Oregon

PETER MATTHIESSEN

Sagaponack, New York

TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS

The Colorado Plateau

JAMES GALVIN

Boulder Ridge and Sheep Creek,

Wyoming-Colorado Border;

Iowa City, Iowa

Lavender Bay and the Blue Plateau,

New South Wales

Although this book is the offspring of a sustained relationship with the keys of a laptop, it would not have come into being at all without the example, friendship, patience, and guidance of many other men and women, above all the writers I study here. I want to thank the choir of people and places whose song this book really is.

The Lands Wild Music began with Barry Lopez. Reading his work, which is everything (wise, lovely, humble, intimate, alive) I would wish prose to be, helped me recognize a calling, and it germinated the thought that became this critical journey that became, in time, this book. When it was little more than a thought, Barry helped me believe this project might be viable and someday bear fruit; he put me in touch with everyone I wished to meet; he helped secure me an invitation to a gathering of nature writers at Harvard, which became the starting point for my pilgrimage. Barry Lopez is a chapter in this book. More than that, he has been a friend and a teacher. And I count myself blessed.

The seminar I attended, thanks to Barry Lopez, at Harvard in October 2000 was The Ecological Imagination: Reflections on Nature, Place, and Spirituality. Celebrating and exploring the contribution of nature writing to the resolution of the eco-spiritual crisis of our times, the seminar was hosted by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim of Bucknell University as part of their ongoing Forum on Religion and Ecology. I thank them for including me in a rich conversation and for giving me a phrasethe ecological imaginationthat helped me organize my thinking as I went.

One night in Moab, Utah, in the middle of my journey, Terry Tempest Williams said to me that, looked at one way, what I was doing was outrageousinviting myself into the homes of a bunch of writers and talking with them about the way they work and live and write, and the way they love the landscapes from which their writing grows. Terry was right. And I am astonished and grateful that I found such a welcome from her and the other writers I visitedthose whom I managed to fit into the book as well as those I didnt. For their generosity, hospitality, and candor I thank James Galvin, John Haines, Edward Hoagland, Bill Kittredge, Laurie Kutchins, William Lines, Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Richard Nelson, Michael Pollan, Carolyn Servid, and Terry Tempest Williams. And I thank their loved ones for putting up with the intrusion. I wanted to spend more time than I was able to with Pattiann Rogers and Wendell Berry, but I was helped along more than they realize by the moments and the correspondence we shared. Thanks, also, to Linda Hogan, Gary Snyder, and Mark Spragg.

Among the writers whose work did not make it into my book, I want particularly to acknowledge William J. Lines and Richard Nelson. They gave me more time, shared with me more conversation, and showed me more of their countryVermont mountains and Alaskan waterwaysthan anyone. Richard Nelson, a wise, funny and civilized man, a brilliant storyteller and a fine writer, is, as Annie Dillard once remarked, the nature writer the nature writers read. He should be here. I dont want you to think for a moment, mate, that Ive left you out because you nearly got me killed in that wicked sea on Sitka Sound. The truth is, places can kill you. The truth is, you saved us both. The truth is, I couldnt find a way to do justice to everything you shared with meabove all your friendship. Dont worryIll get you next time.

Laurie Kutchins has been a victim of the erosion out of which this book shrank into what it needed to be. But I feel bad that I had to drop the chapter I wrote on her. Apart from the beauty of her own life and work, she shared with me some secrets about poetry, place, and listening, without which this book would be a shalloweras well as a smallerthing. She guided me to the real world, where this book finishes up. So she is here, even though she is not.

Many others made me welcome, took care of me, challenged and inspired me during my travels: Jack Bennett and his family in Eugene; Erica Bleeg in Iowa City; Colleen Burke in Cambridge; Lyn Dalebout in Moose; John and Marilyn Daniel in Eugene; Martin Harrison in Darlinghurst; Gary Holthaus in Cambridge; Glen and Rhoda Love in Eugene; Melinda Mueller in Seattle; Martin Mulligan in Melbourne; Tina Richardson in Eugene; Kate Rigby in Melbourne; Eric Rolls and Elaine Van Kempen in North Haven; Carolyn Servid and Dorik Mechau in Sitka; Mark Spragg in Cody; Jan and John Straley in Sitka. Thanks to them, and to Lawrence Buell and Scott Russell Sanders, whom I met at Cambridgefor their words on that occasion, their scholarship and passion for the language of the land.

I wrote two chapters of The Lands Wild Music during a residency in Sitka, Alaska, courtesy of the Island Institute. Another chapter took shape during two short residencies at the Camden Head Pilot Station on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. To Carolyn Servid and Dorik Mechau and to Elaine Van Kempen and Eric Rollsthanks for having me.