What am I Reading?

Nobody has asked me ‘What are you reading lately?’ so I thought I might answer this absent question. Why? I suppose because what one reads perhaps forms some impulse, explanation, or insight into the creative process.

I will start with Road Trip by Mark Rozema. Mark is someone I went to school with while growing up in Flagstaff Arizona and our lives inevitably diverged. One would assume forever as most early friendships resolve. He turned up again about 20 years ago commenting on a story I wrote about a backpacking trip I took in Utah. His comments I remember were that he knew the area well having worked there for a while for the BLM (Bureau of Land Management I should clarify.)

Later I learned he had published a book of essays (Road Trip) and I bought it immediately because I wanted to support him but also to hear what he said. And what a book. First of all, I have to say I am a sucker for essays. They are like short stories in they take such little time to read. They are much deeper when done well.

One learns the form of the essay in high school or college, but this is really a formula for clear expositive writing. A good essay of the kind I enjoy (some would call misleadingly an informal essay) is intricately crafted, something I don’t have the talent for. The best are like very wordy poems except a poem speaks mostly to the heart and a good essay also gives attention to the intellect.

For me Mark delivers. Such honesty, stripped of pretense, he thinks intensely. His life so far different from my more conventional life I find it hard to believe we shared a common background.

I do not think I overstate this for the sake of a past acquaintance and friendship in our childhood. One of the first ‘adult books’ I read was one of Ernest Thomas Seton’s essays on wildlife. Romantically anthropomorphized visions of wildlife from an experienced observer, they provided an entre to a lifelong passion for what is wild and wilderness.

I have supped with the devil of Edward Abbey, the iconoclast essayist and novelist of the American desert southwest. His speaking voice soft and humble in conflict with his provocative anarchistic rhetoric.

I was nurtured through high school on David Quamman’s nature essays. His carefully researched scientific approach to each subject satisfied a young man with an enthusiasm for science, chess, and Star Trek at the time.

More recently my wife suggested a book of poems (Blue Horses) in our book club by Mary Oliver, whom I had managed to avoid any cognizance of. Bang! what great work, each poem so stripped to an essence and so true.

I picked up a book of essays by Mary Oliver at the Seattle airport. (Did I mention I am a sucker for essays?) It is called ‘Upstream’ and so far, I find it fantastic. Her poetry shining through in the prose. Words for the creative, words of the wild. (Her idea here as well… ‘Attention is the beginning of devotion.’)

And finally, I offered to our little book club Aldo Leopold’s A Sand Country Almanac. It seems as the lone American member I have made it a kind of mission to introduce what I love in more obscure American authors. So yes, A Sand Country Almanac is a must as well. And yes, it is a collection of essays. Everyone a well observed vignette of some wild place. And I think Aldo Leopold teaches well that attention is the beginning of devotion.

This brings me back to Mark Rozema’s ‘Road Trip’ as what I see is some blend of these different authors. And so, a well-deserved second reading. The book has informed me, provoked thought, and brought me to tears. A potent combo for such a slim volume.