The Wilderness Between

Janisse Ray’s “Ecology of a Cracker Childhood” is a fascinating exploration of a family and their environment. This book really captures for me the theme of this MFA writing program about how crucial environment is to a story and a character. All of the elements of this book, each description and story, comes back to the family and reveals another facet.

One of my favorite sections of the book was the chapter titled, “Built by Fire.” In this section, Ray personifies the lightning and the longleaf pines, turning the constant battle between the two as a kind of myth. The greedy lightning has claimed the land below and will destroy anything that tries to claim it. The innocent pine finds the ground to be fertile, and thus, the battle begins. Every few years, the lightning strikes down the pesky pines, only to have them grow back even stronger and smarter. Slowly, the pines build natural defenses against the lightning’s attacks until one day, fire is no longer much of a threat.

In this way, Janisse Ray’s family has survived in an otherwise flat land where poverty and mental illness ran rampant in their family. Like the pines, they dug their roots deep. Despite the lightning strikes of hallucination and depression, the familes always grew back even stronger, more solid. The grandfather, Charlie’s, mental illness ripped his family apart, but by the time, bipolar disorder struck Ray’s father, the family was able to cope with it in a much less destructive way.

Too, the second generation had learned from the generation before. Ray’s father forbade Charlie from cursing or physically punishing Janisse and her siblings. We can see that his mental illness veered away from the violence of his fathers in the chapter of “Native Genius.” As Ray explains, the savage and trickery of the wildness in her grandfather had resurfaced in her father, but in a much more constructive manner. Her father used the intellect his own father used for cruel jokes to reconstruct and build machines. Even in the throws of madness, he used what wit he had to protect his family, not harm them.

When I write my essay for this class, I want it to be as involved as this book is. The closest thing we’ve read like it in this class so far has to be the essay called “Buckeye,” where the author uses the land to remember, characterize, and even to come to forgive his father. I think Ray uses this book much in the same way. She is making a sort of peace with her childhood in the junkyard and her own “Southerness.”

I imagine that if I wrote an essay on growing up in Texas, I would want it to be something like this. However, I’m not sure that I can. I only spent five years there, and I’m not sure that I know it well enough to reconcile the stereotypes that I know of Texas now as a fiercely liberal woman who made it through the Bush administration and the few glancing memories of a young child.

I very much emphasize with Janisse Ray and her struggle with her Southerness in this way, though I know it is in no way as deeply ingrained in me. I think her book walks that tenuous line of loving (at least most of) the memories she has, while feeling shame for the place at the same time. A shame that is a gut reaction. A shame that no matter how much you tell yourself you don’t feel, you keep finding yourself of the defensive.

9/27/2009 5:30 pm

Today, it is wet. The exposed soil and bark are still black from the rain over the past few days. I find it interesting that I was so drawn to this spot for class. I find so much peace here among the trees and the undergrowth where it is always dark even when the sun is out. The forest does hold a special place for me, but I still think that I will always prefer the plains.

The open prairies of Montana and Wyoming are the most beautiful places in the world. The great vastness of the sky against the endlessness of the sea of grass; it’s the closest one can get to being in the middle of an ocean with both feet on solid ground. I can’t help but think of Rita Dove’s “Ars Poetica” now, when I remember my time the prairies:

Ars Poetica by Rita Dove

Thirty miles to the only decent restaurant

was nothing, a blink

in the long dull stare of Wyoming.


Halfway there the unknown but terribly


important essayist yelled Stop!


I wanna be in this; and walked


fifteen yards onto the land


before sky bore down and he came running,


crying Jesus—there's nothing out there!

I once met an Australian novelist


who told me he never learned to cook


because it robbed creative energy.


What he wanted most was

to be mute; he stacked up pages;


he entered each day with an ax.

What I want is this poem to be small,

a ghost town

on the larger map of wills.


Then you can pencil me in as a hawk:

a traveling x-marks-the-spot.

See, I want to be in this, but I have yet to run from it. I don’t find the exposure of the expanse to be frightening. Oddly, I find it familiar and peaceful where the great blue sky tries to swallow the yellow-brown of the half-scorched prairies.

One of the most influential times of my life was spent on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana. I spent only two weeks there, doing service for the community and sleeping in a teepee the men had set up for us outside of the prayer lodge where we “officially” stayed. Three other girls and I spent all of our time together, and when our service was finished each afternoon, we would wander the prairies around the lodge we were staying outside of.

There was a cattle ranch next to our plot of land, though we never saw any cattle, only horses. Some times the women who lived at the prayer lodge would show us certain landmarks, hidden by the subtle hills under the long grass. One afternoon, we traveled a few miles away to Mother Rock, a sacred landmark of the tribe. We were led in prayer with sage and given time to sit with Mother Rock and reflect with the wind swishing about, playfully batting at our hair.

When we were all finished, we made our way back to the prayer lodge. Suddenly, something caught my eye. At first, I thought it was a big, white rock, but when I drew closer, I saw the empty eye sockets and the cavernous nostrils. They were bones, bleached a creamy white, resting quietly below the grass. The remains of six or seven whole cattle lay there, mostly intact.

My friends and I examined the skulls, the long elegant femurs, the whole rib bones that stuck into the earth and out of the grass like ornamental hair combs. It looked to us like the cattle had simply laid down and died, but what did we know. We each dealt with it in different ways. I looked closely, but couldn’t bring myself to touch the bones. Another girl took pictures. One, lifted a skull to her shoulders by the horns and pranced around like it was a bacchanal, while the other just laughed.

But that night, when we lay in our teepee, listening to the coyotes call in the distance, all of us heard something that we hadn’t heard before in their cries. It was something more sinister, something more wild, and as the calls grew closer, we brought our sleeping bags together so that we could feel each other’s warmth as we waited for sleep.

“Progress has come to the Arches at last, after a million years of neglect. Industrial Tourism has arrived.” (55)

At last, a nature writer with some bite. Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire was a blast to read. It reminded me so much of one of my favorite fiction writers, Kurt Vonnegut. His style (without quoting from my presentation too much) is a tenuously balanced mixture of fact, romanticism, philosophy, and biting wit and humor. And after my latest trip to the Rocky Mountain National Park, “Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks” hit especially hard. Abbey likes to keep the reader guessing at what he will do or say next.

One of the most shocking moments is when he kills the rabbit in “Cliffrose and Bayonets.” With the same dispassion Oates displayed, killing the ants with her fingers, one by one, Abbey kills the rabbit with a rock. As a nature writer (even if he did not want to have such a title) and crusader for the natural and the wild, it is odd to us that he could needlessly kill a living thing. Abbey knows this, and despite his apparent innocence at the end, he spends quite a few paragraphs rationalizing his deeds. He also has no interest in ever killing again as he says, “The experiment was a complete success; it will never be necessary to perform it again” (42).

I think this scene is crucial to much of the idea that he is trying to convey throughout the book: a picture of modern man living in the wild. Like Thoreau, he has decided to seclude himself in the wild for a few seasons or years. Abbey scoffs at tourists and their automobiles, their cushy campsites. He explores secluded and forbidden areas of the Arches. He drinks river water when he runs out of beer in “Down the River.” He (very resourcefully) uses a gopher snake to rid him of the rattlers instead of killing the rattlesnakes. However, he does not truly live off of the wildness. Abbey eats beans and bacon for much of the book, which, last I heard, were not natural to the Arches.

Abbey kills the rabbit because he must know that he is really a part of this whole wilderness, even if he eats beans and finds shelter in a trailer. Abbey kills the rabbit, because he needs to know that he can survive out there, not as a sportsman or scientist, but as a part of the natural world. He says: “No longer do I feel so isolated from the sparse and furtive life around me, a stranger from another world. I have entered into this one. We are kindred all of us, killer and victim, predator and prey” (41-42).

My favorite part of Abbey’s book has to be in “Water” when Abbey’s friend, Newcomb, gets stuck in the quicksand. You can’t help but feel terrible for poor Newcomb, who could only cry out in long lonesome wails, sure that the quicksand would be the end of him. Abbey was no help either with his wit and amusement at his friend’s distress. I was very glad when Abbey pulled him to the solid ground.

If I take anything I’ve learned from Abbey, I think it will be his sarcasm.

9/22/09 10:34 pm

I decided to mix things up a bit by coming to the steps at night. They are different in the dark, and the wilderness feels more ominous, more dangerous. Anything could be hiding in the shadows. The night air is thick with humidity, and cicadas and grasshoppers sing from the dark. It makes me think of my home in St. Louis, where it is always humid. Where the air is always syrupy with adolescent rain.

On such a night as tonight, in the dark of my wilderness, however, I feel I must admit to myself, and you, that I am not actually from the muggy shores of St. Louis. That’s only what I tell people, and it’s true that I did spend most of my life there. However, in complete honesty, I am really from Dallas, Texas. I was born there and spent the first five years of my life on its dry, red earth. I don’t often admit this to people though because of the stigma Texas now carries.

Texas is the land of gun toting, extreme religious and political conservatives who want to take the valuable bits of earth from the rest of the world and squeeze them for every drop of oil. Everything’s bigger in Texas, but it wants even more. Texas doesn’t care about tomorrow, or you; who are you? Fill’er up, and don’t stop til you get the worm at the bottom of the bottle. Texas wants to bear arms and use them to praise to God. Hallelujah. Texas builds walls. Texas, the ultimate cowboy, looks out for Texas.

At least, that’s what my liberal friends think. And I would be lying if I said I completely disagreed with them. I know some good people down there, and they are some of the friendliest, most hospitable and giving people I know. Still the stereotype persists even in my own mind. It’s true that Texans are a proud and independent people, tending toward the conservative. But they are good people and their name should not be twined with the oil companies.

Of course, none of this is really even mine. Here is what I remember from Texas:

I remember the dry, red soil covered by green grass. I remember the pecan tree in our backyard. I remember the dry heat that rose from the black asphalt. I remember getting my mouth washed out with soap for using curse words at the age of four. I remember sneaking a piece of watermelon into the house during a barbeque. But most of all, I remember the fire ants.

It’s one of my earliest memories. I had been playing Ninja Turtles with my best friend, Jeremy, out in his backyard while our parents sat on the porch sipping beer and talking. In our game, I got shot, so I fell to the ground and played dead. Immediately, Jeremy ran to my side. “Are you all right?” he asked. I remember laughing at his concern. “Of course,” I replied looking up at him. “I’m just playing.”

That’s when I felt it. I had forgotten about the mound of fire ants that Jeremy had pointed out to me before we started playing. It was the biggest mound we had ever seen, and now, I was lying right on top of it. I must have screamed because the next thing I remember is running toward the house, covered in thousands of fire ants, while my dad and Jeremy’s dad ran toward me at a dead sprint.

After that, my memory finds me being stripped of all my clothes and thrown into a bathtub where I floated in the water, watching all of the fire ants float with me.

For me, Texas is the land of fire ants. Don’t mess with Texas.

9/13/09 4:37pm

Today, I let myself sit on the stairs and rest. Today, a Sunday, I find the stairs particularly inviting and peaceful. Few people use them, it seems, when there are no classes, and the traffic from Fifth Avenue almost sounds like waves.

It is still so green here, so shady, though soon, I expect Autumn will take hold. I look forward to the oranges and reds and yellows, but green will always be my favorite. And of course, when the leaves fall, what shall become of my ivy? I know now, that my ivy is English ivy (or Hedera helix). The leaves are bright and waxy and almost heart shaped—the ivy Dionysus claimed for the memory of his mother, Semele, and the female counterpart to mistletoe according to the English.

The ivy has already made its way up the most impressive tree in the vicinity. Oddly enough the ivy does not start until half way up which makes me think that it must have been severed at some point. But, really, it is too late: I can already see the damage the ivy is doing to the tree. The lower branches of the tree are shriveled and broken; it looks brittle for all of its thickness and height. I’m sure that in a few more years, the tree will surrender completely and die under the parasitic ivy.

Here I must stand and stretch my legs, already asleep from sitting on the steps. I also had to get away from the spiders and their webs, thick with corpses, which range particularly along the bottom rail of the stairs. One of the smaller spiders had grown interested in me, and I wanted to get away before it decided to explore this strange, large monster in its home.

I must say that I love spiders. I really, really do. They are the most beautiful, most graceful insects. I love their delicate legs, the sectioning of their bodies into prosoma, abdomen, and spinnerets. I even admire their eight eyes and glistening webs. Arachne is lucky that Athena turned her into such a beautiful insect—she could have done much worse.

However, much of my dislike for spiders comes from the fact that during my first month in Pittsburgh, I received over two dozen spider bites. (You can tell a spider bite from other bites by the white center, where the actually bite is.) The funny thing is (and this is why I respect them) I never saw a spider. I checked under my covers, between my covers, under my bed, around my bed every night to no avail.

When the problem persisted, I vacuumed and washed every inch of my apartment, but I never found a single spider. I did find pill bugs in my living room, sneaking under the alley door, and silverfish scurrying in the front window, but these are lesser creatures.

Spiders are clever. They are sneaky and make a living doing what most humans like—catching and eating other bugs. Luckily, since the cleaning frenzy, the bites have stopped. I can only hope that I’ve taught then a lesson, and that in the future, they will stay out of my bed.

I must say that I agree whole-heartedly with Joyce Carol Oates on the subject of nature in her essay "Against Nature."

What is nature? Whatever it is, I feel my response will only be "glamorized" and "romanticized". Or perhaps, feeling particularly scientific or bitter, I would lean towards my evolutionary psychology background and tell you that I for one am glad that the baby antelope on the National Geographic channell was eaten because it is survival of the fittest.

When I think of how to define nature, the first thing that pops into my head is the word "ecosystem." Nature is terribly complex and busy. It is beautiful and ugly, shocking and banal, but all of these things fit together, balanced precariously. Sometimes the scale is tipped in a certain direction, but more often than not, if left to its own devices, nature will right things again with comets or ice ages.

To put it simply, and in the context of our society, nature is "outside." To put it in a philosophical setting, nature is. It is a force like gravity or time. Honestly, I'm not even really sure what is included in "nature." Is it biology? Is it mircobiology? Is it rocks? Is it weather? If it is weather, does it extend to outer space and other planets where temperature and positioning play a crucial role in denying these rocks the same green, leafy life that we normally associate with the word "nature"?

To me, nature is all of these things, and the result of all of these things. Anything not constructed by man. However, I am reconsidering this last clause.

Before this class, I would have said that my wild places are in South Dakota and Wyoming, places where humans live miles apart, where you can drive for hours without seeing a single person, where the landscape is beautiful and harsh. But none of my wild places seem particularly wild now, and after reading Oate's essay, I must agree that "Nature, as it is understood in the usual slapdash way, [is] as human...experience". Hiking and camping were nature to me before. These were the means by which I met "nature" and "wildness".

At this point, wildness, to me, is simply an unkempt space where nature is allowed to take hold as it will. The grass is not trimmed, the trees are uncut, the leaves do not get raked, and the wildlife is allowed to fend for itself as it has for thousands of year. I realize how limited this definition is, how tame. But there are very few places that I can think of that are truly allowed to thrive and flourish as they are.

On my recent trip to Montana, Estes Park, and the Rocky Mountain National Park, I was surprised by how many roadways there were in the “wild”. Even the national parks cut their grass, place gravel for paths and aluminum cans for trash. They cut trees to make room for more cabins and telephone poles, and the "wild" animals wear collars and tags so that their populations can be controlled.

One of the most depressing moments in my recent memory was finding a herd of elk, proud and majestic with antlers as a crown, eating from the dumpster outside of the cabin area.

We were supposed to be in one of the most beautiful wild places left in our country, but it was too late. These nature trails and mountain hikes that allowed us city dwellers a glimpse into the wild, tamed it. It shaped it, and often, just to allow more humans to wander saftely and take pictures to hang on their walls.

What happened to that darker side, the dangerous side that is crucial to my definition of wildness? Of nature? The big, bad wolf has left our forests.

I'm hoping this class will help me become more comfortable in nature. I also think that it is already challenging my beliefs about nature, which is always a good thing. Finally, I hope this class will help sharpen my creative non-fiction. I've never taken a non-fiction class before.

09/04/09 1:30pm

My bit of wildness can be found on the wooden stairs leading down to Fifth Avenue from campus. It sits between a campus parking lot and the porches of on-campus apartments, and even when climbing up the steep steps, this patch of wilderness is like a breath of fresh air. It is cool in the shade of the trees. They block out most of the sun, and the little light that finds its way through the canopy sways with the branches, illuminating the greenness of the leaves and glinting off spider webs and wings. The undergrowth is thick here and carpeted in green ivy.

I like this place because it is neither one thing nor another, neither here nor there. It is just a place we journey through to get to campus or home. It is on the way to Grandmother’s house. It is the patch of forest we must journey through to find our way. (Though I must admit that the most threatening wildlife I’ve seen yet are the bees that hover near the rails of the stairs and the mosquitoes.)

I chose this space as my wildness because it was one of the only truly unkempt spaces I could find. Several places struck me as beautiful on my stroll through campus, but the perfectly manicured lawn seemed somehow wrong while meditating on the wild. Except for the wall of the parking lot and the brick of the apartment building hedging my wild space in, I doubt that much is done to modify this space. Probably. Maybe.

Then again, because this place is not taken care of as the rest of campus, I must admit that there are distracting pieces of garbage. Half of a paper plate rises from the sea of ivy like a capsized ship. Plastic cup tops steal light from the spider webs. And one spider has even made his home in a small potato chip bag. I can just barely make out the zigzags of his web over the shining silver interior. Perhaps next time, I will bring a trash bag to place the litter in.

But even with the trash, I enjoy these small patches of wildness, where nature is—at the very least—not micromanaged. I find myself enamored by tree roots here. These particular trees have thick roots that writhe above the soil. I suppose the trees need the extra support as they fight their epic battle against gravity, supporting an upright trunk on a very steep hill. I like how gnarled and twisted they are as they rise above the ivy like wave tops.

What really drew me to this place though was the ivy. I love the lushness of the blue-green ivy. Ivy is wild to me. It grows, reaching ever upward, on the tree in the front yard of my home in St. Louis. At the roots, it snakes along the ground, camouflaging itself under the bushes until it reaches the side of the house where it spreads its finger again. There, along the side of my house is truly a carpet of ivy.

My father tries to cut it back every year to keep it from overtaking the fences, the trees, and even the yard itself. However, it refuses to surrender in the face of such regular attacks. Instead, it bides its time, launching quiet counter assaults, so slowly that we don’t even recognize the victory until it has already reclaimed everything we took before.

The color of the ivy, too, is one of my favorites. If it were a Crayola crayon, it would be Jungle Green. I enjoy how lush and innocent the ivy looks, how brown and rich the earth looks beside it. One day, I will have to peel back a few vines to catch a glance of the hidden metropolis I'm sure lies below its stillness.