Home Ground, Saint Paul, Minnesota, May 2009, photo © 2009
by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
We’re back after a 2+ week blogcation. How time flies. On Sunday ybonesy sent me an email titled: Getting Back in the Saddle. We both agreed that the vacation from blogging was refreshing; we needed it. We also took a hiatus from electronics, with the exception of learning a bit about Twitter. It’s a whole other world that moves at lightning speed and (like blogging) has its own protocols, courtesies, and idiosyncrasies. But there are some good, smart people on Twitter including a whole slew of writers and artists.
We’ll keep using Twitter for updates, to stay in touch from the field, and to add links we find of interest or that relate to red Ravine. So keep watching our sidebar for the latest Tweets. If you see an RT, it means we picked the link up from another Twitter user and are giving them credit. Oh, and the bit.ly and tiny.url link shorteners we use are perfectly safe. We test them first and wouldn’t steer you in the wrong direction.
But what should I post today? ybonesy’s back from Vietnam and has a few posts in the works; I survived Art-A-Whirl and am excited to be in the studio. I’m leaning toward something simple for our first day back. While on vacation, I didn’t do much writing, but I did go hear Patricia Hampl at the Highland Park Library in St. Paul. I had already finished The Florist’s Daughter and made the commitment to read all of her work; she is my kind of writer.
Her talk in St. Paul did not disappoint. She was there to promote the new book, Home Ground – Language for an American Landscape from Trinity University Press. The book is edited by Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney and contains an A to Z history of words about the land written by famous writers like Terry Tempest Williams, Barbara Kingsolver, Robert Hass, and Franklin Burroughs. Lopez gave each writer a list of words for which they wrote a definition using a combination of research and wordsmithing; the result is over 850 terms—from `a`a to zigzag rocks—defined by 45 American writers. It’s beautifully written with pen and ink illustrations by Molly O’Halloran.
Hampl explained that Barry Lopez had asked her over a glass of wine if she would be interested in participating in the project; she agreed. And after being initially uncertain about the words she received, she ended up loving the project. In addition, each writer was asked to choose the place they considered to be their “home ground.” Patricia Hampl chose the North Shore of Lake Superior, womb of the earth, a Minnesota landscape completely different from the urban setting of her home in St. Paul.
What place do you consider your “home ground?”
Home Ground – Language for an American Landscape is a historical map drawn by writers — word geography with cairns that weave through centuries of the American landscape. Liz and I fell in love with the book; she purchased it that evening. When I took the photograph at the top (that’s Liz’s finger holding the book up), Patricia Hampl had just walked out of the library and we chatted for a few seconds about the bloom of Spring on the Minnesota landscape and how well the book sold that night. I’m certain it will find a prominent place on our reference bookshelf.
Thanks for hanging in there with us on our red Ravine break. Thanks for reading. We’re back in the saddle and I’m going to wrap it up with a little taste of Home Ground. There is a short essay on saddle written by Conger Beasley, Jr. where he refers to the twin summits of the Spanish Peaks outside of Walsenburg, Colorado (though it’s closer to ybonesy, I did eat dinner there one evening on a drive to Taos). According to Beasley, because of their resemblance to the torso of a woman at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the Spanish Peaks are called Wah-to-yah, “Breasts of the World,” by the Ute Indians and locals refer to the saddle as “the cleavage.” Conger Beasley considers the beautiful and nurturing Spanish Peaks his “home ground.”
Here’s a final excerpt from a word near and dear to our hearts:
ravine
Ravine is French for mountain torrent, and comes from the Old French rapine, or “violent rush.” Larger than a gully or a cleft but smaller than a canyon or gorge, a ravine is a small steep-sided valley or depression, usually carved by running water. The word is most often associated with the narrow excavated valley of a mountain stream. A rarer usage denotes a stream with a slight fall between rapids. In A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, Isabella Bird writes: “After descending about two thousand feet to avoid the ice, we got into a deep ravine with inaccessible sides, partly filled with ice and snow and partly with large and small fragments of rock which were constantly giving way, rendering the footing very insecure.”
-Kim Barnes, from her home ground, Clearwater Country in Idaho
Home Ground Resources:
- Biography of Barry Lopez
- Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape at Powell’s Books
- Interview with Idaho writer Kim Barnes at New West Books & Writers
- Home Ground Jacket Cover Art, Lost in the Gold by Eric Soll
-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
OH, WELCOME BACK! They say that “absence makes the heart grow fonder” and I know that it’s true, because I sure have missed the extraordinary word and visual buffet dished-up regularly here at red Ravine!
QM, thanks for the blossoms and thoughtful review of “Home Ground.” I’ve added the book to my list. I live on the high prairie, but my home ground is small mossy-bottomed Cable Lake in the north woods of Wisconsin.
But, right this very minute, my home ground is here, right here, with you at red Ravine. Welcome Home.
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Thanks so much for venturing out with this first post, QM, after our blogcation. (I like saying that word 8) ).
I love Barry Lopez, have two of his books of poetry, and after having come back from the San Luis Valley on Monday, where I made my annual pilgrimmage to northern NM (Costilla) and now southern Colorado (San Luis and Ft. Garland), I can especially appreciate the word geography and sense of place that Lopez and others from the book you highlight give us. I was close to Walsenberg; it was probably just a few ravines (and maybe a cleavage or two) over from where I was. 8)
Glad to hear you got to see Patricia Hampl. I still haven’t finished the book I was reading about her. I started a work of fiction about the Vietnam War, but I didn’t read that very much either while I was in Vietnam nor on my journeys to and fro. I did complete two doodles, and I had a most relaxing time during my down time, although busy while working.
It’s good to be back. Thanks, breathepeace, for your kind words!!
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Welcome back! You both deserved the blogcation.
I also was away & we took the laptop with, but I think I only went on it 2 times, so although I missed the absence of red Ravine, I wouldn’t have been around to read it.
We had a great time & after last summer, the 2 of us decided we needed it. J can’t do long walks because of the nerve damage in his feet, but we got around none the less.
Our last night was interesting. The hotel was booked solid & our neighbors had a wild party gone bad. It was miserable. They were fighting & I mean street type fighting. Cursing loudly, throwing furniture, & threatening to cut each other up. Security was called to calm it down at 10 pm.. Then again at 3:30 am.. And we had paid double our nightly booking cost as it was the beginning of the 1st night of the Memorial Day holiday. I asked for half of it back at checkout & was given the refund due to the many complaints they had received.It always seems that I tend too have interesting vacations!
It’s good to be home now & glad you are back! I have also added this book to my list. D
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It’s good to know QM and yb are back in the saddle!
I am glad you got to hear Patricia Hampl live, QM. When I was last in Taos, Natalie Goldberg read several excepts from A Romantic Education. Natalie said Patricia is the foremost memoirist in the United States right now. I hope you’ll check in about her books as you complete them, QuoinMonkey.
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I went out to dinner with a few friends last night, and was bemoaning the challenge of dealing with an aging father–one whose impact on my life has been negative and constant. Interestingly enough, one of my friends had recently read A Florist’s Daughter, a memoir where Patricia is none too complementary about her mother. Over cashew chicken and pork lomein, she suggested I read it for comfort. I’ve already got it on hold at the library.
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Teri, I will try to check in on Patricia Hampl’s books as I complete them. I’m pretty new to her work but am already finding that I am learning so much about memoir from reading her books and listening to her interviews. Also after hearing her speak at Highland Park, I can tell she would be an excellent teacher. Hey, did you hear anything about how it went at The Loft Memoir Writing Festival at Open Book? The featured speakers were Kao Kalia Yang, Bernard Cooper, and Patricia Hampl. I bet it was a great event to attend.
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Sinclair, The Florist’s Daughter sounds like a good book to read for conflicting inner emotions about dealing with aging and dying parents. The interview I link to at the end of this post is excellent, too. Hampl is honest and stark about how hard it was to be the caregiver for her parents, not just for months, for as the years went on. All the different emotions that it brings up, and what it means to be an adult daughter.
I was so struck by it, I listened to the interview twice and wrote a few things down. She also addresses how important and hard it is to write honestly in memoir. Here are a few quotes I wrote down from the interview:
-quotes from the Patricia Hampl interview with Katherine Lanpher about writing her memoir The Florist’s Daughter (link at bottom of post)
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breathepeace, I didn’t get a chance to say it yesterday but your comment made my day! So happy to hear from you (as always) and thanks for your kind words. I hope the writing is going well. If you come back to this post, are you heading to Cable Lake this summer to write? If I recall, don’t you head that way every summer?
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diddy, welcome back from Ocean City, Maryland! Wow, that’s quite a story from your last night there. Unbelievable. I hope it went well on the beach aside from the raucous neighbors. Did you spend a lot of time resting on the beach? Hard to tell when I’ll make it to the ocean again. Not yet sure about travel plans this summer but will keep you posted. Hi to J. and the rest.
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Fabulous, fabulous quote. “The quest literature of our time.”
I couldn’t agree more. I don’t want to read a memoir that’s simply a recounting. Something has to be at stake.
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The confluence of the discussion here is perfectly relevant to my personal situation with my mother and my return to Cable Lake. Whereas Cable was the place of carefree childhood summers, it is now much more complicated. Like Hampl, being a daughter has become an adult enterprise for me. My aging-not-so-gracefully mom owns the house on the lake and I am the only one of six kids who will travel with her from Chicago so that she can stay there. It is both a playground and a minefield now. This is good summer for me to read Hampl. Yes, QM, I do write there. It is where I discovered and fell in love with haiku practice. I especially love to float in the kayak on the little lake, with the loon paddling close-by and bald eagles soaring overhead, while writing one haiku after another, counting syllables in the sun.
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I picture you in the kayak, the bald eagle, a piercing through quiet. Meloncholy and love, compassion and tension.
Yesterday I went to the funeral of my brother-in-law’s father. I’ve known my brother-in-law since I was about 10, I believe, and have spent many a holiday with his family. Everywhere around my parents, their peers are dying. My mother’s best friend earlier this year, my dad’s brother a year ago, now Kelly. My aunt Connie sent Mom a box of beautiful tiles, and I helped Mom find a place where she could have them set into a wall. Later that night she called to say that she was giving the tiles to me, that she only expected to live a few more years, and that she didn’t want the tiles to be sold with the house.
What do we see when we look ahead? She sees death. Not in a sad sack sort of way, but pragmatic, matter of fact. She’s been working out for eight or nine years at the gym, three times a week. She is vibrant, healthy, beautiful. I pray she lives a long time yet, but what is long?
Last night I was reflecting, I remember when my grandmother died. I was in my 20s. My parents and aunts and uncles were young. Now I’m their age. Another revolution of the earth. The big Earth.
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Welcome back! 🙂
“Home Ground” sounds like a wonderful book. The kind of book I’d really enjoy. Thanks for the heads up.
I’ve often wondered what the difference is between a ravine and a hollow, or if there is one. When we lived in West Virginia and southern Ohio, what I think of as ravines were called hollow (or “hollers”). Is the difference mainly regional dialect?
I took a quick look at dictionary definitions and found one that describes a ravine as “a deep and narrow hollow.” Interesting.
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What’s your Twitter handle?
I’m @yoginipoet
I’ll look for you.
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Good to have you back. The book sounds very interesting. I’ll take a look. I am following you on Twitter. I love, love, love Twitter.
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Welcome back, with this wonderful post and the stunning work of Cathy Wysocki. We were gone as well, on our first “road trip” in many years. Usually we are heading straight to the airport on any breaks – it was more relaxing to throw everything in the car and go when we were ready. We took a thousand-mile loop down through southern NM and across AZ to Tucson – visited our son – then headed up to Sedona for a Lil Chill with cousins…those big rocks are awesome, they grow on you…headed home on I-40 – This is my home ground, the astonishing variety of mountains and mesas, valleys and vistas, in the Southwest. Always good to be home in one’s own bed. Thanks for being there too.
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Corina, thanks for stopping by. We added you on Twitter as well.
Christine, we are redRavine on Twitter. Now following you, too.
Lil, welcome back from your road trip. Wow, 1000 miles. Haven’t done that long of a road trip since my last drive to Taos (about 1200 miles). I like your idea of Lil Chill with the cousins. I’ve been to Sedona only once and found the rock formations amazing. And that red — you just don’t see that every day.
Robin, you bring up some good questions about hollow and ravine. Let me check it out in the book and get back to you!
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Robin, I checked on the word “hollow” in Home Ground. It was written by Jan DeBlieu (Bio LINK) who says her “home ground” is the Outer Banks of N.C. Amazingly, she also cites the work of Isabella Bird (as does Kim Barnes) but more on that later.
It appears that a hollow is similar though a little different from a ravine. And it does mention (as you do) about the different meanings in different parts of the country. That’s part of what makes this book so great – writers from all parts of the U.S.
Here’s a little about “hollow” by Jan DeBlieu:
_______________________________________________
After two references to Isabella Bird in Home Ground, I had to look her up. I started reading A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879). Isabella Bird (1831–1904) was an English traveler and writer and the first woman member of the Royal Geographical Society. She traveled extensively and wrote a number of books, including The Hawaiian Archipelago (1875), Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880), Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan (1891), and Korea and Her Neighbors (1898). She founded several hospitals in China and Korea.
Bird’s travels began in 1872 when, at the age of 40, she set out on an 18-month trip to Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and Colorado. A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains is a series of letters written by Isabella Bird to her sister during her six-month journey by train and on horseback in the autumn and winter of 1873 from San Francisco to the Colorado Rockies.
I’ve barely broken the surface but one Wellesley reviewer states that Bird sees America as “excessively patriotic and unbearably materialistic” and some of her writing is disturbing in that it follows the Victorian characterization of non-white civilization. But her descriptions and details capture so much about the landscape:
You can judge for yourself. Here are some links (all info above came from these sites) for those who wish to read furthur:
National Women’s History Museum Newsletter: Earth’s Caretakers (LINK) with Rachel Carsen & more early eco pioneers
National Women’s History Museum – Right Here, Right Now (LINK)
Preserving the Natural World at the Turn of the Century (LINK)
Wellesley’s The Women’s Review of Books, Oct, 2003 (LINK) – also a good article on Zelda Fitgerald
The University of Nevada- Tahoe Resources (book cover photo) (LINK)
A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains (1881) (LINK) – read the book with illustrations at The Victorian Women Writers Project Library
Or read the book at World Wide School (LINK) – sans illustrations
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Wow, QM! Thank you. Very interesting and packed with information.
I’ll be working on those links over the next few weeks when I can. My youngest son is getting married on the 13th and we have tons of stuff to do to get ready for all the family and friends coming in for the wedding as well as anything the bride needs us to do.
Thank you so much for going to all that research and trouble. I appreciate it.
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That is interesting, QM, the visual one gets when thinking about the scooped out hollow versus the cloved holler. They sound pretty different.
And this Isabella Bird sounds like a fascinating person. What you mention about her Victorian characterization of non-white was, I think, probably widespread at the time, even among well-traveled people like her. Maybe even moreso. But in spite of that, it is admirable to think of how hard it must have been for her to travel, both due to the challenges of travel back then, period, but also because she was a woman.
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Hey lil, welcome back to you, too. Nice that you got to take a road trip. Jim and I mentioned you and the doc often, wondering whether you were on vacation or not.
Oh, Sedona is so cool. Did you step into a vortex, perchance? 8)
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What a relief to see that you two (and the other people who post) are back in the saddle again. Welcome home. I hope you enjoyed your time away and look forward to what happens in the coming year with red Ravine.
My mother said to me as I entered my fifties and friends started to die, “When you reach your age, your friends start to die. When you reach my age [late 80’s] all of your friends are dead.” As I approach 60, my appreciation of the wisdom of her thought grows.
Somehow life and the time I spent with the people I love and like has become more precious and less about petty stuff. They won’t be here forever and neither will I.
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Robin, have fun getting ready for (and at) the wedding. Lots of work but you’ll be able to relax after the 13th.
ybonesy, I think that’s true about Isabella Bird. She was a product of the disturbing beliefs of her time. And also overcame rigid gender barriers at the same time. Women of her day just didn’t write, travel over rugged terrain, and document their findings the way she did. It seems important to have an awareness of both of these things about her. Yet judge her in the context of the time in which she lived.
One of the links also had a quote by Mary Austin, a naturalist from Southern California (also ahead of her time) who wrote about the desert and was one of the first writers to appreciate the arid ecosystem. One of my profs at MCAD gave me her book Land of Little Rain for a graduation present. It was right after I had been to the 4 Corners area photographing and writing.
In Land of Little Rain (1903) Austin promoted preservation of the land noting:
I think it’s important to add to her criteria the century in which one lived, the decade, the individual years. That along with the land, the seasons, all add up to who we are as people.
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Bob, thanks. I think it’s going to be an exciting summer. About your comment:
I had a similar conversation with a couple in their 80’s during Art-A-Whirl, the parents of one of my close friends. They said they had been to a funeral the day before and that the hardest part of aging was to see all your friends die. They mentioned a few other things as well, memory, loss of mobility.
There was also another woman in her 90’s who lived in Northeast and walked a few blocks with her walker and up into the Casket Arts building to see all the art. I talked to her for quite a while. She thanked me profusely when she left for simply taking the time to talk to her. People really just want to be heard. It made me aware of the need to stop and take the time to really listen to people.
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Picked up “Home Ground” at the library today along with Mark Twain’s “Letters from the Earth”. “The Florist’s Daughter” is MIA at the library so they had me place a hold on another copy at the downtown branch.
On another writing loop to which I belong, I was responsible for the topics for the month. One of the quotes come from Scott Russell Sanders book, Writing from the Center. The quote is,
“We need a richer vocabulary of place. On the average, according to geographers, there are fewer place names per square mile in the Unite States, than anywhere else on earth. In long-settled countries…every watercourse, bluff or butte, every prominent rock bears a name and a story.” My proposed topics were “a richer vocabulary of place” and “write about a place with a name and a story.” Will be interesting to see what comes from those two topics.
I hope that “Home Ground” will provide me with a richer vocabulary for the places here in my homeland.
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Per my friend’s suggestion, I have secured a copy of The Florist’s Daughter from the library. I am 50 pages into it. Patricia doesn’t mess around, does she? Within the first two pages she was letting us in on the difficult character her mother was. It’s a relief to read.
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Bob, Now how in the world did The Florist’s Daughter go missing at the library? Was it stolen or never returned? Maybe it will show up on that “free day” libraries have where you can return late, late, late books with no fines, no questions asked. At least, I think they still have that in Minneapolis. Libraries are so popular right now with the recession. Lots available there. I like the Mark Twain choice, too. He’s one of those writers who I pick up and read over time.
I’m so happy you purchased Home Ground. Let me know how you like it. It fits perfectly with your Topic. Patricia Hampl talked about how maps used to crowded with names of places (I think I’m remembering this correctly) that have been shortened over time. Sparse maps. And now they have people’s last names rather than geographical descriptors. Evolution isn’t always a good thing. Here’s a toast to a richer vocabulary.
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Sinclair, how far along are you in The Florist’s Daughter? Nope, she doesn’t mess around. You know what struck me about that book was that I had the question, how in the world did her parents ever get together. They seem so opposite. Maybe she answers that in another of her memoirs. I’m reading one of the first ones now and it fills in some of the gaps from the last. I like knowing that there are many different levels to memoir, no right way to do it. I ended up liking Patricia Hampl’s mother in the end. She seemed strong but not quite strong enough to live her ultimate dream; she lived it through her daughter.
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[…] entry reminded Liz of last May when we went to see Patricia Hampl and purchased the book Home Ground – Language for an American Landscape. She tweeted back to Bo […]
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[…] Bogs are often classified based on their location in the landscape and source of water. There are valley bogs, raised bogs, blanket bogs, quaking bogs, and cataract bogs. Quaking bogs develop over a lake or pond, with bog mats (thick layers of vegetation) about three feet thick on top. Quaking bogs bounce when people or animals walk on them, giving them their name. My most vivid memory of walking a bog was a side trip we took on a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters. Here are the impressions of two writers from one of my favorite books on topography, Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape: […]
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