uplake

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Restless E ssays
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Ana Maria Spagna

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Unive r sity of Washington Press

Seattle
Uplake was published with the support of the Northwest Writers
Fund, which promotes the work of some of the region’s most talented
nonfiction writers and was established through generous gifts from
Linda and Peter Capell, Janet and John Creighton, Ruth and Alvin
Eller, Michael J. Repass, and other donors.

Copyright © 2018 by Ana Maria Spagna

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Printed and bound in the United States of America

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Design by Katrina Noble

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Cover photograph by Michal Janek on Unsplash

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Composed in Cassia, typeface designed by Dieter Hofrichter

22 21 20 19 18  5 4 3 2 1
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

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transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
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system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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University of Washington Press

www.washington.edu/uwpress
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Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file

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with the Library of Congress.

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isbn 978-0-295-74322-6 (pbk), isbn 978-0-295-74323-3 (ebook)

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 If I could do just one near-perfect thing I’d be happy.

They’d write it on my grave, or when

they scatter my ashes.
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On second thought I’d rather hang about and

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be there with my best friend

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If she wants me.

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—Belle & Sebastian

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For Laurie
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For being there

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 C on t e n t s
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Prologue 3
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Slow Connection  7
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More Than Noise  17

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Winter Flood  27
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Confessional Roots  37
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So Many Rings  53
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Breathe 67
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The Fiddler on the Rock  79

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When We Talk about Courage  85

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Where You’d Rather Be  97

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How to Brine an Elk Steak  107

Post-Strayed 117

Away from Shore  129

The Tree in the River  141

The Injured Bear  151

 Flight Delay  163

Together We Pause  175

Here in the WUI  185

Fire One, Fire Two  193

Pierce 205
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Acknowledgments 229
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 Prol o gu e
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Here’s a story line. A boy grows up in an idyllic place, a

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small rural place, the plains of Nebraska, say, or small-town

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North Carolina. What happens next? He moves away. His

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new perspective may cause him to grow nostalgic like Jim

Burden in My Ántonia or world-weary like George Web-
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ber in You Can’t Go Home Again, but when he returns—

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sophisticated, citified, wizened—he sees the place anew.

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Here’s another. A woman drops everything to go into the

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wild, to take a long hike and test her mettle, to confront

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grief or addiction or depression. What happens next? She

moves back to the city, rejuvenated and renewed, and mar-
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ries and has a family and lives happily ever after. It’s the
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archetypal journey, the stuff of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell,

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Northrop Frye, as familiar to us—to our collective uncon-

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scious, they say—as a three-chord rock song or a five-act

play. We anticipate the resolution, the triumphant return,
the chorus after the bridge.
Here’s another story. A girl grows up in sun-washed sub-
urbs and moves to the woods, not just any woods but the
most distant and remote she can find, a place where glaciers

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4 Prologue

still carve and rivers still sculpt and the local black bear pop-
ulation outnumbers the humans. Then she stays.
That’s not a story. That’s stasis. Or maybe it’s commitment.
There’s a moment at every dinner party when the
dreaded questions arise. You begin to sweat because you’re
about to be introduced as a writer and you’re going to have
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to explain if you’ve ever been published (you have) and

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if they’ve heard of your books (they haven’t), or you’ll be

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introduced to people who don’t yet know you’re gay and

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you’ll either have to do some fancy pronoun footwork or

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make a big pronouncement. Those are tough questions,

but not as tough, anymore, as when people ask where I live.
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My home is beautiful. Check that, it’s way past beautiful;

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it’s pristine, spectacular, majestic, maybe even sublime.

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You’re so lucky to live there, people say.

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I am lucky. But I am also restless. It’s easy to get feeling

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stuck, oppressed, not just by the close valley walls or the

long sunless days of winter or even the lack of a grocery
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store or a library or the chance, ever, for anonymity, but

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by the stuckness itself. So I fly away. I drive long highway

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miles. I fantasize about moving. And though my case may

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be extreme, I suspect I’m not alone in this.

The problem with the word “commitment” is that it
sounds so much like work or at least like a conscious
decision. What about wonder? The kind that strikes you
broadside when you see the first spawning Kokanee shim-
mering under the surface or the first yellow larch on a
ridgetop backlit by sunrise. There’s wonder in the smell of
 Prologue  5

a campfire across the lake; the rolling carpet rump of a bear

spooked on a trail run; the half-drunk swoop of pileated
woodpeckers; in the way rock spire shadows stretch across
a snowy bowl and ice chunks form on the river like floating
mirrors, tinkling; and dogwood flowers appear in spring,
white and showy, then turn papery and drop. There’s won-
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der, too, in the sadness when the last maple leaf dangles
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on a limb and the last seasonal neighbors, bags packed,

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wait for the ferry. There’s wonder even in the sameness, the
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plotlines that recur predictable as sitcoms or soap operas—

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wildlife encounters and wild exuberant parties—and those

that escalate in the age of climate change: fires and floods,
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big snows and hot summers.

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Meanwhile, each morning I drink coffee and pull on

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my running shoes. Usually I don’t want to go. I tell myself

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I can skip this one day. It’s too cold or too hot or too wet or
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too dusty. I have work to do. But this is the only meditation
practice I have, the dregs of the prayers I was taught as a
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child. Name what you see. Offer gratitude. Not every story
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is a circle. Sometimes it’s just one foot in front of the other.

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