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Every Natural Fact. Amy Lou Jenkins
Читать онлайн.Название Every Natural Fact
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780982354568
Автор произведения Amy Lou Jenkins
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство Ingram
Table of Contents
Praise for Every Natural Fact
“What makes this book such a marvel is the way the human and the non-human are kept in perfect balance: the psychological dance of a mother and son, with all its funny, touching, realistic two-steps, intersects with the desire to be opened up to the mystery and rapture of the natural sublime. It is a splendid fusion, as much about parenting and education and generation gaps as it is about patient observation of landscapes in flux. Jenkins’ polished literary style makes it, sentence by sentence, a joy to read.”
—Phillip Lopate, author of Waterfront and At the End of the Day
“Braiding together history, memoir, gentle parenting guidance, and superb nature writing, Jenkins’ prose illuminates the details of ordinary life.”
—Susan Cheever, author of Home Before Dark and American Bloomsbury
“Amy Lou Jenkins writes with complexity about the dance human beings do with nature, and with one another...She puts together pieces of history, natural history, and parenting to make a touching and memorable whole. The whole thing rings true.”
—Michael Finley, judge of the Ellis/Henderson Outdoor Writing Award
“Her vivid imagery mixes a naturalist’s precision with a spiritual seeker’s poetry.”
—Robert Wake, author and editor of Cambridge Book Review Press and co-judge for the X.J. Kennedy Award for Nonfiction
“Armed with a keen sense of geography, geology, and biology—as well as a delightful arsenal of regional folklore—Amy Lou Jenkins chronicles a series of Wisconsin nature walks with her adolescent son, determined to face her own foibles and learning to accept that DJ will eventually leave her loving nest. In her cogent, smart book she holds on to her boy even as she lets him go, and in the process discovers—through the natural world, through her faith, and through guides such as Muir and Leopold—her own strength and vulnerability as a mother.”
—Debra Gwartney, author of Live Through This: A Mother’s Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love and co-editor of Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape
AMY LOU JENKINS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The journey to move my writing from the sideline to center field began while I was working as a nurse. The most common end-of-life advice bestowed implicitly and explicitly by the terminally ill was rooted in regret about abandoned hopes and dreams. My dying patients initiated this book. They made me consider what was essential about my work and my life.
My husband, parents, sister, friends, and children treated me as an esteemed writer even before I’d broken into print. Judy Bridges and the writers from Red-bird Writing Studios, Marilyn L. Taylor, and the Council for Wisconsin writers, Anne O’Meara and the UWM Spring Writers Festival, Jo McReynolds Blochowiak and the Great Lakes Writers Workshop, Anne Bingham, Nina Leopold Bradley, Sheree Bykofsky, and Mary E. Flynn, have all contributed to an essential community of support. Jim Perlman and Holy Cow! Press have championed literature from the Midwest since 1977 and nurtured this book project for the last year. Thank you also to all those friends and supporters who go unnamed.
Alverno College rewired me, recalling for me an ardor for words and ideas that had been stifled. Bennington College flung me into Liam Rector’s vortex of prose, verse, and intensity. Susan Cheever introduced me to a range, addiction, and love of literature, as she celebrated the relationship between a life of letters and living a passionate life. Bob Shacochis recognized the first forays into my subject matter as a potential book and helped me to shape the concept of Every Natural Fact. He also kicked my butt when the work fell short and explained precisely why some writing had literary merit and some did not yet meet the standard. He called for a higher level of generosity to the reader, less lyrically known as a rewrite. This was invaluable. Tom Bissell gave bigheartedly of his talent, criticism, and support. He evaluated each word I sent him with the care of a master artisan. Phillip Lopate, the quintessential New York writer, pulled out his figurative flannel shirt and went with me to the Wisconsin wilderness where he pressed me to also write for those who are seduced by words rather than nature.
This book became a reality thanks to The Mesa Refuge Writing Fellowship, Ellis/Henderson Outdoor Writing Award, Florida Review Nonfiction Prize, Flint Hill Review’s Nonfiction Award, Rosebud Magazine’s X.J. Kennedy Nonfiction Award, Wisconsin Regional Writers Association Jade Ring Award, Literal Latté Nonfiction Prize, and the Santa Fe Writers Literary Prize, which have supported and honored my work.
Finally, thanks to all who work to preserve, restore, and love every natural place.
Dedicated to Dylan—who walked with me.
BETWEEN LAND AND WATER
“Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.”
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
In early spring I discovered a longing for unplugged time with my nearly eleven-year-old son—no phones, computers, iPods, or video-games. DJ and I began our open-air walks. While we walked the natural areas of Wisconsin, he grew toward manhood, and I grew into middle age. At the beginning, before we planned regular outings, I was uncharacteristically whiney, mired in apprehensions that