Hamilton Mountain

Last Monday I woke up with a little craft-beer headache and decided the only way to beat the blues was to climb a mountain. I grabbed my pack, a stack of Dead discs, and drove out to Hamilton Mountain in the Gorge.

Hamilton Mountain is in Washington, just west of Bonneville Dam. The four-mile trail leading to the summit is stocked with waterfalls, wildflower meadows, and towering cliffs with killer views of the Gorge. Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, and Mt. St. Helens all make appearances, nearly overwhelming nearby Table Mountain and Beacon Rock. Read More

Cape Kiwanda

From the tidepools near the dory landing we clambered up the soft eroding stone until we reached the ridge above the steep sandy slope, and proceeded towards the line of dark trees and the cape's jagged meeting with the sea. Signs warned of risk, and cautioned to travel at our own judgment, so I let Mike's judgment go first, followed by Derek's, and finally my own as expedition recorder. We walked under a uniform gray sky, darker gray only down at the coast’s horizon where clouds collided against the land and piled up against the timbered hills. We followed no continuous trail, loping instead across smooth stone, tracing gullies and pitted windswept grooves towards land's end, crossing through copses of wind-shaped pines and past flowers pink and purple and white against the warm orange sandstone. Our path meandered down saddles and over barren crests and past strange wind-sculpted pillars capped with boulders and we wandered as far as we could until we could go no further towards the sea. Derek arrived there first, a solitary figure at the edge of the world, perched miniscule against the slate gray ocean heaving under an arching sky, enchanted and drawn - as were we all - by that immense and powerful force. Cliffs fell precipitously to the sea and the sea rose up in spray and froth to meet the land and reap its rocky bounty. Pelicans and terns wheeled overhead, cormorants skimmed the waves, and the ocean roared against the cliffs, pouring up deep inlets and splashing through caves and channels against barnacles and slime and wet stone painted abstractedly in green seaweed and purple mussel-shell and white sea-salt. We sat in a line, backs to the coast-town snuggled against the sand and spit and hummocked tree-clad slopes, and drank beers brewed locally in vats and casks and copper drums, the product of constant rain and gale, the storm-scented sea-side decay and the warm loamy pine-soil, the slow pace of life when warm light and warm blankets and warm bodies are all the insulation a person has against the coming day. We sat and drank our beers, we watched ten pelicans launch from a rocky island and pass in formation overhead, we cupped our hands around our cigarettes and we sent our thoughts and our smoke sea-ward with the wind, until our beer and our smoke and our thoughts were equally drained and trained on the trail leading back to the land. A dog then bounded over the stone, stopped and sniffed the air eagerly, scouting the way for a party of four crossing the cape distant. We packed our gear, and stood and turned to go, and if I left anything behind there I don’t know what it was, and I don’t miss it.

David Guterson and the Other

Last week I introduced David Guterson at a booksigning at the store. It was a strange experience, in part because of the reactions of some of my coworkers and industry professionals. One coworker said she’d met him several times when she worked in a Seattle bookstore, and she didn’t like him at all. A media escort (hired to pick up authors from airports, drive them to signings, assist booksellers with signings, and so on) for another visiting author said she now refuses to work with him. And many coworkers, informed of his reputation, asked how the signing went.

Well, I replied. It went well.

I should admit that I’ve greatly enjoyed Guterson’s three previous novels. I wasn’t aware of Mr. Guterson’s reputation, and he struck me as the kind of author who shies away from publicity unless it’s necessary – such as a book tour. He’s a solid public speaker, which probably comes from his early career as a high school teacher. But in person, he’s quiet and not very talkative, even with readers in the signing line. There’s always a risk that authors and booksellers won’t have anything to talk about past basic questions and answers: how is the tour going, etc. But Guterson was even more reticent than usual – if I were to hazard a guess, I’d say he believes in the role of the author to write, the reader to read, and that those roles aren’t supposed to cross much.

But it’s more than that, I think. Guterson’s latest novel, “The Other,” explores the reactions of two characters to the fact that our society of material excess is built on the exploitation and suffering of others. One character, John William, decides to lead a hermetic life isolated from society, while his childhood friend pursues a more conventional career and marriage. The novel hinges on the intersection and conflicts raised by these two lives.

Guterson admits that “The Other” is his most autobiographical novel, and what he calls the “other” is our internal conflict caused by having to participate in a society that is predicated on absurdities. Our awareness raises feelings of guilt and a desire to help bring about change. But Guterson believes there is no inherent resolution to this conflict, and he calls hermeticism, with its denial of social contact and subsequent loss of social desire, just as absurd as the metaphysical questions that drove John William to choose such a path.

A reader asked if Guterson felt John William was a sympathetic character. He replied that reviewer’s opinions were mixed: some asked why they should care, and some said John William was heartbreaking. His goal as a writer, however, was to draw a portrait that more closely resembled Thoreau or Chris McCandless in Krakauer’s “Into the Wild,” a character whose romanticism and belief begs a question only the reader can answer: do you personally find him sympathetic?

This theme has grown stronger throughout Guterson’s work, from Kabuo’s cultural reserve in “Snow Falling on Cedars” to Ben’s final solitary journey in “East of the Mountains,” and it grows even stronger in the characters that populate “Our Lady of the Forest.” These works strike me as an attempt by Guterson to strike closer to the “other” within himself, to understand the dichotomies and questions and contradiction within his own life by exploring how those conflicts play out in meaning in fictional lives.

Does Guterson deserve the personal reputation he’s garnered among booksellers in the Northwest? I say no, and even if some people think so, it hardly matters. He’s an artist asking hard questions of himself and his readers, and his work stands under its own weight. Guterson said he believes the metaphysical conundrum underlying our society can’t be fixed, that it’s irredeemable – but his novels show that it’s still worth trying.

When Animals Attack II

A few days ago I watched a man flailing his arms as he walked down the sidewalk outside my bookstore. He was older, with a white beard and thinning white hair, and dressed in a light gray suit. He looked ridiculous with his arms swinging around his head, and he kept spinning around and looking at the sky. That’s when I saw a starling dive-bombing him – it never came closer than a foot or so, but it swooped down repeatedly, beating its wings and chasing the man down the sidewalk.

I’ve recently been watching the starlings roost above the loading dock roof, and sometimes I see them chasing crows. It looks like motorcyclists darting around semi-trucks, though in mid-air.

When the man in the suit passed the bus shelter, the pursuing bird landed on the shelter roof. The man walked down the sidewalk about twenty feet and turned back to look, then walked another twenty feet and stopped again. I couldn’t figure out why the starling was attacking him, and he couldn’t either. But just then, another pedestrian walked down the sidewalk and the starling started to dive-bomb him.

The man in the suit, apparently satisfied, walked away.

A few days before, I’d watched two landscapers stop and peer into a few small hedges near the bus stop. I’m pretty sure the starling has a nest there. Now, every day and without fail, I see the starling guard its territory, a forty foot stretch between the bus stop and a light-post. I’ve watched the bird attack numerous people, including a pregnant woman with a baby in a stroller, several teens, and a few corporate types.

Sometimes the pedestrians don’t even know what’s happening. The starling will fly behind them and flap its wings to hover near their head. When a victim finally figures it out, a mixture of disbelief and confusion, and sometimes a little anger or panic, crosses their face. I’ve seen people run, swat at the bird, and swear and yell.

A coworker has an office window that overlooks the sidewalk and he’s also been watching this happen all week.

Keep it up, starling, keep it up. You’re doing good…

The Soloist

Nathaniel Ayers is a classically trained musician. He's also schizophrenic and was living on the street, playing a two-string violin, when LA Times columnist Steve Lopez met and began writing about him three years ago. The resulting friendship changed both Ayers' and Lopez' lives.

Lopez' book about Ayers, "The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music," was released this month, and is being made into a movie staring Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx. Lopez recently spoke about Nathaniel on NPR's Fresh Air, and the podcast is, to put it mildly, devastating.

Our culture treats the mentally ill as though they were a lower caste, invisible and unimportant. As Lopez asks, would we treat someone with cancer the same way? The answer, of course, is no - and Ayers' story, his illness and his music, his passion and his ability to inspire others, is heartbreaking evidence that American society's overall relationship to the mentally ill is sick and wrong, and discriminating, hurtful and limiting in so many ways. Not just for the ill, who suffer greatly, but for the more fortunate of us who not only have the choice of paying attention, helping, and learning from the mentally ill, but also the choice to not pay attention at all, and suffer and wither and let beautiful people pass away into ignorance, pain, and finally, death. We must, as a culture, do better. We must, as individuals, follow our passions. Nathaniel Ayers follows his every day through the fog and fear of schizophrenia, and by doing so enriches himself and others around him. That's what we expect from "normal" people in our society. Ayers and others like him deserve better. We all deserve better.