David Gessner's Blog, page 2

Deep

 

 

From Ultimate Glory:

If my throws could be erratic, there were things I could trust. Jumping and catching a disk was something I knew I did well and no one could tell me otherwise. I always felt that anything up in the air was mine. Felt that I could go up and get it and do so in the most direct way possible (which may have occasionally involved collisions with other players). A direct line from what I wanted to what I got, so unlike the other areas in my life. I had read my transcendentalists in college and what was this if not transcendent? The moment of leaving the ground—leaving the earth behind! The unthinking moment. Of uncertainty, of risk and reward.

 

The best I felt during those early years was when I was deep in the Hostage zone. As the deep, I played a kind of centerfield position, hanging back and guarding against the other team’s attempts to huck. For once in my young life, I was in command, standing back there, daring the other team to throw, even baiting them to throw. Certainly there were taller players and better jumpers, but I defended my turf with rapacity. It was my responsibility after all. Other people—other Hostages—were depending on me.

 

Since I was behind everyone else on defense, my position also served as a kind of command center where I could yell and tell other Hostages where to go. I loved the feeling of mastery, of seeing the whole field and moving my teammates around like chess pieces. The deep in the zone is very much an individual position—and that suited me—but just as important as being an individual was the feeling that I was part of something. When we were playing really well it was as if we were all part of a vast network or nervous system, connected not just verbally but synaptically. I could yell to Neal to dive right and suddenly he had a block or Jimmy, at side middle, could warn me that someone was running deep on my off side. At our best we were like one connected whole, a single being.

 

 

Ed and Wally in New York

Great essay on Wallace Stegner by A.O. Scott in the New York Times got me thinking about Stegner and Abbey again.

Here are a couple of snippets from my book, All the Wild That Remains, about Ed and Wally and the big city…..

 

When I mentioned the names of these writers in the East, I sometimes got befuddled looks. More than once I had been asked: “Wallace Stevens? Edward Albee?”  No, I would patiently explain. Wallace Stegner and Edward Abbey.

 

It was kind of funny, really. Stegner and Abbey were both so firmly entrenched in the pantheon of writers of the American West that if the region had a literary Mount Rushmore their faces would be chiseled on it. But back east their names, as often as not, elicited puzzlement. When this happened, I would always rush to their defense. Wallace Stegner, I would explain, won the Pulitzer Prize for a novel one year and the National Book Award for another the next, and singlehandedly corrected many of the facile myths about the American West, earning him the role of intellectual godfather, not just of the region but of generations of environmental writers. As for Ed Abbey, I would say, he wrote a novel that sparked an entire environmental movement—have you heard of monkeywrenching or Earth first!?–and another that some consider the closest thing to a modern Walden, a book that many describe as life-changing…..

 

Both men were understandably unhappy about the career-deflating tag of “regional writer,” but the tags have stuck to some extent. Mimicking the confusion of some of the easterners I’ve talked to, Abbey once jokingly referred to himself as Edward Albee. “Never make the New Yorker’s mistake of taking New York for America,” Stegner warned. Abbey, as usual, was more confrontational about his geographic inferiority complex. He railed against being ignored in print and person. When a friend from New York City suggested that the problem was that Abbey was a big fish in a small pond while he, the New York friend, was a small fish in a big pond, Abbey wrote in his journal: “Perfect. This guy thinks New York is the big pond, and the American West the small one.”

Going back into retirement

Death and Rebirth: An Essay in Pictures

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bill and Dave’s: Back From the Dead

Onward to the Sea! (And Back to Boulder)

In the end, my nephew Noah and I were on the road for 4 weeks and 6,500 miles. In the last post I got us from North Carolina to the Badlands of South Dakota. Here we pick up in North Dakota…..

Meeting off-duty Teddy and Edith in Medora, NC.

Noah on the Maah Daah Hey Trail above the Little Missouri (where we camped for two nights.)

Three mornings of sunrise hikes (with cold coffee).

But it wasn’t all fun and games. Every now and then a steer had to be broken.

Noah dwarfs TR (actual size.)

Noah ended up winning the trip-long ping pong competition handily, something like 57-46 games. But I was unbeatable in bars, where I had a home court advantage. This is in Big Sky, Montana.

With Aidan Campbell in Gardiner, MT. Aidan is working as a river guide for the summer after her first year at Yale.

Writing Shack west in Big Sky. Thanks to our gracious hosts, Tom and Sue.

Saw this black bear in Yellowstone as well as a Grizzly with cubs and bison aplenty.

But I got sick of the crowds and found this amazing nap spot….

It was not a short drive from there to California but we made it. Here is Noah at Stinson Bach.

In Marin, our gracious hosts were Jeff Sandler and Karen Bayle. This is Noah’s first time mountain biking….

…and his first fall and mountain biking injury…

A cold dip in the Merced River before braving the Yosemite crowds.

It was a long drive back to Boulder but by the end of day 1 the beer fridge was stocked.

Only issue was a persistent toothache, which required a visit to a Boulder dentist. He was, of course, a Deadhead, with Dead posters all over the walls and Unbroken Chain playing as he drilled into my tooth.

The Campbell family visited and despite our bad knees Jim and I made it up the hill.

 

Meanwhile Nina, Elizabeth, Hadley and the Campbell girls seemed to hike about ten miles a day. Hadley has her back turned in this one on Day 1.

How I felt after a week in Boulder. Hadley can’t bear to look.

A couple more random pics:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Into the Badlands

My nephew Noah graduated three weeks ago. The two if us have spent the last couple of weeks following the trail of Theodore Roosevelt (when not going to Celtic games or playing ping pong). Here are a few highlights from the last 13 days…(Pardon the preponderance of photos of me, often wearing the same shirt, but Noah is the one usually taking the pics.)

Morning writing spot in the Badlands

 

TR’s journal at Houghton Library. Here he tersely describes turning in the boat thieves in Dickinson, ND.

 

The spot in front of the Dickinson courthouse where TR turned in the thieves described in the entry above.

 

If I am remembering correctly from Ellen Meloy’s beautiful book, Eating Stone, what this Bighorn is doing is called “skylining.”

 

The Brinkley bio of TR tells me that individual older bison are called “Lonesome George”s. We had a Lonesome George near our camp and watched him commute down to the creek in the morning.

 

 

Dakota cocktail hour. Great birding. Prairie falcon, meadowlarks aplenty, bobolinks, prairie falcon, blue grosbeak….and Lonesome George in the background….

 

The view from Noah’s tent at sunrise that I can’t for the life of me seem to rotate clockwise (Bill?)….just tilt your head and you’ll get the idea….

 

And for those of you still with us, here are some pics from earlier in the trip.

First stop.

 

With former classmate and current Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin in his congressional office.

 

In Rock Creek Park where TR used to swim naked in winter while prez.

 

Emulation.

 

 

Pulpit Rock, or what I thought was Pulpit Rock, on TR trail. There was another pulpit-like rock next to it that might be the real one. Please let me know the truth if you do….

 

Sagamore Hill on L.I. The beech tree was planted when he lived there.

 

 

TR’s porch. Nice but the Shack has a better view…

 

Noah on ferry from Orient Point to New London.

 

Plaque on the side of the gym where I played pickup b-ball all through college. Never noticed it.

 

Hadley’s first home.

 

The man in the arena. A true highlight.

 

Adams house graduation.

 

Hungover research in Houghton…

 

Last visit with Mr. Hones in his Watertown apartment. His scavenged hat is meant as a screw-you to Harvard.

 

Game 7. Great night, tough loss. Thank you old roommate, Tom Ellis.

 

 

Where we drove to the day after Game 7. LeBron must have thought we were stalking him…

 

Great visit with Jim and Elizabeth Campbell in Madison. This is inside their awesome barn. The ping pong tour of America continues. (Noah and I have played 30 games at various venues in WI, MA and D.C. so far.)

 

 

 

 

Rough Beauty by Karen Auvinen

Long time, no talk Bill and Davers. I’m coming out of seclusion because a very special book is due out a week from today, June 5. With Scribner’s behind it and three starred reviews already (calling it “Breathtaking” and “a beautiful contemplative memoir,”) Karen Auvinen’s Rough Beauty is poised to be a break-out book. And it deserves to be.

I was lucky enough to read it early to blurb it. Here is what I wrote:

���������������� This beautiful and elemental book is an invitation into a life of nature and ritual. Her existence scoured to simplicity by a home-destroying fire, Karen Auvinen sinks into the seasons, watching the world turn from her isolated mountain home, battling loneliness and her own stubborn self, but through contact with the natural world–including the neighborhood bear– achieving moments of illumination and profound truth. At the center of the rituals that make up this mountain life–including walks in nature, meditation, and gourmet dinners���is a high priest named Elvis, a white husky who is tethered to Karen by devotion (and the occasional leash) and fills her days with love, teaching her that she isn���t quite the tough loner she fancies herself to be.��

There are many books about seasons in the wilderness but this is one about a life in it. Henry Beston wrote:���The world to-day is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot.����� Not Karen Auvinen���s world. Rough Beauty has the power to change lives. It stands as an antidote to the brittle and the electronic, the hurried way we rush through our days.

So there it is. Read this book and change your life.

 

Mueller Time

To put it in terms my people can understand: All the others are writing blogs, or at best flash fiction.

Robert Mueller is working on a novel.

 

Just a Thought….

“An exploration of the questing desires of the young heart, ‘Ultimate Glory’ should be recommended reading for every college student. A 20-something, unsure whether to listen to the yearnings of the soul, might find answers in Gessner’s chase of a flying plastic disc.”

The Washington Post

Read Full Review

 

“David Gessner spent 20 years of his youth in the game’s thrall, and he revisits them in “Ultimate Glory: Frisbee, Obsession, and My Wild Youth,” a joyous memoir that explains how “a 175-gram plastic disc” tempered his character and fate. Along the way we get marijuana, psychotropic mushrooms, sex, angst, friendships, cultural commentary, testicular cancer and lots of beer. The word Frisbee “is a hard one to take seriously,” Mr. Gessner admits. But his book is substantial, bearing comparison to William Finnegan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning surfing memoir, ‘Barbarian Days’ (2015).

The Wall Street Journal

Read Full Review

Learn more at www.ultimateglory.net

And watch the fun NFL-Films style trailer: https://vimeo.com/217178323