Ariel Gordon's Blog, page 30
September 19, 2014
forest/poetry
* * *
Yesterday morning, I took Sally Ito's creative writing class at the Canadian Mennonite University for a walk in Assiniboine Forest.
My assignment: To lead them through the forest in an hour and fifteen minutes, providing them with a variety of writing prompts. I also larded them with information about aspen parkland flora and fauna, the history of the forest, and anecdotes about The Forest Perv and the 2000 small plane crash at the far edge of the forest.
Their assignment: To write three forest/poems based on our walk.
At Sally's request, I also read three forest poems from Hump before we set out. "Fall back: off leash," "Fall back: the last good day," and "Enclosure #41: on the occasion of a poet's visit." (I was surprised to realize that Stowaways contains exactly ONE forest poem...)
Interestingly, four of the students chose to freewrite on their phones as opposed to notebooks.
Fun! My thanks to Sally for asking me to lead this workshop again...
Hosting The Raven Sonata
* * *Of the many things I happen to know about Kittie Wong, two make me happy:
1) The novel that she's been working on for many years, on her own and also within the context of Jake MacDonald's on-going creative writing class, is finally done. And she's asked me to help her launch it...
2) The apple tree in Kittie's mother's yard makes great apples: deep red, crisp, and kinda-sorta tasting of white wine.
September 18, 2014
Salt Spring-ing
* * *
I've never been to Salt Spring before...whee!
My fervent thanks to Yvonne for setting this up.
September 17, 2014
The Earth Works Like a Poem
Winnipeg is infamous for its 1919 general strike, but what really moves us to action is trees.
"If you ever want to lose elected office in Winnipeg," said [former] mayor Glenn Murray wryly, "say something bad about a tree."
Winnipeg Tribune Photo Collection
Case in point:
In 1957, the city announced that it would cut down a large elm that stood in the centre of Wolseley Avenue and Greenwood Street. It had been planted in 1860 by horticulturalist and market gardener Mary Ann Kirton Good but by the turn of the century it was considered a traffic hazard.
As city crews arrived, a group of women led by Mrs. Borrowman, gathered around the tree: “They are going to have to chop us down too if they want to chop our tree,” said the women.
According to George Siamandas’ Winnipeg Time Machine:
“As the city employee approached the tree with his buzz saw, an old grandmother with an axe shouted out ‘We don't think you should do this.’ A crowd of three hundred had gathered to support the 12 women that were now guarding the tree. [Newly elected mayor Stephen] Juba then emerged from the crowd and was convinced by the women to find a way out of it. On the premise of public safety, Juba put an end to that day. Mrs Borrowman kissed the mayor on the cheek and invited him to her place for tea.”
On Hallowe’en 1958, the tree was dynamited by an unknown arsonist. Mrs. Borrowman asked to have a piece of the tree so she could have an “electric lamp made.”
Case in point, this one from 2014:
There is a 25-metre elm in front of Patricia Kuzak's West Kildonan house.
In April, the 76-year-old woman ran out of her house barefoot and in her bright red housecoat to rescue her tree. Sewage and drainage upgrades were being conducted by city workers and a private construction crew and the hole they were digging was potentially damaging the tree’s roots.
According to an article in the WinnipegFree Press by Ashley Prest, Kuzak said,
"I said, 'Get the hell out of here. I'm phoning the press, I'm calling the city, I'm getting an arborist out here.' And they did," said Kuzak.
Afterwards, Kuzak put signs on the boulevard, alerting workers to the perennials planted under the snowdrifts. She and her husband plan to monitor the tree closely for any signs of damage.
"I told Bob, if that tree is down, I'm down," Kuzak said. "The tree is more important than the house. You can build a house. You can't build a tree."
So it should be clear that I come from a place that is incredibly proud—and destructive of—urban nature.
People shake their fists at crows, cankerworms, squirrels, merlins (Oh the poor poor songbirds!), and deer in their yard eating their perennials down the ground. <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:Verdana; panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1593833729 1073750107 16 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;} @page WordSection1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> Men in the city’s employ wield chainsaws exuberantly and back their machines into boulevard trees.<br /><br />But they also fall in love with the peregrines who rear young on the very tops of our downtown hotels—it mimics the cliff habitats they prefer—watching them via webcam. They feed the winter-thin deer, despite pleas from city naturalists to ‘let nature take it’s course.’ They tell those men in machines to get the <i>fuck</i> away from their trees, and, when the trees finally succumb to disease or old age, come out of their houses to watch the chippers work. (The children echoing: <i>Vroom!</i>) <br /><br />After a childhood vacationing in a shack on an island in Minaki, after an adolescence rowing on the Red River, with its obnoxious waterskiers and naked men on the riverbanks, I’ve realized that I’m most comfortable in spaces that neither completely urban nor completely natural. <br /><br />Where I work is who I am. As such, I specialize in urban/nature poetry.That is, I work at the following questions: What’s the difference between wild and tame, natural and unnatural? <br /><br />Also, my urban/nature poems all have people in them. Because they’re a part of the narrative too. And not just ambivalently mourning the birds that smashed against our windows or the neighbourhood cat mowed down by a car. But living in that space with the urban adaptors, the commensal, the exotics, the drought-resistant natives. That nature isn’t something you visit or adjacent to a rented cabin-in-the-woods. <br /><br />So you might say that I have both impulses: tree-hugger and arsonist. Mycologist and stomper-of-boulevard-mushrooms: <i>They might be poisonous! The children! </i><br /><br />My poetry doesn’t have an overtly ecological bent. But I think of my poems as a refocusing of a particularly grimy lens, as a gesture towards the complexity at work on a patch of land, whether it be urban/rural or urban/suburban. <br /><br />* * *<br /><br />And then I read my poem "Bicker" from <i>Stowaways</i>, which is infested with merlins and housecats and neighbours. <br /><br />* * *<br /><br />These is an ever-so-slightly cleaned-up version of my notes for my first Under Western Skies panel. <a href="http://janedayreader.blogspot.ca/2014..." target="_blank">Note that I did not directly answer the panel's implicit question</a>. But other poets did. And, together, we provoked a wide-ranging conversation about art-making and the self and nature that was, well... completely invigorating.
"If you ever want to lose elected office in Winnipeg," said [former] mayor Glenn Murray wryly, "say something bad about a tree."
Winnipeg Tribune Photo CollectionCase in point:
In 1957, the city announced that it would cut down a large elm that stood in the centre of Wolseley Avenue and Greenwood Street. It had been planted in 1860 by horticulturalist and market gardener Mary Ann Kirton Good but by the turn of the century it was considered a traffic hazard.
As city crews arrived, a group of women led by Mrs. Borrowman, gathered around the tree: “They are going to have to chop us down too if they want to chop our tree,” said the women.
According to George Siamandas’ Winnipeg Time Machine:
“As the city employee approached the tree with his buzz saw, an old grandmother with an axe shouted out ‘We don't think you should do this.’ A crowd of three hundred had gathered to support the 12 women that were now guarding the tree. [Newly elected mayor Stephen] Juba then emerged from the crowd and was convinced by the women to find a way out of it. On the premise of public safety, Juba put an end to that day. Mrs Borrowman kissed the mayor on the cheek and invited him to her place for tea.”
On Hallowe’en 1958, the tree was dynamited by an unknown arsonist. Mrs. Borrowman asked to have a piece of the tree so she could have an “electric lamp made.”
Case in point, this one from 2014:
There is a 25-metre elm in front of Patricia Kuzak's West Kildonan house.
In April, the 76-year-old woman ran out of her house barefoot and in her bright red housecoat to rescue her tree. Sewage and drainage upgrades were being conducted by city workers and a private construction crew and the hole they were digging was potentially damaging the tree’s roots.
According to an article in the WinnipegFree Press by Ashley Prest, Kuzak said,
"I said, 'Get the hell out of here. I'm phoning the press, I'm calling the city, I'm getting an arborist out here.' And they did," said Kuzak.
Afterwards, Kuzak put signs on the boulevard, alerting workers to the perennials planted under the snowdrifts. She and her husband plan to monitor the tree closely for any signs of damage.
"I told Bob, if that tree is down, I'm down," Kuzak said. "The tree is more important than the house. You can build a house. You can't build a tree."
So it should be clear that I come from a place that is incredibly proud—and destructive of—urban nature.
People shake their fists at crows, cankerworms, squirrels, merlins (Oh the poor poor songbirds!), and deer in their yard eating their perennials down the ground. <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:Verdana; panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1593833729 1073750107 16 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;} @page WordSection1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> Men in the city’s employ wield chainsaws exuberantly and back their machines into boulevard trees.<br /><br />But they also fall in love with the peregrines who rear young on the very tops of our downtown hotels—it mimics the cliff habitats they prefer—watching them via webcam. They feed the winter-thin deer, despite pleas from city naturalists to ‘let nature take it’s course.’ They tell those men in machines to get the <i>fuck</i> away from their trees, and, when the trees finally succumb to disease or old age, come out of their houses to watch the chippers work. (The children echoing: <i>Vroom!</i>) <br /><br />After a childhood vacationing in a shack on an island in Minaki, after an adolescence rowing on the Red River, with its obnoxious waterskiers and naked men on the riverbanks, I’ve realized that I’m most comfortable in spaces that neither completely urban nor completely natural. <br /><br />Where I work is who I am. As such, I specialize in urban/nature poetry.That is, I work at the following questions: What’s the difference between wild and tame, natural and unnatural? <br /><br />Also, my urban/nature poems all have people in them. Because they’re a part of the narrative too. And not just ambivalently mourning the birds that smashed against our windows or the neighbourhood cat mowed down by a car. But living in that space with the urban adaptors, the commensal, the exotics, the drought-resistant natives. That nature isn’t something you visit or adjacent to a rented cabin-in-the-woods. <br /><br />So you might say that I have both impulses: tree-hugger and arsonist. Mycologist and stomper-of-boulevard-mushrooms: <i>They might be poisonous! The children! </i><br /><br />My poetry doesn’t have an overtly ecological bent. But I think of my poems as a refocusing of a particularly grimy lens, as a gesture towards the complexity at work on a patch of land, whether it be urban/rural or urban/suburban. <br /><br />* * *<br /><br />And then I read my poem "Bicker" from <i>Stowaways</i>, which is infested with merlins and housecats and neighbours. <br /><br />* * *<br /><br />These is an ever-so-slightly cleaned-up version of my notes for my first Under Western Skies panel. <a href="http://janedayreader.blogspot.ca/2014..." target="_blank">Note that I did not directly answer the panel's implicit question</a>. But other poets did. And, together, we provoked a wide-ranging conversation about art-making and the self and nature that was, well... completely invigorating.
September 16, 2014
Taking on first-world love
<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:Verdana; panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1593833729 1073750107 16 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Verdana; panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1593833729 1073750107 16 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style>This was my favourite question/answer from my recent interview with Fernie, BC-based writer <a href="http://abdou.ca/" target="_blank">Angie Abdou</a> for <i>Prairie Books Now</i> about <a href="http://www.arsenalpulp.com/bookinfo.p..." target="_blank">her fourth novel, <i>Between</i></a>.<br /><br />Angie's answer was too long to make it into the article intact, but I liked the progression of the thought, so I thought I'd include it here in its entirety:<br /><b> </b><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bKVBhtcXFZo..." imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bKVBhtcXFZo..." height="400" width="275" /></a><b>What was it like taking first-world love, marriage, and parenthood as subjects while being in the middle of them yourself? </b><br /><br />That's a good question. In my acknowledgements, I thank my family and comment that I know this book was a particularly hard one, for everyone.<br /><br />I believe parents very quickly forget the intense challenge of raising young children. Once children are older, parents are quicker to give advice and talk about "right" ways to parent and "wrong" ways to parent and parenting strategies that "work" and parenting strategies that "don't work." People who are right in it are never so smug.<br /><br />As I moved out of the young children stage, I couldn't let myself forget its intense challenges—the strain it put on my career, my relationship, my sanity. I wanted to remember, exactly, so that I could capture those challenges in an honest and detailed way on the page.<br /><br />That meant dwelling on that stage more than I should have—and also dwelling on gender inequality around being a working parent, a working mother. Such a focus didn't really put me in the best frame of mind for dealing with my own specific challenges. I was angry a lot of the time, and occasionally despairing.
September 15, 2014
Panelling
The view from behind UMP's books table at Mount Royal University's Under Western Skies conference; the Earth Works Like a Poem panelists, Alec Whitford, Ariel Gordon, Richard Harrison, Micheline Maylor, and Weyman Chan.
* * *
My week in Calgary was split three ways glorious but tiring ways.
First, I attended a variety of panel discussions with titles like Fantastic Invasion: Wild Politics and Order in Urban Spaces, Urban/Rural Ecologies and Policies, and Creating Civilization out of Wilderness and Vice-Versa: Prairies, Forests, and Badlands in the North American West.
It should go without saying that much of this was right up my alley, but I will say it: there was lots to think on and lots of references to look up post-conference. I would even go so far as to say that I was inspired by the work that was shared.
My favourite new piece of forest-y jargon is "hard deforestation," which means the loss of forest cover to the built environment (as opposed to farming and logging...).
Second, I participated in two panel discussions—The Earth Works Like a Poem on Tuesday and Eco-Poetry Readings on Thursday—and subbed in Jenna Butler in a third, Friday's Environmental Literature session.
The eco-poetry panel was hosted by Micheline Maylor and included Angela Waldie and Joan Shillington from Calgary and Diana Woodcock from Qatar (via Skype...) while the environmental lit panel was hosted by Kit Dobson and featured both Ann Eriksson and Phil Condon.
The first two sessions were were all about poetry and ideas and community-building, which are some of my very favourite things. And it was good to kick off my fall touring of Stowaways...
The highlight of the last session was getting to read the preface and first chapter of Jenna's upcoming book of creative non-fiction about her small northern farm, On the Grizzly Trail. The lowlight, if there was one, was making sure that I was doing the text justice...reading long-form prose is so very different than performing poetry.
The third and final segment of the conference was sitting behind UMP's books table and spelling off UMP's acquisitions editor. The way it worked out is that she got to go to more of the keynote speakers and I got to go to more panels...
Did I also mention there were events most nights of the conference? And that I was interviewed by the intrepid Emily Ursuliak for the CJSW radio program Writer's Block?
So, yes, I'm knackered. But home again and happy...
September 13, 2014
Fish Creek Provincial Park
Fish Creek Provincial Park, Calgary, AB. September 11, 2014.* * *I just got home from the Under Western Skies conference in Calgary, where I stayed at my friend Tessa's house. Tessa and I have known each other for fifteen years now, so it was very comfortable to stay with her family...
This is the only picture worth sharing from a walk I did with Tessa's family to the nearby Fish Creek Provincial Park.
We found a few other mushrooms, but were rapidly losing the light...and I was so grateful to be walking, to be looking on flood-downed trees and underbrush for mushrooms, after three late nights, after three days of snow, broken trees and icy freeways, attending the conference, that it didn't matter.
Fish Creek was severely damaged by last year's Calgary flood. But the pedestrian bridge, which had been washed away by the floodwaters, was open again. And we thankfully didn't see very many new downed branches...but there was still lots of debris and downed trees leftover from the flood that lined the main path.
People were calling this week, with heavy snowfall on trees still in full leaf, 'treemageddon.' Apparently about 3,800 'tree emergencies' were called into the city of Calgary's 311 line.
It's easy to define tree emergency when even the trees lining the freeway have branches down. On the Mount Royal campus, they used police tape to cordon off paths where several trees had come down and Thursday afternoon was full of the sound of trees shedding heaps of melting snow.
It had been two days of stories on traditional media and networks like Facebook about overburdened trees falling on houses and cars, cutting power and blocking streets.
But on Thursday, there was sun and people walking and most of the snow had cleared.
(More later on this conference itself...)
September 7, 2014
Post-apple
* * *
After a rain delay on Thursday (read: a day of thunderstorms...), I finally went to my apple pick.
As it turns out, there were two trees tumbling with fruit. And the other picker couldn't make it. So I got M to help me...and we managed to pick to pick approximately 150 pounds of apples in two hours.
We hauled them all home, the car full of airborne sugars, and now I have to wait until Monday to deliver half to Resource Assistance for Youth.
And last week's smallish pears aren't even ripe yet....
September 6, 2014
The not-so-big chill: Naturalist's northern reflections feel guarded, routine
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Reviewed by Ariel Gordon
Paddlenorth: Adventure, Resilience and Renewal in the Arctic Wild
By Jennifer Kingsley
Greystone Books, 240 pages, $30
These days, Ottawa-based naturalist Jennifer Kingsley builds radio documentaries about encounters with whales and is the on-board naturalist for National Geographic tours through the Northwest Passage.
But, back in 2005, when she embarked on a 54-day canoe trip to the Arctic with five companions, she was still trying to figure out the boundaries of what increasingly was becoming a "wilderness-bound life," saying "most of the people closest to me would never see me in the places I love most, where I am often my best and sometimes at my worst."
The record of this negotiation is Paddlenorth, Kingsley's first book. This is travel writing of an extreme sort, where the narrator describes her numb and cracked feet and bug-bitten skin with a kind of pride.
Unfortunately, Kingsley is unwilling to slip into either the naturalist or confessional modes that are de rigueur for either nature writing or memoir, and the book suffers as a result.
Though she now makes her living as a guide for other people seeking their own adventures, Kingsley seems reluctant to spend too much time describing the landscape around her or to put what she's seeing into context for the reader.
For instance, Kingsley fervently hopes that their journey on Nunavut's Back River intersects with the annual barrens caribou migration, writing over and over that this is a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." Eventually, their group is surrounded by more caribou than Kingsley can count. But what's missing is the information that the caribou herds were in significant decline even in 2005, and that there were concerns by northern officials over how rising temperatures owing to climate change and the incursions by mining companies in caribou calving grounds were affecting the herds.
Kingsley is also unwilling delve too deeply into the interpersonal relationships among the six companions. And that's a shame, because it robs the book of much of the "resilience" and "renewal" promised in the book's subtitle. We don't really get to know more than one or two of the other paddlers and the conflict suggested by passages here and there is never fully explored.
Kingsley chooses to fill these gaps with descriptions of other travellers in the region, focusing in on British naval officer and explorer George Back, who explored the area in 1834 as well as the disastrous tenure of Catholic missionary Joseph Builiard in the area in 1949.
She also goes into great detail about the ill-conceived 1955 Arctic journey led by Arthur Moffatt, which led to his death from hypothermia.
All of these histories are interesting, but they're exclusively male and Euro-western. (Where are the Inuit and Dene stories from the region, both historical and contemporary?)
They also serve to highlight the fact that, while anyone would agree that spending the summer canoeing in the Arctic is extreme, there is very little privation for Kingsley and her companions. They have space-age fabrics, maps and plenty of food to see them through their trip.
Which leaves us with the subtitle's final hook: "adventure." Yes, Kingsley's group traverses several sets of big rapids and even capsizes a canoe early on. They also have to wait out some nasty weather, which threatens to delay their departure, but everything mostly goes as planned...
Towards the end of Paddlenorth, Kingsley writes "everybody has a different reason for committing a journey to paper, and no one has the same memory." She's talking about George Grinnell's 1996 account of the Moffatt expedition, but she could have easily been discussing her own story.
It's unclear what Kingsley's reasons were for writing about this particular trip, especially as she's since been on dozens of others and because she seems so guarded about what seems to have been a largely uneventful trip.
My wish for her is that the next time she writes an account of her travels—and I'd like to read that next book— that she trusts both her readers and herself a little more.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.
Reviewed by Ariel Gordon
Paddlenorth: Adventure, Resilience and Renewal in the Arctic Wild
By Jennifer Kingsley
Greystone Books, 240 pages, $30
These days, Ottawa-based naturalist Jennifer Kingsley builds radio documentaries about encounters with whales and is the on-board naturalist for National Geographic tours through the Northwest Passage.
But, back in 2005, when she embarked on a 54-day canoe trip to the Arctic with five companions, she was still trying to figure out the boundaries of what increasingly was becoming a "wilderness-bound life," saying "most of the people closest to me would never see me in the places I love most, where I am often my best and sometimes at my worst."
The record of this negotiation is Paddlenorth, Kingsley's first book. This is travel writing of an extreme sort, where the narrator describes her numb and cracked feet and bug-bitten skin with a kind of pride.
Unfortunately, Kingsley is unwilling to slip into either the naturalist or confessional modes that are de rigueur for either nature writing or memoir, and the book suffers as a result.
Though she now makes her living as a guide for other people seeking their own adventures, Kingsley seems reluctant to spend too much time describing the landscape around her or to put what she's seeing into context for the reader.
For instance, Kingsley fervently hopes that their journey on Nunavut's Back River intersects with the annual barrens caribou migration, writing over and over that this is a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." Eventually, their group is surrounded by more caribou than Kingsley can count. But what's missing is the information that the caribou herds were in significant decline even in 2005, and that there were concerns by northern officials over how rising temperatures owing to climate change and the incursions by mining companies in caribou calving grounds were affecting the herds.
Kingsley is also unwilling delve too deeply into the interpersonal relationships among the six companions. And that's a shame, because it robs the book of much of the "resilience" and "renewal" promised in the book's subtitle. We don't really get to know more than one or two of the other paddlers and the conflict suggested by passages here and there is never fully explored.
Kingsley chooses to fill these gaps with descriptions of other travellers in the region, focusing in on British naval officer and explorer George Back, who explored the area in 1834 as well as the disastrous tenure of Catholic missionary Joseph Builiard in the area in 1949.
She also goes into great detail about the ill-conceived 1955 Arctic journey led by Arthur Moffatt, which led to his death from hypothermia.
All of these histories are interesting, but they're exclusively male and Euro-western. (Where are the Inuit and Dene stories from the region, both historical and contemporary?)
They also serve to highlight the fact that, while anyone would agree that spending the summer canoeing in the Arctic is extreme, there is very little privation for Kingsley and her companions. They have space-age fabrics, maps and plenty of food to see them through their trip.
Which leaves us with the subtitle's final hook: "adventure." Yes, Kingsley's group traverses several sets of big rapids and even capsizes a canoe early on. They also have to wait out some nasty weather, which threatens to delay their departure, but everything mostly goes as planned...
Towards the end of Paddlenorth, Kingsley writes "everybody has a different reason for committing a journey to paper, and no one has the same memory." She's talking about George Grinnell's 1996 account of the Moffatt expedition, but she could have easily been discussing her own story.
It's unclear what Kingsley's reasons were for writing about this particular trip, especially as she's since been on dozens of others and because she seems so guarded about what seems to have been a largely uneventful trip.
My wish for her is that the next time she writes an account of her travels—and I'd like to read that next book— that she trusts both her readers and herself a little more.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.
September 5, 2014
galling
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You'll recall my exuberant glee at finding rose galls in Grasslands National Park, but this is the largest, most potato-y rose gall I have EVER seen...
