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Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country
Beloved writer and teacher Pam Houston explores what ties her to the earth in essays as lucid and invigorating as mountain air.
“How do we become who we are in the world? We ask the world to teach us.” In her travels from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska, Pam Houston explores what ties her to the earth—her 120-acre homestead in the Colorado Rockies most of all. Here, elk calves and bluebirds mark the changing seasons, winter temperatures drop to 35 below, and lightning sparks a 110,000-acre wildfire in a dry summer, threatening her century-old barn and its inhabitants. Alongside her devoted Irish wolfhounds, Houston learns what it means to take responsibility for a piece of land and the creatures on it.
A survivor of parental abuse and neglect, Houston also discovers how the natural world has mothered and healed her. Deep Creek delivers her most profound meditations yet on how “to live simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief . . . to love the damaged world and do what I can to help it thrive.”
“How do we become who we are in the world? We ask the world to teach us.” In her travels from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska, Pam Houston explores what ties her to the earth—her 120-acre homestead in the Colorado Rockies most of all. Here, elk calves and bluebirds mark the changing seasons, winter temperatures drop to 35 below, and lightning sparks a 110,000-acre wildfire in a dry summer, threatening her century-old barn and its inhabitants. Alongside her devoted Irish wolfhounds, Houston learns what it means to take responsibility for a piece of land and the creatures on it.
A survivor of parental abuse and neglect, Houston also discovers how the natural world has mothered and healed her. Deep Creek delivers her most profound meditations yet on how “to live simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief . . . to love the damaged world and do what I can to help it thrive.”
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 29, 2019
596 people are currently reading
9257 people want to read
About the author
Pam Houston
47 books932 followersHouston is the Director of Creative Writing at U.C. Davis. Her stories have been selected for the Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Awards, the Pushcart Prize, and the Best American Short Stories of the Century. She lives in Colorado at 9,000 feet above sea level near the headwaters of the Rio Grande.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 911 reviews
October 26, 2018
A balm for the soul, a visit with an old friend, a love song to the Earth. This book was all that and more. Cowboys Are My Weakness was a touchstone for me when I was in my mid-twenties, and this book served as a reminder of the fiery, uncertain young woman I once was and an illustration of how far I’ve come to be comfortable in my own life since then. I’m grateful to writers like Pam Houston who put themselves out in the world to provide gentle guidance to so many readers they likely will never meet. It matters.
February 10, 2019
I love this book with my entire heart. Read this book if:
... you’ve ever fallen in love with a piece of land, especially in the Colorado mountains
... the fate of this planet has ever brought you to tears
... you love animals more than humans (at least sometimes)
... you’ve survived things you should never have had to survive
... you are a brave woman, or not so brave just yet but you want to be
... you loved Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild,” Thoreau’s ”Walden,” Terry Tempest Williams’ “Refuge” or any the other great chroniclers of the American landscape
... you find yourself navigating the line between wanderlust and rootedness
... you care about words, and writing, and women telling their truths
Pam Houston does not disappoint. Having admired her work for years, I think this is her best yet.
... you’ve ever fallen in love with a piece of land, especially in the Colorado mountains
... the fate of this planet has ever brought you to tears
... you love animals more than humans (at least sometimes)
... you’ve survived things you should never have had to survive
... you are a brave woman, or not so brave just yet but you want to be
... you loved Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild,” Thoreau’s ”Walden,” Terry Tempest Williams’ “Refuge” or any the other great chroniclers of the American landscape
... you find yourself navigating the line between wanderlust and rootedness
... you care about words, and writing, and women telling their truths
Pam Houston does not disappoint. Having admired her work for years, I think this is her best yet.
November 21, 2019
Pam Houston, author and English professor, purchased a ranch on a wing and a prayer some twenty-plus years ago. She turns now, in mid-life, to examine what this Colorado homestead has meant to her in terms of finance, labor, lifestyle, and healing from the deep and dismal wounds of an abusive childhood. Beating beneath the text of a rich and beautifully depicted existence on a modern-day frontier is the racing heart of a daughter who could not relax a single day in residence with her father or risk a single unguarded moment with a mother who made it perfectly clear she would never measure up.
When a raging forest fire threatens to jump the Continental Divide and rush down the mountain to her home, the triggers tip like so many serpentined dominoes...
Any reasonable, self-caring person scheduled to teach twenty-one full days in a row without a single day off would take themselves the hell to bed. To say nothing of the readings, and panels, and the endless infernal cocktail parties. But in every picture that exists of me as a child I have rings around my eyes so dark I look anemic. Staying awake all night never kept my father from hurting me, but I wanted to know in advance when it was going to happen. I couldn't bear it if it took me by surprise.
Left then to worry and wait, wait and worry, the familiar childhood factoring begins...
Another lesson from my childhood: once the thing I fear most happens, there's no place to go but up. Being cut out of my father's Cadillac with a chain saw by highway patrollers on Christmas Eve, for instance, was so much better than sitting in the bar with him while he had his fourth martini knowing black ice was forming on the road outside. Being in the safety of the hospital while they applied my three-quarter body cast with all the nurses making a big fuss over my four-year-old self was so much better than knowing my father was about to pick me up and throw me across the room.
Waiting is terrible, but soon, maybe very soon, the bad thing will have already happened, and I'll be able to start from whatever I have left...
Most of this account remains on the ranch; its buildings, its land, its animals, its every struggle and ordeal. Carving out her safe space is what gives her journey meaning, her efforts value, that child's heart its reason to continue beating. And though the cost of maintaining this 120-acre sanctuary entails constant out-of-town employments, entails leaving the very protected state she's fought so hard to create, this is, conversely, a signal of just how committed she is to herself and her well-being. Whatever it takes.
A moving memoir, and ridiculously well-written. One warning, though. Animals suffer through several of these pages, as they tend to do in wilderness locales. Those with sensitivities on this score will likely have to prepare themselves for that.
When a raging forest fire threatens to jump the Continental Divide and rush down the mountain to her home, the triggers tip like so many serpentined dominoes...
Any reasonable, self-caring person scheduled to teach twenty-one full days in a row without a single day off would take themselves the hell to bed. To say nothing of the readings, and panels, and the endless infernal cocktail parties. But in every picture that exists of me as a child I have rings around my eyes so dark I look anemic. Staying awake all night never kept my father from hurting me, but I wanted to know in advance when it was going to happen. I couldn't bear it if it took me by surprise.
Left then to worry and wait, wait and worry, the familiar childhood factoring begins...
Another lesson from my childhood: once the thing I fear most happens, there's no place to go but up. Being cut out of my father's Cadillac with a chain saw by highway patrollers on Christmas Eve, for instance, was so much better than sitting in the bar with him while he had his fourth martini knowing black ice was forming on the road outside. Being in the safety of the hospital while they applied my three-quarter body cast with all the nurses making a big fuss over my four-year-old self was so much better than knowing my father was about to pick me up and throw me across the room.
Waiting is terrible, but soon, maybe very soon, the bad thing will have already happened, and I'll be able to start from whatever I have left...
Most of this account remains on the ranch; its buildings, its land, its animals, its every struggle and ordeal. Carving out her safe space is what gives her journey meaning, her efforts value, that child's heart its reason to continue beating. And though the cost of maintaining this 120-acre sanctuary entails constant out-of-town employments, entails leaving the very protected state she's fought so hard to create, this is, conversely, a signal of just how committed she is to herself and her well-being. Whatever it takes.
A moving memoir, and ridiculously well-written. One warning, though. Animals suffer through several of these pages, as they tend to do in wilderness locales. Those with sensitivities on this score will likely have to prepare themselves for that.
February 11, 2019
Thoughts soon.
October 12, 2018
It took me awhile to write this review because I am still getting over the excitement of reading a new book from Pam Houston. Her writing was moving and I felt like I could see her ranch and all of the places she described so beautifully. This is an important book about being a woman, an environmentalist, and a writer. Her voice is so refreshing and it will be the perfect read for welcoming 2019.
December 29, 2019
These autobiographical essays are full of the love of place, chiefly the ranch in Colorado that Houston bought for 5 percent down in 1993 from the profits of her first book. It has grounded her to have this haven to come back to during a nomadic career of teaching stints and book tours. Moreover, it has been a stand-in for the loving family home she never had: her mother was an alcoholic and anorexic; her violent father sexually abused her.
Nature has been a healing force, whether traveling to the Arctic and being surrounded by a pod of narwhal or trying to save an injured elk on her property. She also keeps horses, sheep and chickens and has had a succession of Irish wolfhounds (“Who in your life has ever been that ecstatic over your arrival? Someone, I hope. Some living being.”). Two of my favorite essays were “Mother’s Day Storm,” about keeping vigil with her dying dog Fenton, and “Kindness,” about the elderly babysitter who taught her the lessons of altruism and compassion her narcissistic parents never did.
Overall, the book is about the process of making a life of your own that may not resemble anything you expected, and about loving the world even – or especially – when it’s threatened with destruction. It’s a fine addition to this year’s collection of nature or nature-adjacent writing that takes the environmental crisis seriously.* This only missed out on 5 stars from me because of the 60-page “Diary of a Fire,” which I mostly skipped. I can highly recommend it to readers of Rough Beauty by Karen Auvinen (to which it is remarkably similar: a remote Colorado location, a solitary writing life, a beloved dog, a devastating fire) and The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch.
A favorite passage:
“I want to live simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief without having to diminish one to accommodate the other. I want to be honest with myself about our condition, but also to love the damaged world and do what I can to help it thrive. In December 2018, I signed the papers to put this ranch in an environmental land trust.”
*Including This Is Not a Drill (the Extinction Rebellion handbook), Letters to the Earth, Irreplaceable by Julian Hoffman and Surrender by Joanna Pocock.
Nature has been a healing force, whether traveling to the Arctic and being surrounded by a pod of narwhal or trying to save an injured elk on her property. She also keeps horses, sheep and chickens and has had a succession of Irish wolfhounds (“Who in your life has ever been that ecstatic over your arrival? Someone, I hope. Some living being.”). Two of my favorite essays were “Mother’s Day Storm,” about keeping vigil with her dying dog Fenton, and “Kindness,” about the elderly babysitter who taught her the lessons of altruism and compassion her narcissistic parents never did.
Overall, the book is about the process of making a life of your own that may not resemble anything you expected, and about loving the world even – or especially – when it’s threatened with destruction. It’s a fine addition to this year’s collection of nature or nature-adjacent writing that takes the environmental crisis seriously.* This only missed out on 5 stars from me because of the 60-page “Diary of a Fire,” which I mostly skipped. I can highly recommend it to readers of Rough Beauty by Karen Auvinen (to which it is remarkably similar: a remote Colorado location, a solitary writing life, a beloved dog, a devastating fire) and The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch.
A favorite passage:
“I want to live simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief without having to diminish one to accommodate the other. I want to be honest with myself about our condition, but also to love the damaged world and do what I can to help it thrive. In December 2018, I signed the papers to put this ranch in an environmental land trust.”
*Including This Is Not a Drill (the Extinction Rebellion handbook), Letters to the Earth, Irreplaceable by Julian Hoffman and Surrender by Joanna Pocock.
September 10, 2020
[3.4] Deep Creek is an ode to Houston's Colorado ranch, her animals and her beloved wilderness. I admire Houston and her writing but cannot rate this higher because the abundant details on ranch life and animal care became tedious for me.
February 2, 2019
I love Pam Houston for the way she loves. Be it cowboys, her animals, writing or in this volume her ranch. Houston is at her best here, in love with the land. Her essay on the fire that devastated the surrounding area was interesting if a bit too detailed and off balance with the rest of her writings. Not disappointed, I love my own animals a little bit more. And myself.
August 30, 2019
Houston has led an astonishing life – she had been in 16 wrecks that totaled the vehicle before the age of 16 – and is quite self-aware about the motivations in her life: “After high school, having gotten out of my parents’ house alive, I predictably replaced the dangers inherent there with risks of my own choosing”. Despite the abject failures of her parents, she has a strong faith in humanity and when she writes about wilderness, it’s luminescent and captivating; writing about her ranch, it’s less so.
Her essays about nature are interjected with brief chapterlets on, for instance, the Leonids (meteor showers in November). She discusses the importance of getting out of your head and into your body – doling out the hay for the animals, breaking the ice on their water trough – in order not to think about the sadness of life. There is quite a bit about her day-to-day life on the ranch, including a lengthy chapter which is a little slow-going about a fire that comes very close to her property. The style of the chapter – interjecting definitions of fire-fighting terms into the text of the event – ensured I wasn’t really captivated and that lowered the rating from 4 stars for me.
Her essays about nature are interjected with brief chapterlets on, for instance, the Leonids (meteor showers in November). She discusses the importance of getting out of your head and into your body – doling out the hay for the animals, breaking the ice on their water trough – in order not to think about the sadness of life. There is quite a bit about her day-to-day life on the ranch, including a lengthy chapter which is a little slow-going about a fire that comes very close to her property. The style of the chapter – interjecting definitions of fire-fighting terms into the text of the event – ensured I wasn’t really captivated and that lowered the rating from 4 stars for me.
April 30, 2019
I had to get over myself to enjoy this book. I was actually really kind of jealous, because Pam is living out one of the dreams I had as a little girl. I wanted to be a writer, live in a cabin like Thoreau, get published, and be famous. But mostly I wanted to worship nature by living off the land. "What can she say that I couldn't?" I thought, huffily, and a maybe a litter bitter, as I sat in my comfy arm chair in a stick-built ranch-style house in a typical subdivision in small town America, my new Ford Escape slowly losing its shine inside my almost heated garage. I kept reading though, thinking, at least, that I'd finish the book and add it to the log I'd been keeping of how many books I'd read for 2019, until I got to the horrible part about the ranch sitters and how they treated one of her sheep (you will know what I'm talking about when you get there). That's it, I thought, I can't take it. My animal activist side blew up, and I tossed the book on top of a bookcase in my library. I even got on here and marked the book "Abandoned." At least I tried.
And then I met Pam. She came to our small bookstore here, that had recently become a co-op after the original store went out of business (like many small bookstores are doing now). I rarely go out in the evenings, but I made sure to go this time because my daughter, who made herself absolutely clear she didn't want to go (because mom wanted her to go and she's 13), wants to be a writer. She sullenly followed me into the bookstore, walking as slowly as possible, and as I made it to the front row of chairs I saw her slip into the young adult section at the back of the store. After Pam talked, and I was preoccupied, I sent my daughter to stand in line for Pam to sign my copy. Before I could get back to her, my daughter met Pam, had my book signed to my name...and I could tell she was hooked.
I let the book sit for a few days. When I picked it up and started reading again, it was like I was reading a completely different book. Why hadn't the beginning of Pam's book been this good? I took it in little snippets after that, slightly grieving the end, and when I got there, I flipped to the first chapter and read a few sentences....the book hadn't changed in the end, something had changed in me.
I decided in that moment that the book deserved another chance, and I would do something I very rarely do: re-read it. Yes, my 2019 book log will be shorter, but this book is definitely worth a couple spots as least.
And then I met Pam. She came to our small bookstore here, that had recently become a co-op after the original store went out of business (like many small bookstores are doing now). I rarely go out in the evenings, but I made sure to go this time because my daughter, who made herself absolutely clear she didn't want to go (because mom wanted her to go and she's 13), wants to be a writer. She sullenly followed me into the bookstore, walking as slowly as possible, and as I made it to the front row of chairs I saw her slip into the young adult section at the back of the store. After Pam talked, and I was preoccupied, I sent my daughter to stand in line for Pam to sign my copy. Before I could get back to her, my daughter met Pam, had my book signed to my name...and I could tell she was hooked.
I let the book sit for a few days. When I picked it up and started reading again, it was like I was reading a completely different book. Why hadn't the beginning of Pam's book been this good? I took it in little snippets after that, slightly grieving the end, and when I got there, I flipped to the first chapter and read a few sentences....the book hadn't changed in the end, something had changed in me.
I decided in that moment that the book deserved another chance, and I would do something I very rarely do: re-read it. Yes, my 2019 book log will be shorter, but this book is definitely worth a couple spots as least.
February 11, 2019
I LOVE to read books about farming/farms because I have a fantasy about that life (mostly that I would be really good at it and love every minute of it) and they always leave me feeling like time is slipping away and I have to DO IT NOW and I spend the next five days looking at farm properties that can't meet my requirements and making plans to buy one anyway because I WILL LEARN HOW TO USE A HAMMER! (It's kind of exhausting...)
I can't say I love travel books but since I can't travel myself, I do like to read them occasionally to give me an opportunity to learn about the little-known things in the world, at least on a second-hand basis, and I always feel like "Seems like there's a lot of poop/guns/ice/drugs/etc. in that place, guess I'm not really missing much..."
And then Pam Houston and now I live in bizzaro world.
Her "farming" stories put that world into perspective in a way most of that genre overlooks - I have no intention of chopping out blocks of ice for hours at a time so my horse can drink. Or strapping on snowshoes and going out in blizzards to feed the sheep. Or even hauling 500 bales of hay from the driveway to the barn every year, even if it's nice weather! Just thinking about it = exhausted.
Her "travel" stories make me want to get up and go this second and, maybe, never come back. I want to be "rescued" by a guy from the Royal Bahamas Defense Force and have a German chocolate birthday cake in Patagonia. And I most DEFINITELY want to see whales and seals and spirit bears and manatees and the elusive big "fish" that I won't give away because it's so amazing....
But in order to do those things, and do them properly, I think I'd need to be Houston and there's not a million German chocolate cakes or big "fish" in the world that would make me trade her life for mine. To say her childhood was "heartbreaking" would be disingenuous - it was straight-up horrifying. I don't mean to "diagnose" here but Houston's kind of extreme travel (not necessarily in activity but just in constancy) seems obviously driven by the need for escape combined with a constant search for proof that the world itself is safer than the world she was given.
Her writing, on several occasions, brought me to tears because I was so happy that both of those things were successfully achieved. It's been a long time since I've felt like I've personally met an author I'd never heard of before....
The writing is so flawless. It flows so easily that the worst thing I've ever read about in a "farming book" made me gasp out loud as if I were discovering it myself. I don't know how Houston didn't murder the son of a bitch who caused the situation.
There is also a good portion of the book detailing a 2013 forest fire in the San Juan National Forest that is probably the best education you can get about the personal experience of forest fires without being in one yourself. I absolutely couldn't put it down and when I had to, I actively wondered if the fire had spread as if it were news about something happening in my backyard instead of reflection of something that happened six years ago and 2,000 miles away.
Now, I wasn't a fan of everything Houston does, so don't go assuming I'm a sycophant (yet.) I wasn't (and never am) a fan of the name-dropping. Sometimes it's fine and seamless but sometimes it does feel like there is an effort to impress which just doesn't fit the tone at all. I was also a little put out by the money factor - the "I pulled myself up from my bootstraps" reminders - I genuinely appreciate the sentiments that Houston is expressing, it just happens too often and begins to feel more like she is assuaging her own guilt at spending money on anything than it does trying to inspire the rest of us to take chances.
And maybe that's the gist of it right there - this book is going to inspire folks to take chances and to make things work. As hokey as it is, I don't know if I think there is a better goal in the world than to inspire folks to follow their dreams. I think Houston has done that here and I expect others will find the same.
I can't say I love travel books but since I can't travel myself, I do like to read them occasionally to give me an opportunity to learn about the little-known things in the world, at least on a second-hand basis, and I always feel like "Seems like there's a lot of poop/guns/ice/drugs/etc. in that place, guess I'm not really missing much..."
And then Pam Houston and now I live in bizzaro world.
Her "farming" stories put that world into perspective in a way most of that genre overlooks - I have no intention of chopping out blocks of ice for hours at a time so my horse can drink. Or strapping on snowshoes and going out in blizzards to feed the sheep. Or even hauling 500 bales of hay from the driveway to the barn every year, even if it's nice weather! Just thinking about it = exhausted.
Her "travel" stories make me want to get up and go this second and, maybe, never come back. I want to be "rescued" by a guy from the Royal Bahamas Defense Force and have a German chocolate birthday cake in Patagonia. And I most DEFINITELY want to see whales and seals and spirit bears and manatees and the elusive big "fish" that I won't give away because it's so amazing....
But in order to do those things, and do them properly, I think I'd need to be Houston and there's not a million German chocolate cakes or big "fish" in the world that would make me trade her life for mine. To say her childhood was "heartbreaking" would be disingenuous - it was straight-up horrifying. I don't mean to "diagnose" here but Houston's kind of extreme travel (not necessarily in activity but just in constancy) seems obviously driven by the need for escape combined with a constant search for proof that the world itself is safer than the world she was given.
Her writing, on several occasions, brought me to tears because I was so happy that both of those things were successfully achieved. It's been a long time since I've felt like I've personally met an author I'd never heard of before....
The writing is so flawless. It flows so easily that the worst thing I've ever read about in a "farming book" made me gasp out loud as if I were discovering it myself. I don't know how Houston didn't murder the son of a bitch who caused the situation.
There is also a good portion of the book detailing a 2013 forest fire in the San Juan National Forest that is probably the best education you can get about the personal experience of forest fires without being in one yourself. I absolutely couldn't put it down and when I had to, I actively wondered if the fire had spread as if it were news about something happening in my backyard instead of reflection of something that happened six years ago and 2,000 miles away.
Now, I wasn't a fan of everything Houston does, so don't go assuming I'm a sycophant (yet.) I wasn't (and never am) a fan of the name-dropping. Sometimes it's fine and seamless but sometimes it does feel like there is an effort to impress which just doesn't fit the tone at all. I was also a little put out by the money factor - the "I pulled myself up from my bootstraps" reminders - I genuinely appreciate the sentiments that Houston is expressing, it just happens too often and begins to feel more like she is assuaging her own guilt at spending money on anything than it does trying to inspire the rest of us to take chances.
And maybe that's the gist of it right there - this book is going to inspire folks to take chances and to make things work. As hokey as it is, I don't know if I think there is a better goal in the world than to inspire folks to follow their dreams. I think Houston has done that here and I expect others will find the same.
September 7, 2020
In the summer of 1993, author Pam Houston traveled the American West to promote her first book, Cowboys Are My Weakness, and find a home to call her own.
Whether it was fate or plain ol' luck, she found a 120 acre ranch in the Colorado Rockies and managed to buy it with only 5% down because the owner “liked the idea of her”. Since then, Houston has criss-crossed the country and taken many adventures and writing assignments in order to make her payments on time.
Houston offers readers a peek into her homestead where she finds profound hope in the land and the animals, healing her from childhood traumas of abuse and neglect. At times painful but somehow always positive, she weaves her personal story into the history of the land and her connection with it.
The only issue I had with this book was Part Three, Diary of a Fire. While it detailed a wildfire threatening her town, this section felt much less personal than the rest, filled more with definitions and facts than memories and emotion.
Overall, an excellent memoir balancing personal accounts with the wonder of the natural world. I highly recommend Deep Creek to readers who appreciate memoir/essays with emphasis on nature.
For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
Whether it was fate or plain ol' luck, she found a 120 acre ranch in the Colorado Rockies and managed to buy it with only 5% down because the owner “liked the idea of her”. Since then, Houston has criss-crossed the country and taken many adventures and writing assignments in order to make her payments on time.
Houston offers readers a peek into her homestead where she finds profound hope in the land and the animals, healing her from childhood traumas of abuse and neglect. At times painful but somehow always positive, she weaves her personal story into the history of the land and her connection with it.
The only issue I had with this book was Part Three, Diary of a Fire. While it detailed a wildfire threatening her town, this section felt much less personal than the rest, filled more with definitions and facts than memories and emotion.
Overall, an excellent memoir balancing personal accounts with the wonder of the natural world. I highly recommend Deep Creek to readers who appreciate memoir/essays with emphasis on nature.
For more reviews, visit www.rootsandreads.wordpress.com
November 7, 2018
Pam Houston's writing is the most comforting and encouraging writing that tackles the horrors and pains of this world that I've ever read. With prose that sings, she takes you through the years that she's lived on her 120-acre ranch in Creede, Colorado, and relays the joys and terrors she's experienced while there. Hers is a story of resilience, and it was even before she had to take care of ranch animals, and deal with elevation, and survive winters and fires at 9000 ft., but the ranch taught her many things about herself and about the world. And now Pam teaches us. We can't all have this beautiful plot of land in the mountains, but we can read about it, and learn from Pam's wisdom, and find hope in the same high country that she did. In a time where the world is either drowning, or burning, of being drilled-into, Pam's outlook promises a better tomorrow - even if that means we're no longer here.
October 7, 2018
Any book that brings me to tears on multiple occasions deserves all the stars.
I expected a lot. It packed way more wallop.
I expected a lot. It packed way more wallop.
February 5, 2019
An exquisite love letter to Colorado and the Earth. So beautiful.
August 23, 2019
""For now, I want to sit vigil with the earth the same way I did with Fenton. I want to write unironic odes to her beauty, which is still potent, if not completely intact. The language of the wilderness is the most beautiful language we have and it is our job to sing it, until and even after it is gone, no matter how much it hurts. It we don't, we are left with only a hollow chuckle, and our big brains who made this mess, our big brains that stopped believing a long time ago in beauty, in everything, in anything.
What I want to say to my colleagues is that the earth doesn't know how not to be beautiful. Yes, the destruction, yes the inevitability, but honestly, Doctor Distant Reader, when was the last time you slept on the ground?
How will we sing when Miami goes underwater, when the raft of garbage in the ocean gets as big as Texas, when the only remaining polar bear draws his last breath, when fracking, when Keystone, when Pruitt? I don't know. But I'm not celebrating the earth because I am an optimist - though I am an optimist. I am celebrating because this magnificent rock we live on demands celebration. I am celebrating because how in the face of this earth could I not?"
What I want to say to my colleagues is that the earth doesn't know how not to be beautiful. Yes, the destruction, yes the inevitability, but honestly, Doctor Distant Reader, when was the last time you slept on the ground?
How will we sing when Miami goes underwater, when the raft of garbage in the ocean gets as big as Texas, when the only remaining polar bear draws his last breath, when fracking, when Keystone, when Pruitt? I don't know. But I'm not celebrating the earth because I am an optimist - though I am an optimist. I am celebrating because this magnificent rock we live on demands celebration. I am celebrating because how in the face of this earth could I not?"
February 25, 2019
Memoir, yes, but as much a memoir of climate, planet, and place as it is about the author and her ranch. I loved the levels of story here: home as a planet, as a ranch, as safety in changing conditions that maybe aren't really safe for anything, anymore. The timing and material in this book are so important: We're in the earliest years of living through the dramatic and severe consequences of climate changes we've been warned about for decades. How we feel, talk, and write about what's happening to us, and everything around us, is not only critical for shared grieving, but for the future. Science told us what was coming, but we didn't know how it would feel to live it: being cooped up inside for weeks, with air filters going, trying to breathe in smoke-filled air with cabin fever, for example. Things change so rapidly, which makes these snapshots of ourselves within the world, having feelings about the world we've so damaged and figuring out how to BE in it, the story of our time - whatever that time looks like from one day to the next.
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December 29, 2021I read this book in three days, which is unusual for me. Usually I read complex, deeply researched (and boring, quite frankly) books that take a lot longer. I was happy this one was fast for two reasons--first, I need something deeply entertaining. I loved reading about Houston's ranch & her connection with the wildness around her. I liked hearing the stories of the animals. I liked learning more about her life beyond COWBOYS ARE MY WEAKNESS. Secondly, the speed of this one was important because I'm trying to beat my Goodreads reading goal for the year. So I zoomed through. There was an entire section that probably should have been in a different book. I won't name the section. I enjoyed in immensely, even if it wasn't in the right book. LOL. And I sure do love the easy style of Houston...so easy to read, so easy to enjoy. She reminds me of Annie Lamott in that way. It's like 300 pages of chocolate cake. Okay, so not all of it is chocolate cake. Maybe a better metaphor is 300 pages going downstream. On a really nice river. In summer. Yummy.
February 24, 2019
I just finished Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country and as I turned the last page, I thought, “I am so glad I read this book.” I’m a Colorado native, and though I grew up on the front range, far away from Creede where most of Houston’s love letter to her ranch is set, but reading her writing made me homesick in the best kind of way. I loved this book.
October 5, 2020
First comment -- this is the 2020 One Book, One Broomfield (OBOB) selection. Having some inside information, I know that the committee tends to choose books by 'local' authors who will not cost a great deal to bring in for the OBOB author talk. Some of their book selections are okay / interesting, but of the two library-based book clubs that I've been involved with while reading the OBOB choices, our overall ratings have been fairly low. We have opted to not even read them for the past two years. So....
This book was broken into sections: about one third described the author's extensive travels, which was based primarily (maybe exclusively?) on her work as a writer. Those descriptions were just lovely and left me truly envious of all the amazing opportunities that she's had to experience those astonishing experiences in the stunning locations! Much more of this would have really helped!
The primary part of the book was a description of life on her 120-acre ranch in Colorado. Also lovely at times, but honestly, it was difficult to remain entertained about the daily grind of caring for the livestock, checking fence lines, dealing with ranch-sitters, and making improvements. Sprinkled in among the other two sections, she included some genuinely ugly incestuous treatment by her father (which mommy dearest was fully aware of, being at times in the same room) and her hours and hours and thousands and thousands of dollars of resulting therapy.
So, what I didn't care for was the obvious conflicts.
-> One, she lectured endlessly about how 'we' need to be the solution rather than the problem of what we are doing to our beautiful planet. During these lectures, she also described how she would make the five-hour (one way) drive to the airport, hop on an airplane and travel for thousands of miles to do a story before returning to her ranch via the five-hour drive home. She also described how she would invite friends to fly into Denver, get in a car and drive to her ranch for a short visit. Somehow, that doesn't seem like being part of the solution?
-> Second, she repeatedly mentioned her abuse as a child and how she finally 'escaped' when she left for college. The abuse included visits to the doctors, so was apparently not insignificant. But, then she described how she would go home for visits from college and contentedly sit in the basement with said abusive father and watch a ballgame while mom was elsewhere. Maybe that is how it works, I honestly don't know but it seems like if you did indeed 'escape' that you would do almost anything to stay away!
I suppose that other people might get more out of this book, but it was really just not for me! The entire book left me feeling like it was an assignment by her therapist and she thought we should all be included.
This book was broken into sections: about one third described the author's extensive travels, which was based primarily (maybe exclusively?) on her work as a writer. Those descriptions were just lovely and left me truly envious of all the amazing opportunities that she's had to experience those astonishing experiences in the stunning locations! Much more of this would have really helped!
The primary part of the book was a description of life on her 120-acre ranch in Colorado. Also lovely at times, but honestly, it was difficult to remain entertained about the daily grind of caring for the livestock, checking fence lines, dealing with ranch-sitters, and making improvements. Sprinkled in among the other two sections, she included some genuinely ugly incestuous treatment by her father (which mommy dearest was fully aware of, being at times in the same room) and her hours and hours and thousands and thousands of dollars of resulting therapy.
So, what I didn't care for was the obvious conflicts.
-> One, she lectured endlessly about how 'we' need to be the solution rather than the problem of what we are doing to our beautiful planet. During these lectures, she also described how she would make the five-hour (one way) drive to the airport, hop on an airplane and travel for thousands of miles to do a story before returning to her ranch via the five-hour drive home. She also described how she would invite friends to fly into Denver, get in a car and drive to her ranch for a short visit. Somehow, that doesn't seem like being part of the solution?
-> Second, she repeatedly mentioned her abuse as a child and how she finally 'escaped' when she left for college. The abuse included visits to the doctors, so was apparently not insignificant. But, then she described how she would go home for visits from college and contentedly sit in the basement with said abusive father and watch a ballgame while mom was elsewhere. Maybe that is how it works, I honestly don't know but it seems like if you did indeed 'escape' that you would do almost anything to stay away!
I suppose that other people might get more out of this book, but it was really just not for me! The entire book left me feeling like it was an assignment by her therapist and she thought we should all be included.
October 9, 2020
To publish personal essays is to put your life under a microscope for the public. Pam Houston's life on a remote ranch in Colorado's high country near the headwaters of the Rio Grande, paid for by a job that requires her to fly 100,000 miles a year, is not particularly sustainable, but whose is? In the first part of this book, the author describes her pastoral life with dogs and assorted livestock (only later does she reveal that the livestock are partly a tax strategy to keep her ranch in the "agricultural" category as opposed to "vacant"). I don't particularly identify with either the high-altitude life (mountains give me the willies in anything but small doses) or the livestock (a cat and some plants are about as much as I care to be responsible for), but her harrowing memories of getting over some very poor parenting helped me understand where she's coming from and how she finds comfort in her chosen family and safe space. Not that she owes anyone an explanation, but I appreciate getting to know another way of thinking and living.
Where Houston lost me was in the second half, where she put me through sixty choppy pages full of incomprehensible data (what do 100 feet of height mean for a fire on a mountain?) about a record-breaking forest fire that threatens her land from all sides, relating how she FLEW BACK AND FORTH REPEATEDLY from writing workshops on the West Coast to keep an eye on things. She goes on to another essay ruing the effects of climate change (as seen on multiple jaunts to remote locations worldwide) without ever acknowledging the role her six figures of yearly flight miles or her much-mentioned 4Runner might play in all of it. Every life contains contradictions, which is fine by me as long as they're acknowledged. This is what allowed me to enjoy Eat, Pray, Love: Elizabeth Gilbert was always acknowledging her privilege and how her year of gallivanting might look from the outside. Pam Houston's oscillation between "poor me" and "yay, me!" is not such a good look.
Where Houston lost me was in the second half, where she put me through sixty choppy pages full of incomprehensible data (what do 100 feet of height mean for a fire on a mountain?) about a record-breaking forest fire that threatens her land from all sides, relating how she FLEW BACK AND FORTH REPEATEDLY from writing workshops on the West Coast to keep an eye on things. She goes on to another essay ruing the effects of climate change (as seen on multiple jaunts to remote locations worldwide) without ever acknowledging the role her six figures of yearly flight miles or her much-mentioned 4Runner might play in all of it. Every life contains contradictions, which is fine by me as long as they're acknowledged. This is what allowed me to enjoy Eat, Pray, Love: Elizabeth Gilbert was always acknowledging her privilege and how her year of gallivanting might look from the outside. Pam Houston's oscillation between "poor me" and "yay, me!" is not such a good look.
October 16, 2019
“I have spent most of my life outside, but for the last three years, I have been walking five miles a day, minimum, wherever I am, urban or rural, and can attest to the magnitude of the natural beauty that is left. Beauty worth seeing, worth singing, worth saving, whatever that word can mean now. There is beauty in a desert, even one that is expanding. There is beauty in the ocean, even one that is on the rise. And even if the jig is up, even if it is really game over, what better time to sing about the earth than when it is critically, even fatally wounded at our hands.”
“The language of the wilderness is the most beautiful language we have and it is our job to sing it, until and even after it is gone, no matter how much it hurts.”
Pam Houston experienced horrific parental abuse, as a child, but somehow rose above and conquered her fears and one of the catalysts of her life was acquiring a 120 acre ranch in Colorado, a place where she could find solace and heal, the wounds of her past. Despite the many challenges of running a ranch, alone, and with zero experience, she somehow persevered. This is her story. Well-written, gritty and heartfelt. A nice blend of Annie Proulx and Cheryl Strayed, along with a strong environmental message. Houston has written other books, fiction and nonfiction. I will be exploring these too.
*This is also excellent on audio, with narration by the author. BTW- She loves her wolfhounds!
“The language of the wilderness is the most beautiful language we have and it is our job to sing it, until and even after it is gone, no matter how much it hurts.”
Pam Houston experienced horrific parental abuse, as a child, but somehow rose above and conquered her fears and one of the catalysts of her life was acquiring a 120 acre ranch in Colorado, a place where she could find solace and heal, the wounds of her past. Despite the many challenges of running a ranch, alone, and with zero experience, she somehow persevered. This is her story. Well-written, gritty and heartfelt. A nice blend of Annie Proulx and Cheryl Strayed, along with a strong environmental message. Houston has written other books, fiction and nonfiction. I will be exploring these too.
*This is also excellent on audio, with narration by the author. BTW- She loves her wolfhounds!
February 18, 2019
Blown away by this lovely book. It reads like the best, engaging fiction but has the oomph and meaningfulness of memoir. Houston is such a lovely writer. I am surprised and delighted that I am just discovering her now. Of course, this is not a book for everyone. It’s not perfect. Yet, within the first chapter, it burrowed inside my head and inside my heart.
Read it for the section on saying goodbye to her dog (which beautifully takes us by the hand and leads readers into the book’s thread of environmental writing), stay for her description of a boat trip to the arctic, and save the section on wildfire for when you have a long expanse of free time (it’s hard to put down).
Do you ever wish you could pin pieces of books on your wall like pictures or postcards so you could slip into them and inhabit them again at a glance? So many parts of her book were this for me.
Read it for the section on saying goodbye to her dog (which beautifully takes us by the hand and leads readers into the book’s thread of environmental writing), stay for her description of a boat trip to the arctic, and save the section on wildfire for when you have a long expanse of free time (it’s hard to put down).
Do you ever wish you could pin pieces of books on your wall like pictures or postcards so you could slip into them and inhabit them again at a glance? So many parts of her book were this for me.
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November 20, 20189,000 feet above sea level is a Place, a ranch, surrounded by mountains on most sides. It has allowed a Jersey Girl nursing a myriad of wounds to heal, grow, and love. This poignant ode to Place, to nature, to natural beauty, and ultimately optimism - is a pushback against cynicism and meanness. It provides the same inevitable hope that comes with the first shoots of grass in the pasture. It champions the idea that there is safety in saving - in reaching out, in trusting to everyday grace.
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March 19, 2020beautiful
March 7, 2023
In this book of essays, Pam Houston successfully manages to show readers what it's like to live in a time of climate change without leaving us in total despair. I found myself caring more about the world and its creatures after reading this book.
Houston takes us through a Colorado wildfire, punctuating her essay with excerpts from national fire reports of the acreage burned and wildfire-specific vocabulary. In each section I thought to myself, this acreage can't possibly increase the next day. It can't! But more burned. Reading about the fire's path was like watching a horror movie. Yet in the end, she shows us a hike through the fire's aftermath, the new aspen trees, the green of new growth standing out against the blackness.
She also includes scenes from her travels, of which she seems to do at least half the year. In one scene where she is aboard an arctic cruise, she witnesses a killer whale's fin trapped in some sort of net. The scene is as horrifying as the fire. She is showing us the impact of our dying oceans. Then, later, we see hundreds of narwhals migrating, a "once in a hundred" lifetime opportunity. These contrasts - the beauty with the horror - show us how she grapples with what is happening to our planet.
Most impressive: Houston made me want a dog. I am not an animal person, yet reading her connection to her animals- sheep, chickens, horses, dogs- I thought about how much I underestimate them. One scene sticks with me in which Winston, her dog, saves her from getting buried under feet of snow.
We need to be reading books like this, sharing books like this with our kids. These stories put a face to climate change.
Houston takes us through a Colorado wildfire, punctuating her essay with excerpts from national fire reports of the acreage burned and wildfire-specific vocabulary. In each section I thought to myself, this acreage can't possibly increase the next day. It can't! But more burned. Reading about the fire's path was like watching a horror movie. Yet in the end, she shows us a hike through the fire's aftermath, the new aspen trees, the green of new growth standing out against the blackness.
She also includes scenes from her travels, of which she seems to do at least half the year. In one scene where she is aboard an arctic cruise, she witnesses a killer whale's fin trapped in some sort of net. The scene is as horrifying as the fire. She is showing us the impact of our dying oceans. Then, later, we see hundreds of narwhals migrating, a "once in a hundred" lifetime opportunity. These contrasts - the beauty with the horror - show us how she grapples with what is happening to our planet.
Most impressive: Houston made me want a dog. I am not an animal person, yet reading her connection to her animals- sheep, chickens, horses, dogs- I thought about how much I underestimate them. One scene sticks with me in which Winston, her dog, saves her from getting buried under feet of snow.
We need to be reading books like this, sharing books like this with our kids. These stories put a face to climate change.
March 23, 2026
This was my first exposure to Houston's writing and now I feel I have to get my hands on everything she writes. Her mastery of capturing raw emotions is truly second to none - her escalating fear as she faced the threat of wildfire at the doorstep of her 120 acre ranch; her capped rage when faced with the incomprehensible slaughter of her lambs, her preoccupation with her dog's illness even while watching a pod of whales dance and, of course, her constant grappling with the anguish left by her violent father and indifferent mother.
Although I found the long chapter about the wildfires near Creede, CO to be over the top, the passion for place comes through in every corner of this memoir. She truly has come alive in this corner of the high country and has gained perspective, trust and love for this ranch, its inhabitants and this tight welcoming community.
My favourite parts were the Ranch Almanac sections, which demonstrate her deep love for her animals and which does not sugarcoat the trials of providing for and protecting her 'pets'.
This above section goes on to say that we should not turn away from Earth after all the damage we have done to her (algae-filled oceans, beetle-killed forests,etc). In fact, we should embrace her all the more as a way to heighten our love and appreciation of her. It is a very powerful couple of paragraphs.
There is SO MUCH women empowerment within. Without being preachy, Houston shows the myriad ways that women have become trapped by the idea of men as protection and providers and goes on to show that she can do it all alone and be happy at the same time. Powerful stuff!
Although I found the long chapter about the wildfires near Creede, CO to be over the top, the passion for place comes through in every corner of this memoir. She truly has come alive in this corner of the high country and has gained perspective, trust and love for this ranch, its inhabitants and this tight welcoming community.
My favourite parts were the Ranch Almanac sections, which demonstrate her deep love for her animals and which does not sugarcoat the trials of providing for and protecting her 'pets'.
If we pretend not to see the tenuous beauty that is still all around us, will it keep our hearts from breaking as we watch another mountain be clear-cut, as we watch North Dakota ... be poisoned for all time by hydraulic fracturing?
This above section goes on to say that we should not turn away from Earth after all the damage we have done to her (algae-filled oceans, beetle-killed forests,etc). In fact, we should embrace her all the more as a way to heighten our love and appreciation of her. It is a very powerful couple of paragraphs.
"I realized I could make my own life," I say. "I could have my own ranch. I finally realized that I could be the cowboy."
There is SO MUCH women empowerment within. Without being preachy, Houston shows the myriad ways that women have become trapped by the idea of men as protection and providers and goes on to show that she can do it all alone and be happy at the same time. Powerful stuff!
May 22, 2022
I adore this book. I found it in a little free library and read it on a whim… Absolutely did not expect to love a random memoir by a lady I had never heard of so much. The writing is equally as heart-wrenching as it is full of unbridled hope and joy. I laughed and cried. Thank u Pam Houston ❤️
November 5, 2019
This was beautiful. I've already listened to it twice.
Houston ties together her own difficult early years and fraught family relationships, her work and writing and friendships, and a truly epic wildfire that threatened her beloved home, into an exploration of what non-human nature means to her and how to stay with the places and landscapes we love as climate breakdown changes them beyond all recognition or destroys them. The writing is gorgeous and her story weaves back and forth between the past and present, and human and natural disasters, with grace.
Houston ties together her own difficult early years and fraught family relationships, her work and writing and friendships, and a truly epic wildfire that threatened her beloved home, into an exploration of what non-human nature means to her and how to stay with the places and landscapes we love as climate breakdown changes them beyond all recognition or destroys them. The writing is gorgeous and her story weaves back and forth between the past and present, and human and natural disasters, with grace.
November 19, 2019
Regular movement backward and forward in time, new characters added with no introduction, switches from place to place, and frequent subject changes give the memoir a feeling of tension and instability. Houston uses that to help us feel and understand her turbulent childhood, education, and approach her adult life. It gave me a feel that she experienced all of her life at any one time. Her childhood abuse was always there as was her farm. The abuse was destabilizing but the farm gave her a stable place where she felt belonging and safety.
Houston has had amazing life experiences that she vividly describes. She worked on this book for several years. It must have been a major challenge to write.
Houston has had amazing life experiences that she vividly describes. She worked on this book for several years. It must have been a major challenge to write.
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