Seasons of Death and Life: A Wilderness Memoir

by Maggie Ross

Memoir of the author's sojourn in the American wilderness where she takes a job as a caretaker and meets some extraordinary characters who become her teachers and companions. Here she receives healing from these people and from the land.

211 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1990

Reviews

[Phair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ross is an Anglican solitary nun who has taken on the job of caretaker at an isolated Pacific Northwest mountain camp property belonging to the church. She had left her previous position because she found it difficult to maintain her solitariness and detachment when society and church bureaucracy became overly intrusive and obstructionist. Much of the book is her inner meditations and worries about God, forgiveness,peace and her own spiritual journey. She does become close to a neighbor and her husband and this relationship turned out to be very moving. Lots of animal and nature stuff and frequent quotes, prayers and poems both biblical and literary as well as the author's own work.
I found the whole book involving, easy to read and thought provoking. I love this sort of spiritual exploration, especially when it also includes nature.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extraordinary book. A memoir from 1990 by the Anglican solitary Maggie Ross. Maggie Ross (not her real name) has made a point (as befitting her calling) of keeping off the radar. But actually, the former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams oversees her vocation and, apparently, she was spiritual director to Desmond Tutu.

In this book (written in an earlier period of her life), she is once again off the grid, in a wilderness area somewhere in northwest USA. You assume it's going to be a memoir about solitude, but actually it's a story about community... about the communities that have left her scarred, and the one she finds in this place off the beaten track.

It's a story of friendship, of going through a literal death, and near-death, of healing, of being hurt, caring for the hurt, and ultimately of being able to take flight.

A beautiful, strong, insightful, unique book.

I quote from the flap of the book, because it more powerfully communicates the soul of the writing than I have, and contains a lot of wonderful concepts:

"Like Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard, she describes landscapes of rare beauty that reveal the true meaning of sacrament, 'in the smallest wood orchid and the vast wildness of the sea... the last flimsy boundaries between sacred and secular melted away.' We emerge from this near-mythic tale – from its frustrations, its tragedies and epiphanies – illuminated, refreshed, with a new and vital perception of our common humanity, and of the importance of wilderness as a context for the transfiguration of pain."

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a slow start for me, but the second and third sections of the book more than made up for that. Very powerful insights that leave one with much to ponder.

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maggie Ross writes an interesting account of her vocation as an Anglican solitary, reminding me that "hermits" aren't necessarily cut off from the world. She engages in friendships and fights with her neighbors, and even local police. She truly immerses herself in the culture of the rural northwest, in and through her vocation of prayer and celibacy. She does tend toward arrogance, and often portrays herself as a victim, however.

[Jessie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rarely have I read a book that aroused in me such antipathy for the writer as this one. I've had a pretty crappy life and had lots of bad things happen to me and complain a lot to my friends about it. This woman, whatever her past, seems to believe that the crappiness of her life is far beyond the crappiness of anyone else's and because of that she's Entitled. Ross is an Anglican nun, a respected theologian, solitary, and writer. Nowhere in this book did I feel any sense of spirituality, any sense of dedication to anything other than complaining about how no one would leave her alone. She's outright given a place to live and supported financially but complains that the house wasn't ready for her to move into with washed windows and wildflowers in a jar on a polished table. Her two dogs form an important part of her life, but she's willing to have them put to sleep for her own convenience so she can move on to the next "spiritual" thing to which she is called (although she doesn't make clear what that is). I found this book to be the chronicle of a unlikable, argumentative, self-centered woman whining on about how nothing in life is what she expected.