This issue of High Country News
departs from our usual fare – it’s still devoted to news and to
truth, but of a different variety. News, not of mining and drilling
and public policy, but of thought-provoking books and of authors
well worth getting to know. Truth, not as found in facts and
statistics, but the more layered reality revealed by personal
experience and reflection.
The essays and articles in
this issue are signposts of a sort, markers to help us triangulate
on the complex, chaotic place we call the West. Through these
stories, we may learn a little more about ourselves as Westerners,
about the places we build today and the sometimes harrowing past of
this land – and perhaps we’ll glimpse a future worth creating.
Portland author David Oates takes us from a Sierra Nevada
campsite to a plaza in France and a square in Venice, examining the
essential qualities we look for in spaces public and private – the
particular things that make a place feel like home. Further
insights on being at home in the West come from historian Rebecca
Solnit, interviewed by Laura Paskus. Peter Chilson, who teaches
literature at Washington State, finds similarities in the histories
of West Africa and the American West, both “large and sunlit lands”
ravaged by conquest.
Tales of hitchhiking across the
region’s empty spaces, relayed by contributing editor Michelle
Nijhuis, expose our secret loneliness and offer a chance to redeem
ourselves through human connection. They also show us the essential
quirkiness of Westerners: Hitchhiker Dev Carey is picked up by a
driver who says that as a child he was diagnosed as having only
half a brain. The doctor told him it was a very dangerous condition
and the thing to do was not to think.
Oddly enough, I can
relate to that. Last fall, I started having constant headaches.
They worsened to the point that I could hardly eat, let alone
think. A doctor finally figured out what was wrong: While I did
still have a whole brain, it was a quart low; the fluid that
normally cushions the brain was mysteriously leaking out. While I
lay immobile in the hospital for a week, depressed and bored, a
dear friend came to read to me. She brought her son’s latest
favorite, the fantasy Inkheart by Cornelia
Funke. In the book, reading aloud literally brings characters to
life – the villain escapes the pages of his own story and wreaks
havoc in the heroine’s world. In much the same way, my friend’s
voice wove a refuge for me, a distant land I could escape into.
Perhaps the voices in this issue of HCN will do
something similar for you, giving you a window into other parts of
the world and the West.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline No frigate like a book.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
