"DEEP CREEK--Finding Hope in the High Country" by Pam Houston

 "My mother always told me, I don't want to see you until dinner. And with those words she freed me to go out and love the earth."

Pam Houston's love of the earth, particularly her love of a ranch she purchased in Creede, CO for 5% down, almost 30 years ago, is the running theme of this memoir. She takes the reader briefly through her abusive, terrifying childhood which set the stage for a life filled with sometimes extreme adventures, extensive travel, and a menagerie of animals on her 120 acre ranch.

Libby, Joanie, Mary Lib, Sheri, Saran, and Paige were present today. On zoom of course. 

Most of us liked, even loved the book. Comments were made about  Pam's ability to clearly encapsulate a moment or feeling with well chosen words, or how she made her story personal for us. For example, her italicized "Ranch Almanac" sections, in which she told sometimes endearing, sometimes humorous stories about the challenges and rewards of life on the ranch. Or, how she did not dwell on her abusive childhood, but wove the impacts of that into her life story (ie. her involvement in hi risk outdoor adventures: what did she have to lose after all she had been through as a child).

A comment was made about the book being somewhat disjointed. The extreme gaps between working on the ranch and then being in some far flung locale eating sushi. And, questioning how she could love a place so much, and yet be gone from it so often, leaving it to sometimes questionable care-takers.

I thought the section, "Diary of a Fire", was educational and relevant, but over-long. Other's did not agree, and thought that Pam was able to represent the impact of the moment vividly throughout this chapter. And, of course everyone was able to relate to many parts of this chapter, from definitions of fire-specific vocabulary, to being glued to InciWeb for days at a time.

Finally, we talked about the frequent references to the changing climate, and how do we go on, in an ethical way,  taking pleasure in being outdoors in a dying world. How do we justify all the plane travel we engage in? Pam certainly tops the list for accumulated flyer miles, and she knows it. 

I will end with a passage from her book: "We are all dying, and because of us, so is the earth. That's the most terrible, the most painful in my entire repertoire of self-torturing thoughts. But it isn't dead yet and neither are we. Are we going to drop the earth off at the vet, say goodbye at the door, and leave her to die in the hands of strangers? We can decide, even now, not to turn our backs on her in her illness. We can still decide not to let her die alone".

Annie