by Annie Proulx
“A great crisis is just ahead,” said one scientist. “What we saw this last week—” he muttered. Sapatisia Sel thought he meant that they had been looking at human extinction. She wanted to cry out, “The forests, the trees, they can change everything!” but her voice froze in her throat.
• • •
The ice had frightened her badly and the next day she called him from the airport: “Can’t we try again? Can’t we fix what we broke? I need to be with you. Our lives and our work. I understand now that the work is the most important thing.” Onehube had said—“Some broken things can’t be fixed.”
• • •
She, Sapatisia Sel, was here now and she hadn’t given up, but she had to sleep, had to, had to sleep. “What can I do but keep on trying? But what if it was all for nothing? What if it was already too late when the first hominid rose up and stared at the world? No!” What she and so many others were doing was working, it had to work. So many people trying to repair the damage, so selfless many of them caring and trying. And the forests themselves trying to grow back. “Oh God,” she groaned, “oh God! Put out the moon!”
In the eastern quadrant of the sky the moon was small and very white and its impersonal brilliance showed the rocky coast, ravaged forests, silent feller bunchers, a black glowering mass of peat bog and spiky forest like old negatives. It showed Onehube’s white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. The sea lifted itself toward the light. And kept on lifting.
Acknowledgments
It is not possible to list all of the people who helped with suggestions and resources during the work on Barkskins, but here are a few of the many.
Portions of two chapters appeared in somewhat different form in Brick and The New Yorker.
The writing of this book was supported in part by a Ford Fellowship and United States Artists, and in part by my publisher Scribner. Parts of this work were written during a residency in the International House of Literature Passa Porta (Brussels) as part of the program Residences in Flanders and Brussels, organized by the literary organization Het beschrijf and the Department of Culture of the Flemish Community of Belgium. Special thanks to Ilke Froyen and the Passa Porta staff and their excellent bookstore. Thanks also to Isolde Bouten, who gave me a first taste of speaking and hearing and reading Nederlands. I am grateful to my publisher Erik Visser of De Geus, and my editor Nele Hendrickx, for their encouragement and scrutiny of my dictionary Dutch.
In New Zealand
Writer Jenny and musician Laughton Pattrick, friends and guides, tui enthusiasts, exemplars of joie de vivre took me into the rich Wilton’s Bush (a.k.a. Otari) forest reserve in Wellington to see rimu, totara, kahikatea, rewarewa, tree ferns—a moist forest world of yesteryear. The New Zealand Maritime Museum Library and Archives was helpful. Betty Nelley, Curator, and Andrea Hemmins, Collections Manager of the Kauri Museum, Matakohe, Northland, were welcoming and enormously helpful. I enjoyed the help of Rita Havell, Research Librarian at the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. Karren Beanland of the Michael King Writers’ Centre helped with information and connections. One of those connections was Liz Allen, a center trustee, who took several days from her busy schedule to drive me up to the Hokianga to visit kauri museums and one of the few remaining kauri forests. In the Hokianga, Betty Nelley of the stunning Kauri Museum arranged a night foray into the forest to see the great trees by moonlight. Our guide was Kyle Tuwhekaea Ranga Chapman, who added to the drama of the experience with flute, bull-roarer, chant, story and lurid denunciations of stoats and possums that prey on kiwis.
In Nova Scotia
Grateful thanks to Roger Lewis, Mi’kmaw scholar, Curator, archaeologist, ethnologist and mesmerizing raconteur, of the Nova Scotia Museum: Museum of Natural History, for reading parts of the novel and explaining the importance of rivers to Mi’kmaw people. And thanks to my sister Roberta Roberts, who spent a week with me in that province.
In United States
The encouragement and support of my agent, Liz Darhansoff, and editor, Nan Graham, carried through several time extensions. I am grateful to Susan M. S. Brown for Herculean labors on the manuscript and for arranging three hundred years’ worth of characters in an understandable family tree. It would have killed me to do this hard job. Cheryl Oakes, Librarian at the Forest History Society, came up with hard-to-find articles and references, and Cort Conley of the Idaho Commission on the Arts helped with books on western logging. In Vermont, Dr. John P. Lawrence aided me with some characters’ medical details. Artist David Bradley of Santa Fe linked me to reports on the struggles of indigenous forest people forced out of their traditional territory by logging, cattle ranching, palm oil farms and mining. I found many scarce books through the myriad booksellers who list their wares on AbeBooks, and of course the indispensable Internet, especially the Google search engine, brought many obscure personalities and events to the surface. Coe Library at the University of Wyoming was my starting point for many scarce or hard to find books. Thanks also to Morgan Lang for help with the technical end of handling a large manuscript.
© GUS POWELL
ANNIE PROULX is the author of nine previous books, including the novel The Shipping News and the story collection Close Range. Her many honors include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize and a PEN/Faulkner Award. Her story “Brokeback Mountain,” which originally appeared in The New Yorker, was made into an Academy Award—winning film. She lives near Seattle.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
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Also by Annie Proulx
Heart Songs and Other Stories
Postcards
The Shipping News
Accordion Crimes
Close Range
That Old Ace in the Hole
Bad Dirt
Fine Just the Way It Is
Bird Cloud
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First Scribner hardcover edition June 2016
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Proulx, Annie.
Barkskins : a novel / Annie Proulx.—First Scribner hardcover edition.
pages cm
I. Title.
> PS3566.R697B37 2016
813'.54—dc23
2015030152
ISBN 978-0-7432-8878-1
ISBN 978-1-4767-7182-3 (ebook)