Raising Wild

by Michael P. Branch

  In mathematics, a vector is “a quantity that has direction as well as magnitude,” and it is represented symbolically by “a line drawn from its original to its final position.” Each of our lives is also a vector whose representative story line—the narrative of its trajectory through time and space—can be plotted only along the points of our significant vernacular experiences in place. The tragedy of our age is how discontinuous and fractured that line has become, how in desperation we are forced to splice its missing fragments together with misinformation from distorted, alien maps that omit or obscure the lost story of our own being in the world.

  I have a dream that someday the V.E.C.T.O.R.L.O.S.S. witnessing archives will occupy hundreds of acres of buildings full of vaults in which all of our most important vernacular experiences are expressed and located, never to be lost. Numberless letters, e-mails, postcards, text messages, tweets—even scribbled cocktail napkins or photographs of drawings etched with sticks into damp sand—each with a small story and an accompanying set of numbers that describes a specific location in space. Countless moments of illumination and disappointment and transformation, placed carefully onto a fully textured map of the living world. Even in its earliest phases, the project has demonstrated that every map, however fastidiously drawn, obscures a rich, invisible landscape of important vernacular associations with the land. And these local experiences do not simply accrue in places over time, piling up like stones in a rising cairn that marks a trail along the ridgeline leading to the future. Instead, the vernacular landscape is a palimpsest, a page of geo-experiential manuscript upon which holograph records are written, overwritten, erased, elided, interpolated, inserted, canceled, and then written again, sometimes in languages not yet spoken, sometimes in a forgotten language.

  I believe that the infinitely draped cartography of significantly experienced places, if it is ever completed, will simply be the map of all that is holy. Every spot it depicts will be sacred ground—will be the site of some otherwise invisible deer antler or snow angel. And who among us would not kneel, if in kneeling we could touch a furrow of bark from that tree where the shining ivory bill momentarily reappeared, ghostlike, from the world where all that is lost is said to remain forever? Only then will we finally know what to tell our children when they ask. We’ll tell them that all of the earth is a reliquary—that every chip of bark and stone and bone turned out to be a chip of the true cross. If they don’t believe us they can check the map, where the first thing they will discover is the place and moment of their own birth, so precious to us, already recorded there.

  Reading Group Guide

  1. In the book’s Pre-amble, the author contrasts his own epic hikes in the high desert with his daughters’ long-held ambition to climb a modest local ridge they call Moonrise. Ultimately, he concludes that the experience of hiking with his daughters is “more fascinating and valuable than any heroic male wilderness adventure could possibly be.” What is the impact of the contrast between these two forms of experiencing wilderness—solitary male adventure vs. a father hiking with his daughters?

  2. The book’s opening chapters, “Endlessly Rocking” and “The Nature within Us,” reveal that the author has real fears about whether he is prepared to be a good father. Why is he so hesitant about becoming a parent? How does he ultimately confront concerns that he will be inadequate as a father?

  3. Much of this book is concerned with the author’s developing identity as “the father of daughters.” How might the book have been different if Branch had instead been the father of sons? How might the book’s story have changed had it been told by a mother of daughters or a mother of sons?

  4. Branch writes that “Laughter is the sound we make in the moment we acknowledge, perhaps even begin to accept, our own mistakes or inadequacies”. He even claims that “laugher generates the flexibility and acceptance that are necessary for one to develop patience and express love”. How does humor function throughout the book? Would you agree that humor has the power to make us more accepting and resilient? What are the limits to the power of humor to help us in our lives?

  5. In his endorsement of Raising Wild, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Gary Snyder writes that the book “points forward, not back,” and he describes it as “hopeful.” What do you think Snyder meant in describing the book as pointing forward?

  6. Although the book is often both funny and hopeful, a number of chapters offer serious contemplations of potential loss. For example, “Tracking Stories” examines what might be lost if pronghorn antelope were to be extirpated from the author’s local landscape, while “Fire on the Mountain” examines the near loss of Branch’s family home to fire. Why are these contemplations of loss important to the larger story told by the book? How can they be reconciled with the book’s lighter, more hopeful tone?

  7. The key to this book is its setting in the remote, high-elevation Great Basin Desert, which the author describes as being “among the most extreme landscapes in North America”. “This place is not remarkable in spite of its blizzards and droughts, its fires and floods, its rattlers and scorpions,” he writes. “It is astonishing because of them”. If the high desert landscape is so inhospitable, why does he value it so highly? Why does he want to inhabit this extreme environment—and raise his children there—if it is such a difficult place to make a home?

  8. At many points in the book, the author contrasts the way adults and children see the world. “There is something about adult perception, however finely honed it might be, that struggles to attain the sense of possibility that is instinctive to children,” he writes. Do you agree that children retain a “sense of possibility” that has become less accessible to adults? What are examples of things children can imagine that grown-ups have a harder time envisioning? What might adults learn from a childhood sense of possibility?

  9. Although Raising Wild is a book about the author’s life with his family in the high desert wilderness, it often reaches out to make contact with popular culture. For example, “Playing with the Stick” offers a humorous look at the induction of the stick into the National Toy Hall of Fame, while “The Hills Are Alive” takes a comical approach to examining the musical film The Sound of Music. How do the chapters that work with pop culture relate to the chapters that more directly discuss Branch’s experiences with his children in their home desert? For example, what does “Playing with the Stick” suggest about the differences between adult and childhood perceptions of nature, a theme important throughout the book? How does “The Hills Are Alive” challenge our assumption that green landscapes are superior to arid landscapes, which is another key issue in the book?

  10. For many of us, a garden is an important domestic site where nature and culture meet and overlap—a place where we try to understand nature but also shape it to our own purposes. What representation of the garden emerges in the chapter “My Children’s First Garden”? What are the author’s ambitions for his children’s garden? How are those ambitions thwarted? How does Branch respond to his repeated difficulties in this troubled garden? Do you consider the garden described in this chapter to be a failure?

  11. The author addresses his book’s title this way: “We tend to think that something that is ‘raised’ cannot also be ‘wild’ and that something that is ‘wild’ must not have been ‘raised.’ (Think salmon here.) But rather than figure the wild as other than and apart from the family, this book explores the ways in which living as a family in a wild landscape reveals the wildness at the heart of both childhood and parenthood”. How does Branch conceive of the relationship between domesticity and wildness? Would you agree with his sense that the wild and domestic can coexist, or do you instead consider them mutually exclusive?

  12. Henry David Thoreau, whom Branch quotes and refers to a number of times, once wrote that “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” However, this quotation is often incorrectly rendered as “In wilderness is the preservation of the world.” What is the difference between wil
dness and wilderness? Can one exist without the other? In what ways does Raising Wild explore the relationship between wildness and wilderness, and what does the book ultimately say about the distinction between the two?

  13. Near the end of the chapter called “Fire on the Mountain,” the author discusses the scientific consensus that “People who write about traumatic events are a great deal more resilient than are trauma victims who do not create a narrative of their experience”. Why do you think writing about emotionally difficult experiences has been shown to be so therapeutic? What is it about retelling the story of a traumatic event that makes that event more endurable, perhaps even more comprehensible, to the writer?

  14. How would you reply if asked to categorize Raising Wild by genre? Is it creative nonfiction? Memoir? Humor writing? An essay collection? Nature or science writing? Regional literature? Is it a parenting book? How might you read the book differently if you were to first identify it as being an example of one or another of these genres?

  15. Very late in the book the author addresses his readers directly, inviting them to try a specific thought experiment: “Take a moment to imagine the landscape you now inhabit or, alternatively, a treasured landscape from your past. What memories have you attached to that place? How has that place helped to shape the person you are today? How have your experiences there informed your way of seeing yourself, your family, the place itself?” Now actually try this! How have your experiences or memories of this special place influenced your identity and your view of the world? How might you be a different person had you never encountered this unique place?

  Acknowledgments

  Writers are very much in need of friends, and I have been fortunate to have so many in my life and in my corner. Here I offer my sincere thanks, along with equally sincere apologies to anyone I may have neglected to include.

  Among fellow writers of environmental creative nonfiction, my thanks go to Rick Bass, Paul Bogard, John Calderazzo, SueEllen Campbell, Laird Christensen, Casey Clabough, Jennifer Cognard-Black, Chris Cokinos, John Elder, Andy Furman, Dimitri Keriotis, Ian Marshall, Kate Miles, Kathy Moore, John Murray, Nick Neely, Sean O’Grady, Tim Palmer, Bob Pyle, David Quammen, Eve Quesnel, Janisse Ray, Suzanne Roberts, Chris Robertson, Leslie Ryan, Terre Ryan, Gary Snyder, John Tallmadge, David Taylor, and Rick Van Noy. Very special thanks to David Gessner, John Lane, and John Price, whose support has been decisive.

  Thanks also for the encouragement I’ve received from other friends in the environmental literature community, including Tom Bailey, Patrick Barron, Jim Bishop, Kate Chandler, Ben Click, Nancy Cook, Jerry Dollar, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Tom Hillard, Heather Houser, Richard Hunt, Dave Johnson, Rochelle Johnson, Mark Long, Tom Lynch, Kyhl Lyndgaard, Annie Merrill, Clint Mohs, David Morris, Dan Philippon, Steve Railton, Heidi Scott, Robert Sickels, Dave Stentiford, Jim Warren, and Alan Weltzien.

  I’ve been fortunate to benefit from productive collaborations with many talented and industrious editors. Following are a few of these folks, along with the magazine or press at which they worked at the time I received their help: Chip Blake, Jennifer Sahn, Hannah Fries, and Kristen Hewitt (Orion); David Gessner, Ben George, and Anna Lena Phillips (Ecotone); Stephanie Paige Ogburn, Jodi Peterson, Paul Larmer, Tay Wiles, Michelle Nijhuis, Diane Sylvain, Cally Carswell, Emily Guerin, and Kate Schimel (High Country News); Kate Miles (Hawk & Handsaw); Chris Cokinos (Isotope); Nick Neely (Watershed); Rowland Russell (Whole Terrain); Nancy Levinson (Places Journal); Jamie Iredell (New South); Mike Colpo (Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line); Tara Zades (Reader’s Digest); Justin Raymond (Shavings); Jeanie French (Red Rock Review); Bruce Anderson (Sunset); Caleb Cage and Joe McCoy (The Nevada Review); Fil Corbitt (Van Sounds); Jason Leppig (Island Press Field Notes); Brad Rassler (Sustainable Play); Barry Tharaud (Nineteenth-Century Prose); Greg Garrard (Oxford University Press); George Thompson (GFT Publishing); Jonathan Cobb (Island Press); and Boyd Zenner (University of Virginia Press).

  I want to express my sincere gratitude to the terrific team at Roost Books, whose work on Raising Wild has been exemplary from the start. Thanks to assistant editor Julia Gaviria, copy editor Diana Rico, and proofreader Emily White for seeing the manuscript down the final stretch, and to art director Daniel Urban-Brown and designer Jess Morphew for making it a thing of beauty. My thanks to sales and marketing manager KJ Grow, publicity director Steven Pomije, and publicity and marketing coordinator Stephany Daniel, whose excellent work has helped this book to find its readers. Most important, I offer my deepest and most heartfelt thanks to my editor Jennifer Urban-Brown. My collaboration with Jenn has been among the most productive and enjoyable of my career, and I can only hope that folks who believe that a writer’s relationship with their editor must be adversarial might someday be as fortunate as I have been in having such a supportive, patient, and insightful partner in their work.

  It is fitting that Raising Wild should have found a home at Shambhala, given the strange and wonderful way in which my own path and that of the press came to cross. Shambhala Publications emerged from Shambhala Booksellers, which began in 1968 in the back of the storied Moe’s Books, on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. Back in early August 2002, my wife, Eryn, and I were on our way from the high desert over to the San Francisco Bay to root for the Giants as they took on the Pirates. As usual, we left time to visit the Berkeley Hills and peruse the shelves at Moe’s. It was there, as I admired the plates in a beautiful edition of Audubon’s The Birds of America, that Eryn emerged from the bathroom waving the small wand of a pregnancy test above her head. Through the wand’s tiny window we caught a glimpse of our future: two parallel magenta lines that gave the first indication we would become parents. The kid presaged by that magic wand at Moe’s Books turned out to be Hannah, who is now twelve years old. She and her little sister, nine-year-old Caroline, are the figures at the heart of Raising Wild, serendipitously published by Shambhala, which also traces its origin story to Moe’s.

  Closer to home, I’d like to offer thanks to fellow Great Basin writers Bill Fox, Shaun Griffin, Ann Ronald, Rebecca Solnit, Steve Trimble, Claire Watkins, and Terry Tempest Williams, with a nod to the desert writers who led my way: Mary Austin, Ed Abbey, Ellen Meloy, and Chuck Bowden. Thanks to my colleagues in the MFA program at the University of Nevada, Reno: Steve Gehrke, Ann Keniston, Gailmarie Pahmeier, Susan Palwick, and, especially, Chris Coake. And thanks to my students in the courses on American humor writing, place-based creative nonfiction, and western American literary nonfiction that I taught during 2014, 2015, and 2016. I have also been encouraged by the stalwart readers of my “Rants from the Hill” essay series at High Country News online, where more than a hundred thousand folks have been kind enough to spend five minutes with my unusual way of seeing the world.

  Among Reno friends, I’ve received valuable support from Pete Barbieri, Mike Colpo, Fil Corbitt, Dondo Darue, David Fenimore, Daniel Fergus, Mark Gandolfo, Betty Glass, Torben Hansen, Aaron and Diana Hiibel, Kent Irwin, Rich Kentz, Tony Marek, Ashley Marshall, Katie O’Connor, Eric Rasmussen, and Meri Shadley. Special thanks to my closest friends, Colin and Monica Robertson and Cheryll and Steve Glotfelty. The most significant support I have received outside my family came from Cheryll, whose encouragement has been essential to my growth as a writer.

  I am blessed with a family that is exceptionally tolerant of my eccentricities and ambitions, my fierce sense of place and idiosyncratic sense of humor. On the other side of the Sierra, thanks to our Central Valley people: O. B. and Deb Hoagland, Sister Kate and Uncle Adam Myers, Troy and Scott Allen, and all the cousin critters. Here on the Great Basin side of the big hill, more thanks than I will ever manage to express go to my folks, Stu and Sharon Branch, who have directly or indirectly enabled everything I’ve accomplished in life. My wife, Eryn, is all I ever dreamed of in a partner—loving, patient, smart, creative, funny, generous, and encouraging; this book could never have been written without her constant support.

  I often tell our daughters that “it ta
kes a family to make a book.” The dedication of a book is the most sincere gesture of gratitude available to a writer, and I have dedicated Raising Wild to Hannah and Caroline, whose wild desert upbringing inspired it. I hope my record of our shared experiences up on this high desert hilltop will seem to them even sweeter as the years go by.

  Credits

  Many of the chapters in this book had their first life as essays published in magazines, though the versions that appear here are very much expanded and revised (and in several cases retitled). Information on first publication (and, as necessary, original titles) appears below. I am deeply grateful to these magazines and their editors for their support of my work.

  “Endlessly Rocking.” Ecotone: Reimagining Place 2, no. 1 (Fall/Winter 2006): 20–37.

  “The Nature within Us.” Originally published as “Couvade Days.” Whole Terrain: Reflective Environmental Practice 15 (2008): 44–47.

  “Tracking Stories.” Originally published as “Ghosts Chasing Ghosts: Pronghorn and the Long Shadow of Evolution.” Ecotone: Reimagining Place 4, nos. 1 and 2 (January 2009): 1–19.

  “Ladder to the Pleiades.” In Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the Dark, edited by Paul Bogard, 74–84. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2008.

  “The Adventures of Peavine and Charlie.” Originally published as “The Adventures of Peavine and Charlie: A Journey through the Imaginative Landscape of Childhood.” Orion 30, no. 1 (January/ February 2011): 58–63.