This blog posts on Mondays. This year, 2021, I am dedicating the first Monday of the month to Texas Books, in which I share with you some of the more unusual and interesting books in the Texas Bibliothek, that is, my working library. Listen in any time to the related podcast series.
Writes Craig Childs in his masterful The Secret Knowledge of Water, “There are two easy ways to die in the desert: thirst and drowning.” It does indeed rain in the desert, not often of course, but when it does, with so little vegetation to catch it, water can rage through canyons with killing power. In Far West Texas a standout tragedy of the 20th century was the June 11, 1965 flash flood that killed 26 people and devastated the little railroad town of Sanderson.
But this post isn’t about the Sanderson flood, rather, the matter of books in a writer’s working library. Back when I was writing Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico, my first book of creative nonfiction, I learned the painful way to never, as in, never ever, let pass the chance to snap up a book of local history. These histories, which often offer the richest of detail, unique voices, and personal memories, are vital reading for such a work as mine—as those of you who follow this blog well know, I’m now working on a book about Far West Texas.
Oftentimes local histories are self-published, and in the days before amazon and print-on-demand, only available locally and in limited numbers. Try to find such a book later, and chances are… you won’t. So when I wandered into the Sanderson Visitors Center and saw them, I snapped up Tales of the Flood, a collection of oral histories by C.W. (Bill) Smith, along with Russell Ashton Scogin’s history, The Sanderson Flood of 1965: Crisis in a Rural Texas Community (Sul Ross State University, 1995), and Terrell County, Texas: Its Past Its People (Rangel Printing, Fourth Printing, 2008).
Sanderson is the seat of Terrell County, a county best known for its hunting ranches with fabulous vistas, its cactus, and sheep ranching. One of the more remote towns in Texas, from El Paso Sanderson lies a 4 and a half hours drive east, and from Austin a 5 and a half hours drive west. If you live anywhere in the county outside of Sanderson, you’ll want a rifle. It’s infested with rattlesnakes.
Here’s my map of Far West Texas (that is, Texas west of the Pecos River), showing Sanderson just above the US-Mexico border between Langtry and the Big Bend National Park.
In the Sanderson Visitors Center C.W. (Bill) Smith granted me a fascinating and wide-ranging interview on Sanderson’s history–which of course included much discussion of the 1965 flood. The podcast of this interview has been a long while in production, but I’ll be posting it shortly. (You can listen in to the other 21 podcasts apropos of this book posted to date here.)
From C.W. (Bill) Smith’s Tales of the Flood, from “Genaro’s Story”:
Sometimes a moment of mirth turns to disaster in seconds. Genaro Valles and his wife of Del Rio were just in town visiting. They had found an older wooden house near the Dairy King to stay in while there and spent a restless night from the pounding rain and the roar of the nearby creek. Early that morning Genaro awoke to the sound of water running. He teased his wife for letting the water run in the old toilet. But as he turned over to return to sleep his hand dropped by the side of the bed and fell into cold water…
If memory serves me, I found Joe Brown’s Faded Rimrock Memories in one of the Big Bend National Park ranger station bookstores. A Sanderson, Texas native, Brown grew up “all over West Texas, doing whatever to survive.” His ranch stories and cowboy poetry are lively examples of the genre, and his rattlesnake stories alone are worth the price of the book.
From Faded Rimrock Memories by Joe Brown:
A Texans Version of Jesus Birthplace
Jesus was born in Texas, this I know, Listen and tell me this is not so. His mother rode into town on an ass, His father walked, they had no cash
(end of excerpt)
As for the Terrell County book, a hardcover that clocks in at over 700 pages, that was a bit pricier, and dicier to pack into my luggage. But I’m glad I did, for it is a superb reference on the region, with innumerable family and business histories, and it includes local newspaper clippings from the 1965 flood—and earlier and also devastating floods.
So what is the Texas Bibliothek? That’s what I call my working library for my book-in-progress, tentatively titled World Waiting for a Dream: A Turn in Far West Texas. Texans are rather more prolific on the literary front than bajacalifornianos, so keeping the Texas Bibliothek in order has been, shall we say, a learning experience. But my bookmark organizing method, which I blogged about here, is keeping me away from the Advil.
Next month for my first-of-the-month post on Texas books I’ll be blogging about using archive.org and assembling an online library for out-of-copyright books, that is, books that are now in the public domain. Reading a book online is never the ideal option, but oftentimes necessary.
This year, with some exceptions, the post for the fourth Monday of the month is dedicated to a Q & A with a fellow writer. This is the last Q & A for 2018; look for the series to resume on the fourth Monday in January 2019.
I had the pleasure of meeting Amy Hale Auker and of hearing her read
from her work back in 2016 at the Women Writing the West conference in Santa
Fe. She’s the author of several works of poetry, fiction and essay, including Rightful
Place, the 2012 WILLA winner for creative nonfiction and Foreword
Reviews Book of the Year for essays. Her latest collection, Ordinary Skin:
Essays from Willow Springs, is a treat for anyone who relishes
fine creative nonfiction– and it’s a vivid and moving look at a life lived
close to the land, on a working ranch in Arizona.
As those of you who follow my blog well know, my
work to date has focused on Mexico, but for a while now I’ve been at work on a
book about Far West Texas, and this had led me to read widely and closely about
the West. It has a grand if sometimes underappreciated literary tradition, so
if you’re not familiar with it, take special note of Amy Hale Auker, and of her
reading recommendations here. You will be richly rewarded.
From the catalog copy for Ordinary Skin:
“Touching on faith and body image and belonging, these essays explore our role in deciding what is favorable or unfavorable, as well as where we someday want to dwell, and who came before us. In that touching, they feel their way with observations about current affairs, drought, mystery, and the hard decisions that face us all as we continue to move toward more questions with fewer answers. This exploration is informed and softened by hummingbirds, Gila monsters, bats, foxes, bears, wildflowers, and hidden seep springs where life goes on whether we are there to see it or not. It is about work in a wild and wilderness environment. In the end, even as life changes drastically around us, we are better off for knowing that the ugly mud bug turns into a jewel-toned dragonfly.”
C.M. MAYO: How might you describe the ideal reader for the essays in Ordinary Skin?
AMY HALE AUKER: Ordinary
Skin is a book for anyone who loves language and story and first person
narrative, who craves an intimate look at the natural world and the land, who
recognizes the value of hard work and sweat with a pause, or many pauses, for
falling in love with life, over and over again. While I think that women will
find the deeper messages of the instinctual feminine, it is also a refresher
course for men on why they love our Mother Earth.
C.M. MAYO: If a reader were to read only one essay in your collection, which would you recommend and why?
AMY HALE AUKER:“Using Tools
Backward.” That essay reflects our sense of place and those who came
before, paving the way, and who we are as we stand in these places.
C. M. MAYO: You have been a longtime participant in cowboy poetry festivals, including the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Alpine, Texas. My impression is that while cowboy poetry, fiction and song are beloved to many in the western US and Canada and elesewhere, they are also considered exotic, and alas, something to even disdain, by many in the literary communities in urban areas of the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Your writing seems to me to fall squarely in both camps– cowboy and what I would call (for lack of a better term) literary. Can you offer your thoughts about this? And perhaps comment on what people who read literary prose but who are unfamiliar with cowboy poetry (and cowboy culture generally) might look for and reconsider?
AMY HALE AUKER: I
have to admit to having run with this question directly to my editor and dear
friend, Andy Wilkinson,
who is often a clearer thinker and better communicator about labels and
definitions than I am. I tend to simply write what I write and bang my head
against category later. Wilkinson responded to my query in this way:
“The only way out is to question … artificial categorization. Stevens didn’t write ‘insurance executive’ poetry, Williams didn’t write ‘pediatrics’ poetry, Frost didn’t write ‘farmer’ poetry, etc. Poets write poetry, and though their poems may be about a kind of life, the poets are neither the subjects nor the classifications.”
I agree with Editor Dearest, but would also add
that it is not my job to ask any reader to look more closely at any culture. It
is my responsibility to simply do my job and step back (my clumsy paraphrase of
Lao Tzu). This question looks too closely, in my opinion, at genre, marries me,
as a writer/poet, too closely to a day job, a skill set, a means to earn a
paycheck. Of course, my work in the natural world, with animals, growing food,
informs my writing, my creative process, as did Frost’s… as does Wendell
Berry’s. And yes, there are stereotypes out there, always, surrounding any
profession or region that has been grossly, and often erroneously, romanticized
to the point of becoming myth rather than reality. But an astute reader and
listener will be quick to see where the stereotype breaks down and were reality
shines through.
I would like to add that the elitist view of
literature and life is what furthers the divide in this nation. That the only
writing worthy of consideration can’t come from the pen of someone who grows
food, who works as a peasant, who has shit on their boots, who works with their
hands. This us vs them view of art, literature, and philosophy is
dangerous and furthers our separateness.
C.M. MAYO: Speaking of shit, my own favorite writer on that topic is Gene Logsdon, who called himself “The Contrary Farmer,” and who wrote a book I highly recommend– it’s informative, beautifully written, and hilarious– with the title, Holy Shit.
For someone who appreciates good writing but is unfamiliar with writing about rural life / farming / ranching, apart from your works, what might be a few reading suggestions?
AMY HALE AUKER: I just added Logsdon
to my list of things to read! Thank you.
I hope you will consider all of Wendell Berry’s
work… poetry, prose, essay…. all of it. I highly recommend The Unsettling
of America, essays surrounding the “green
revolution” and the industrialization of agriculture.
Some other authors include James Galvin (Fencing
the Sky), Verlyn Klinkenborg (The Rural Life), and Merrill Gilfillan
(Magpie Rising).
Teresa Jordan wrote a gorgeous memoir, “Ride
the White Horse Home.”
These are just a few, but if you really want to
the peak of the pile, read The Unsettling of America. Berry is
brilliant.
C.M. MAYO: Can you talk about which writers have been the most important influences for your writing– and which ones you are reading now?
AMY HALE AUKER: My influences are
eclectic and many… but I tribute the poetry and songwriting of Andy Wilkinson
as an influence to write any and everything that burns brightly in me. I
tribute Merrill Gilfillan, Jeanette Winterson, E. B. White, Verylyn
Klinkenborg, Barbara Kingsolver, and Edward Abbey with influencing my first
person narrative. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Natalie Goldbberg, Ann Lamott, and
Julia Cameron are on my “forever shelf.” Recently I started reading
Pema Chodron. I read a lot of fiction when I am writing nonfiction. So, right
now I am reading novels. By my elbow is News of the World by Paulette
Jiles. I love how she writes literary fiction in a western setting, breaking
out of genre.
C.M. MAYO: You have been a consistently productive writer for many years. How has the digital revolution affected your writing? Specifically, has it become more challenging to stay focused with the siren calls of email, texting, blogs, online newspapers and magazines, social media, and such? If so, do you have some tips and tricks you might be able to share?
AMY HALE AUKER: I view my time
as a pie chart. It is important to give of my creative energy consciously.
However, my journey has also led me to consider all of the roles in my life as
part of who I am as a creative being… author, cowboy, grandmother, gardner,
cook, poet, performer, speaker. So, it has been fun to see how very creative I
can be on my social media platforms, in particular Instagram. People point
their cameras at things they love, so it is a glimpse at their hearts. That
said, the most important thing I can do is to go to cow camp where I am
unplugged and write in longhand on the unlined page. Or put a 38 pound pack on
my back and walk off in the wilderness, solo except for the dog. And I do. When
I am home, it takes discipline to turn it all off. But that is what we all
should do, for more of the day rather than less.
C.M. MAYO: Another question apropos of the digital revolution. At what point, if any, were you working on paper? Was working on paper necessary for you, or problematic?
AMY HALE AUKER: I
write three pages of longhand every single morning a la Julia
Cameron. It is my discipline and my practice and it serves me well.
Even if I don’t get to write the rest of the day, I know I showed up at the
page Even if it reads like a “to do” list, I know I was present to my
creative fire. I wrote most of “The Story Is the Thing” in longhand
on yellow legal pad because a character in the book wrote in the same manner.
What startled me was the dramatic and interesting process of transfering my
handwriting to the screen. There was a magic there that I have not forgotten
and crave to duplicate. So I am grateful that there are so many tools available
to us… from uniball pens on blank journal pages to speaking into our phones
while we drive to Schrivener (which baffles me) to Word where I can hurry up
and get it all down. There is a freedom in having multiple ways to approach art
in any medium.
AMY HALE AUKER: I joined Women Writing the West because my publisher, Texas Tech University Press, told me to. It has been an honor to be part of that group of highly talented people.
[C.M.M. post-interview note: Women Writing the West is open to writers (both women and men) living in and/or writing about the West, in any genre. I’ve been a member for several years now, and highly recommend it.]
C. M. MAYO: What’s next for you as a writer?
AMY HALE AUKER: So many things…. I am working on both a very weird collection of short short pieces that are a mixed bag of fiction and nonfiction and meditations as well as what may very well end up being a new collection of essays. However, I don’t believe artists should discuss what they are working on at the time in much detail. It is too easy to talk about our process rather than dig deep and stay in it…. all the way to completion… if there is such a thing.
COMMENTS: Ms. Mayo: Fascinating interview with Amy Hale Auker. I have two of her essay collections: Ordinary Skin and Rightful Place. Her word choices are poetic; her thoughts on ranch life are inspiring. Thank you for asking inciteful questions—they are challenging but she is up to the task. –Judith Grout www.judithgrout.com
Thanks for your interview of Amy Hale Auker. I have read both her essays and her fiction and admire both, and heard her poetry at one of the WWW conferences (perhaps Tucson?). Your questions and her answers were thoughtful and interesting. I appreciated your delving into her thought processes and comments on poetry and essays. I loved both of your recommendations for books! –Julie Weston
