Cross-country skiing is a lot like writing. The white trails are a blank canvas, the groomed tracks your page margins. Once you find your rhythm with your arms swinging, you can cover a lot of ground.
Last week I went to the Rolling Huts in the Methow (MED-how) Valley for four nights and three days for a self-structured writing and ski retreat to try to hone a rhythm. For those who know me, the Methow Valley is one of my favorite places on earth, probably because it is so much like Colorado. I lived in Washington state for 21 years before I discovered it (!!). While lying flat on a plastic recliner in 2012, my dentist told me about the Rolling Huts as he poked my gums and looked under my tongue. He commissioned Tom Kundig to design and build the structures on his property in Mazama, Washington, 28 miles south of the Canadian border. Wesola Polana is the name of the complex: six rolling huts, a cabin, separate bathroom and maintenance facilities (the huts have electricity and private outhouses, but no running water), plus a detached restaurant. A restaurant that for the first several years we vacationed there was run by Steven, a sandy Irishman married to a Peruvian. He’s gone now, flown to Brazil, I think, but his eclectic beer selection lives on –a row of amber bottles from all over the world sitting on an interior window shelf between the dining room and bussing station. But we can no longer eat his delicious Irish stew or hear his Irish brogue, musical and green against the white snow. I miss it. And him.
The girl had set off on the descent, going back and forth in her tranquil zigzags, and had already reached the point where the trails were more trafficked by skiers, yet her figure, faintly sketched, like an oscillating parenthesis, didn’t get lost in the confusion of darting interchangeable profiles: it remained the only one that could be picked out and followed, removed from chance and disorder.
– Italo Calvino, The Adventure of a Skier
Wesola Polana means “happy meadow” in Polish because Poland is Dr. Friedrich’s childhood home. An apt name, for I feel happy every time I’m there. I did a self-structured writing retreat one other time but only for two days in New York, at the tail end of a business trip in early 2019. Which didn’t really work that well because I have friends in NYC whom I mistakenly told I would be there. Plus, New York itself is a good friend of mine. She begged me to go out even when Stephanie, Caren, Sue, or Alison didn’t. Consequently, I didn’t get much writing done because when friends beckon, I respond like a knee jerking under a reflex hammer: I just go (and honestly, I’m really glad I did that time because I went on an Airbnb tour of Hasidic Brooklyn and it was one of the most memorable travel experiences of my life).
Lesson learned. Dedicated writing requires boring and familiar – if not remote – places.
I write through my Big List of Memories but am struggling with…memories. Even though what I’m writing is non-fiction, I wonder. Is there any such thing, really? As 100% non-fiction? There’s no way I can remember detailed dialogue from that long ago or exactly what someone was wearing or smelled like, so some parts will have to be made up. But maybe it’s the intent that matters most. Maybe “non-fiction” really means fiction-that’s-as-close-to-truth-as-it-can-be. Which makes me think strategically. In remembering, I realize how alone and marginalized I felt for most of my childhood after my mother died. So maybe I’ll avoid dialogue in my book altogether, a signal of my aloneness. Which I wouldn’t classify as loneliness, by the way. I don’t remember feeling lonely as a child. Just alone.
I’ve been writing random memories because working on the structure was leading me to analysis paralysis. But now I feel like writing random memories is leading to the opposite: unconfined words oozing all over the place like worms spilled from a can. So I’m returning to outlining. Because I don’t need to write every thing. Just the most important, pivotal moments (thank you, Joyce Carol Oates!). I’m researching length, too: flash fiction versus short story versus novelette versus novella. I was thinking this would be a collection of short stories, but now I’m leaning toward a novella. And outsourcing memories, too. How might I tap into the memories of others to better piece together a compelling narrative?
Speaking of memories, today is Seth’s birthday: March 9, 1987. A sunny, almost-spring Monday at La Plata County Community Hospital in Durango, Colorado at 3:52 p.m. 8 lbs 4 1/4 oz, 22-inches long. That is 100% non-fiction.
Happy Birthday, Seth.
Things That Nourished My Writing: March 1-7.
FILM
Nomadland Frances McDormand is a goddess.
FOOD
Caffe Vita Steeped Single-Serve Coffee Bags
The Mazama Store (like Metro Market in the mountains!).
LITERARY
The Collected Stories by Amy Hempel
George Saunders: What writers really do when they write.
MUSIC
Camilo. I love Latin music.
PLACES
Washington’s Magnificent Methow Valley
The Mighty Columbia which flows alongside Highway 97 on the way to the Methow.