Literary Place: Rock Man Medicine

In another of my short stories, Rock Man Medicine, I’m conscious of a somewhat different treatment of place.  Different and I think in many ways more deliberate.

The sense of place and its importance to the development of Peter, the protagonist in this story, is paramount.  Place here is considered on a wholly spiritual level and serves as a means for Peter to not only connect with the land and the people who claim it as their ancestral home, but more than that as a means with which he might heal himself.

The story centers around a particular journey to a location far up a desert canyon and deep in the mountains where Peter has decided to enact a purifying sweat in the way of the indigenous people, the Hentellii.  Throughout the story, from his initial hike across open desert to the mouth of the canyon, up its series of increasingly watered ledges, at the glen where he decides to construct his sweat lodge, and amongst the other mental references working through Peter’s consciousness, it is his awakening sense of place that provides him a strength and assurance.  He is doing his best as a ch’oon, an outsider, to draw from the spiritual awareness of the Hentellii, a deeply held consciousness that sources from and resides within the very rocks of this desert landscape.

Peter initiates his hike in the dark of very early morning and at one point, as he pauses to rest, is distinctly aware of the effects the expansive and utterly still and silent landscape exerts on him.

Just perceptibly, the predawn air touched his forehead. Though silent, the movement was sound to him. It filled the otherwise hushed atmosphere. While Peter stood, his ragged breathing slowed until the stillness surrounding him became that within him. In the serenity of the transition he thought of the land that engulfed him and of the people who had for so long called it home.

And he is reminded, as he is with every visit to this place, of the inherent potency of such a landscape.

In a way held privately, the desert here cleansed him, filtering whatever darkness clung to his spirit. Only here, where he was in full possession of the scale of his life, could he find escape from the sickness that had attached itself most tenaciously to him.

Peter had timed the start of his hike to experience on the desert flats the first cresting of sunlight at dawn, a child to the Hentellii, called polasuhl.

A shaft of brilliant light crested the peak and fanned out over the sky. A sharp yellow, it pierced the flattened dome of lapis above him like a flame. Other streaks soon joined it and then slowly lowered earthward as the sun broke free of the land. Polasuhl, the dawn child, had arrived. Flowing across the land the enthusiastic youngster awakened all and colored the soil and the brush a vibrant saffron.

That event, though in many ways no different than any other morning at this location, triggered within him an even deeper sense of place and the power it held over him.

Transfixed by the dawn’s dramatic arrival, he had not noticed the tranquility that accompanied it. What little trace of breeze had existed in the predawn had now vanished and with it any sense of movement, of sound. An even deeper stillness settled over the mesa and Peter felt the inescapability of its presence. The settled calm was as indigenous as the desert light.

This sense is reinforced later on his hike when Peter is treated to the sight of two golden eagles soaring and tumbling entangled in a courtship display in the sky high above him.  Transfixed by the rare sight he is also initially plagued by melancholy as it reminds him of just what he is missing in his life and the spiritual sickness that has resulted and grown within him.  But in this place the negative effects are more easily managed.

A wave of self-pity encompassed him. The faces of the real-ghosts came and he nearly succumbed. But the endlessness of the land around him, the inhuman purity of its silence, fortified his resolve. He used it to push the evil thought from his mind and was pleased by the ease with which he was able to do it. Even here in the isolation of the desert the ghost-sickness retained some power, but its endurance suffered….With the escape that the desert offered him, he had found a powerful defense against the creeping influence of the sickness. If only he could live under its direct influence continually, he had often mused, he could surely purge the illness completely. 

Peter is keenly aware that the personal strength and healing that this place offers him is dependent upon his genuine understanding of the Hentellii worldview.  Though a resident of this location, he is a new one, and knows that the appreciation of place that the Hentellii have developed over generations exists at a level he can scarcely comprehend.  But as his knowledge of Hentellii worldview increases so too does that which he is able to glean from his visits to this place.

The first trip he had made into the desert following his discovery of the Hentellii texts had been a revelation. The land was suddenly new to him and infinite in its healing powers. Subtleties revealed themselves to his awakened perceptions and spurred him with a desire to know even more.

This idea speaks to something like indigenous location awareness and its potentially unique manifestation as a particularly strong sense of place.  Something I’d like to explore in a future blog.

Peter continues on and makes his way up a canyon that grows increasingly significant as a waterway as he ascends its entrenched course further into the mountains.

With the walls on either side of him having risen to a level exceeding his own height, Peter experienced the comforting sensation of being within the earth, protected by these folds of its skin. The walls themselves changed, from crumbling scarps of terra cotta sandstone and loose scree to a hardened precipice of reticulated, varnished rock. The sand under his boots grew denser, its firm surface littered with determined lines of spoor; a desert expressway, he mused, leading to the reward of water.

He is after a particular place, one he had stumbled upon during his last visit to this area and one he sensed intrinsically would serve his needs.

He needed, most importantly, a proper location. To enact an effective healing he knew required a place where the power of the rock, where the presence of Henthinlo, was most evident. During the ceremony he would need to draw of that power and the more readily available, the better.

Thinking back now to the palpable sense of place this location had exuded on that first visit, he was convinced his journey there had been no accident.  It had been designed, he knew now, to open his awareness to the power of the landscape, which in turn would serve him as a source of strength with which to successfully conduct the difficult sweat ceremony.

When he locates the place within the canyon he was seeking he knows it with certainty; its inherent beauty, its physical presence, strikes him just as noticeably as it had the first time.

From where he stood, at the lip of the pooled water above the smooth slide of rock, the cañón opened into a delicate glen that curved gracefully around a brooding wall of dark, igneous rock. The scene lay before him now half bathed in the bold light of the waning afternoon. A sparkling creek wound away from the edge of rock at his feet and hard against the bulk of dark stone, until it vanished around the arc of the cañón. Opposite the dark wall, along the north bank, a row of cottonwood and tamarisk saplings shimmered, moving tenderly in a shaft of sunlight.

From the base of the trees near the water, a packed, sandy bank climbed gradually until it ran against a varnished wall of sandstone, stained with streaks and artistic curves of mineral deposits. In the glow of the late afternoon, the wall presented a satiny face as the light pulled transient colors – coppers, saffrons, red umbers, peaches – from within the swirling form of the stone. Where the sun did not reach, the sandstone resonated with aqueous textures of browns; from pale, tawny hues to deepening sepias and walnuts, all of it alive, circulating under his gaze.

Peter notices too the strange absence of birdsong, in this riparian zone where he would have expected much of it, especially in the late afternoon of his arrival.  He concludes that the inherent spirituality of this place is the reason.  Sound then, an important component of place, is seen to shape the sense, the perceived meaning, of a physical landscape either in its presence or absence.

Because of its particular location, this place is something of an oasis in an otherwise arid landscape and it is that unique element, the presence of what Peter understands as water spirits, that plays a crucial role in his activities.  As he conducts the sweat, it is the interplay of rock and water, in some ways opposing forces in this location, that allows him to proceed in an appropriate way.  Even the composition of the canyon itself, on one side sandstone, laid down as sediment within an ancient lake or sea, on the other igneous rock, forged by heat in the depths of the earth, speaks to this duality but also to the coexistence and important interplay of these two elements.

It is moisture in fact, first in the form of steam from the heated stream rocks and then in the form of his own sweat as it drips off of his body and down towards the bedrock beneath him, that conveys the power of the rock spirit Henthinlo in a way Peter can manage.

Following a successful ceremony and the dismantling of the lodge, Peter has not only found a level of peace, but is clearly even more closely connected to the place in which he finds himself.  That sense has fully permeated him and in doing so has afforded him a new level of clarity and awareness.  It had been a difficult and arduous path to this place at this point in time, but that effort had rewarded him.

Lying in his sleeping bag, considering the array of stars in the wedge of night sky above the high canyon walls, he reflects that he will now be able to take this place, its meaning, with him in the morning as he returns from the desert.

Literary Place: Before the Flame

One of the motivations associated with my explorations into this idea of place involves considering how I’ve used it myself, as part of my own creative expression.  I’ve touched on that topic in terms of photography, but am also interested in thinking a bit more about how I’ve leveraged sense of place for effect within my creative writing.

As a start then I’m considering here the presence of place within one of my short stories, Before the Flame.

This work was composed some time ago, long enough that I can’t recall with certainty if I was fully aware of and deliberate in my weaving of sense of place into the storyline, but I do know the detailed description of the natural environment, the physical setting of the story and its effects on the story’s two characters, was a critical element in its telling.  The movement of a storm past the mountain cabin where the story takes place, for instance, operates as something of a metaphor or at least parallels the events taking place within the cabin.

It is that setting itself that is important in terms of generating a sense of place, which not only provides a context for the story but also helps to shape and define the two characters.  They are each situated firmly within this location but in different ways – their connections to it as place are quite distinct.  That difference then generates a tension which in turn drives the events of the story.

Immediately the key elements associated with one such sense of place, that of the protagonist, are established – the setting of the cabin on a river bluff, the presence of a storm in the mountains, and the way in which he relates to this natural setting:

The lightning was a surprise.

When he noticed the first wide flash through the windows of the cabin he thought it something else.  He noticed its suddenness out of the corner of his eye and he thought it a trick of his vision or maybe something he had imagined altogether.  It was that suddenness more than the thing itself which drew him.  Despite the unlikelihood he knew it could have been lightning and the idea of it would not leave him.  In the six years he had lived in the mountains he had only seen a lightning storm once and even watching it then, brilliantly defining the silhouettes of the surrounding ridges, he had hardly believed it.  It was nearly too much, the lightning and the mountains, together.  There had been thunder then too and he had marveled at the way it had echoed around the valley.

And continuing…

Everything seemed to be waiting.  The movement of the river was constant and its soft, rushing sound so regular he often forgot he heard it; but when he considered it, as he did now, it was clear in its presence in the gorge below.  He envisioned it moving steadily through the dark.  It never ceased moving and the idea of it flowing unseen at night no different than in the daylight held him.

The next flash of lightning was everywhere and then it was gone.

He was watching for it this time so it was no surprise as the first one had been, but it was overwhelming in its scope and the way it changed everything.  In an instant the river valley lay lit up for him and he saw it all at once in a strange, white light; the back-lit mass of clouds, the buffalo humps of the fir-covered mountains upriver, the rock-strewn rise of the ridge across from the cabin, the narrow meadow that was the flood-plain on the opposite bank, and, from its fleeting sheen of white, the river itself.  From atop the sheer cutbank where the cabin perched he had a commanding view of everything in the night-turned-day.

The scene lingered like a photograph, all of its components exposed simultaneously under the quick glare of a flash.  It was dark again, just as quickly, and the night seemed deeper afterwards.

Slowly, reaching him as if from within the surrounding mountains themselves, a rumbling of thunder arose from the southeast; it had been a long time coming and the lightning had been diffused everywhere in the clouds so he knew the storm was still distant.  In the darkness and the quiet after the thunder the river sounded steadily and nothing had changed.

The other character in the story, the visiting girl, is likewise presented from the perspective of the protagonist, so there is no way to know for certain her personal sense of place.  But it is revealed, in the way the protagonist himself experiences her and celebrates the way she relates to and fits within the shared landscape:

She had said that thunderstorms were common here and they had gotten into an argument over that, a playful one that was just a different way of flirting.  She had lived here all her life and she knew but he had only seen the one storm in six years and where he grew up there had been storms, full-blown mean ones, nearly every evening in the summers.  Her views were nearly always alien to him but he had not minded the friction this had caused right at the start–she was young and opinionated but she had this place inside of her and maybe he could learn something from her.

And later, as his awareness deepens and the evening progresses…

They had stood like that and looked down upon the river.  It was evening and the sun was below the ridgeline but the sky was clear and still softly lit.  The slopes across from the cabin had changed back from the sepia tone they had gained in the waning sunlight to a dusky green, a little deeper than the shade they normally held during the day.  Along the terraces of the river the clustered alders were just sprouting leaves so new they were yellow, not green; when the breeze moved down the river their shimmering against the dark of the firs was delicate and heart-wrenching.

The river itself was up then with the first real surge of runoff and it moved powerfully.  Most of the rocks that made rapids in the late summer and fall were submerged, but directly below the cabin where the river turned around a basalt shelf, the glossy surface was shredded into foam.  He had always liked to look at that place where the river changed, where the thick slate-green water turned pale and violent and the noise arose that drifted up to the cabin.

She had stayed quiet for a long time beside him and he had begun to think it was because she had always lived here and she had heard that the river talked to those who listened long enough; it had different voices and you learned to interpret them.  She had pushed aside the screen door then and walking across the deck had leaned at the railing watching the water more closely.  If you didn’t know she was from these mountains you would know it now, he had thought.

The sight of her there with the sheer, forested slopes surrounding her and the heady sound of the rapids and the softness of the light had intoxicated him.  It was an exhilarating sensation to see her like that, something so beyond him.  Feeling unworthy and outside of it, he had cautiously joined her at the railing and watched with her.

As his awareness of the girl’s sense of this place deepens, it permeates his own sense and alters it.  But that understanding also results in a more nuanced perception and appreciation of the girl herself, as they share a meal together:

Whenever she talked like that he enjoyed the youthful lilt to her voice since it sounded to him more like singing than speaking.  Her words flowed, never abating, and it put him in mind of the river after the flush of autumn rains.  Her eyes were very dark and they maneuvered swiftly, in synch with her speech; watching them he thought of the two crows he had seen cartwheeling over the water on the first warm day of that season.  Their spontaneity and the cadence of her voice joined forces to capture him.  Every point no matter how insignificant took on grand, colorful proportions in her hands.

But despite what seems their potential and promise, these two senses of a shared place ultimately cannot change what is for the protagonist an inevitable course of events.

Absolutely nothing occurred to him.  All he sensed was that it was crumbling away beneath him and it seemed foolish to launch a fight against it.  He stood and carried the two empty dinner plates to the kitchen sink.  When he came back to the table she was sitting with her head lowered and she was rubbing a finger along the edge of her crumpled napkin.

Indicative as it is, the protagonist’s sense of place is part of a broader landscape of him as a complex individual.  It transports him for a time somewhere different and carries with it hope and the possibility of connection, but in the end it’s not enough.  It is at last overwhelmed by the rest and what was a flight of optimistic fancy is then recast as another irreconcilable point of difference with the girl.  The moment passes and things return to their steady state.

At this stage, when it was over, there was a certain relief to be enjoyed.  The calm that had come with the finality had touched her too and after she had thanked him she paused, expectantly.  But he said nothing more and she climbed behind the wheel of her car.  A moment later he watched her drive away.

He stayed there in the driveway in the cool of the night air until his thoughts calmed.  He felt the regret and the hopelessness he always experienced then, not just from the end of it but from the way it settled so effortlessly into the pattern.  He had always thought there might be more to life than this.

Later, after recalling the relatively turbulent events of the dinner, he settles back into what he knows and holds close, a keen awareness of his environment.  His sense of place has come full circle and is once again uniquely his.  It is a peculiar component of his unique identity, which he has once again come to accept.

The lightning had moved to the north, beyond the ridge across the river and the thunder was too distant anymore to distinguish above the sound of the water.  The flashes had come regularly and brilliantly for a time and gradually the novelty of it had left him.  Now the storm was gone.

He turned his attention to the moths at the floodlights above the deck.  They were thick at the corners of the cabin, circling and diving and throwing themselves at the bulbs, oblivious to anything but the intensity of the light.  Some crawled crazily along the railing of the deck and across the wooden planks of the floor while others sat perfectly exhausted, mesmerized maybe, their pale wings outstretched and still against the dark gray cedar of the cabin wall.  The river brought them here, he knew.  They had hatched along its banks and in the night his deck lights had drawn them up the steep bluff.  There were more below, moving with the rush of the water down in the darkness.  With this realization, he flipped the switch alongside the glass door, extinguishing the light.

In Before the Flame, the protagonist’s heightened awareness of his location, his perception of the girl’s sense of that same place and his experience of the girl herself, this visitor to his home – all these elements intertwine and become indistinguishable from one another.  And it is this blend of elements, forged within the crucible of a distinct sense of place, that shape him, define him as a character in the story.