Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Kristen Lodge/@kristenlodge
” Tell me the landscape in which you live,and I’ll tell you who you are.” -Jose Ortega Y Gassett (Continental Quotient, page 19)
I am very pleased to feature Memoir Author Kristen Lodge in this guest post on writing memory and personal history. Kristen’s memoir, Continental Quotient: Stories From Both Sides of the Divide published by Homebound Publications, addresses the power of place in memoir.
My reviews can be found on Amazon and Goodreads.
Welcome, Kristen!
Memoir on Place: Writing memory and personal history.
The longing to go west began when I was a senior in high school. I wanted to see The West: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. I wanted to know that Western smell: Colorado sage and the Arizona desert after the rain.
Before I got to know the sights and spells of the west I read Wallace Stegner and Edward Abbey. They taught me about the West and I fell in love with it even before I glimpsed the first white mountain peaks in Colorado. I realize now, after almost ten years of living in the west, that for a good part of 25 years I have been reading and writing about these places as required reading for my life.
These writers taught me to get to know a landscape and understand its people. They taught me to write about the forms, the colors and the light.
It is only now that I can reflect back and think about what my adventures in the mountains means by writing my life stories. I never knew anyone who had the same dreams so I was alone in seeking out the mountain landscapes I wanted to live in. It was only when I moved to my first mountain town, Bethel, Maine, in 1999 that I started to write the stories. Once I moved to my second western mountain town, Granby, Colorado, living close to wilderness and wildlife, seemingly isolated from the world, the fierce drive to make meaning from stories began.
In the effort to tap my memory I realized that I brought home with me every place I went. But I also suffered in my alone-ness and my stories began to be about putting one foot in front of the other, making plans, and surviving. Living in a beautiful remote place helped ease the pain and in the face of disaster, writing and telling stories helped.
Writing memoir helps me to work out the troubled relationships, honor my family and most of all, reminds me what is important. The beauty of writing memoir is making the commonplace memorable through life’s catastrophes, love loss, job loss, money problems, anguish, and confusion. How to tell that story is the crux of every writer in the history of mankind.
I live now in Tucson, Arizona; farther west than I’ve ever been. I can see what happened more clearly with the time and distance perspective. I realize I have a lot of experience with not knowing where I’m going, vulnerability, and living with uncertainty.
I write the stories of people getting hurt, finding amazing friends, moving on and finding new places.
Along this journey I have met people who confirm many truths I have come to know. You live your life and you are kind. You find your people over and over again.
The most important thing is to keep focused on what you know is true and the truth evolves over time and space. But oh – what a journey.
Available on Amazon.com, BN.com and Homebound Publications website: http://homeboundpublications.com/continental-quotient-bookstore/
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Thank you Kristen for taking us on your journey of the heart across this beautiful country and leading us to your place of truth and peace.
Author Bio:
Kristen grew up in Plattsburgh, New York and Rye, New Hampshire. She earned a BA in English from the University of New Hampshire. From 1999 to 2012 she lived in ski towns in northern New England and Colorado including Killington, Vermont, Bethel, Maine, Steamboat Springs, Colo., and Granby near Winter Park, Colo. She now lives near the Tucson desert with her dogs: Daisy and Winnie.
Kristen is an outdoor adventurer; hiking, competing in road and mountain biking races, triathlon, and trail running. Exploring the outdoor world is part of her everyday life and is reflected in much of her work. She has published several poems and stories in anthologies, literary magazines and online publications including Wilderness House Literary Review, Press Pause Moments: Essays About Life Transitions by Women Writers, NPR’s: This I Believe, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and River Poets Journal. For four years she wrote a weekly outdoor column for a community newspaper in Grand County, Colorado writing about skiing, hiking, poetry, environmental issues, sports, historical preservation, and interviewed several adventurers from Colorado.
Author Contact Information:
Kristen Lodge www.kristenlodge.com
Outdoor Blog www.kristenlodge.blogspot.com
Twitter@kristenlodge
Pinterest for Book: http://www.pinterest.com/kristenlodge/continental-quotient-stories-from-both-sides-of-th/
Memoir Excerpt:
From Stories from 8,000 Feet:
A mule deer herd wanders around the hills across the street from my house that will soon be a new development filled with houses and people. For now I walk my dogs on these vacant roads with mountains surrounding me. Down the road is a trail to a fishing cabin President Eisenhower used when he came to Grand County, Colorado many years ago; it’s dilapidated now. As I hike around my neighborhood I remember the warnings about mountain lions and hope I never see one. This is another sign that I’m in the right place; more wildlife, less people.
If a place can influence who you are and what you become, it is the mountains towns I’ve lived in during the last ten years that has defined me. When I was 16 I discovered Robert Frost’s poem, Escapist – Never. I wrote out the poem on lined paper and tacked it to my wall in my bedroom.
“His life is a pursuit of a pursuit forever/It is his future that creates his present.”
It took me a long time to finally find a place where I feel connected and grounded; no longer pursuing that “thing” out there in the future. I don’t know how long I will live here; I still don’t know if I can live in one place for a lifetime. For now I feel like I’m in the right place.
As the sun sets behind the rolling sage-filled hills to the west, a red fox with a bushy tail runs across the field going back to his den in the culvert behind my house where just last week I saw a kit peek its head out; hair on that tiny head springing out in every direction. That little fox just stared at me in wonder. I in turn stare into the horizon with the same kind of wonder at what is next. As the sky becomes a darker blue by the minutes, and bright stars gradually fill the sky, I feel lucky, safe, and finally, fulfilled.
How about you? What do you call place home where you feel “lucky, safe and fulfilled?”
Kristen and her publisher, Leslie M Browning of Homebound Publications have generously agreed to offer a copy of Continental Quotient to a lucky commenter whose name will be selected in a random drawing.
We’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~
ANNOUNCEMENT: Congratulations, Sarah Freeman! Your name was selected in a random drawing of commenters to win Bryan Cohen’s book: 1000 Creative Writing Prompts.
This week:
Thursday, 12/12/13:
” How What We Learned in the ’60s and ’70s is Important to Women Today.” A Wow! Women on Writing Blog Tour with a guest post by Merimee Moffitt, Winner of First Honorable Mention, Poetry for the anthology, Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the ’60s and ’70s