Barbara J. Scot

Barbara Scot returned to the close-knit community in Iowa where she grew up, seeking understanding of her mother’s life and to reconnect with family who might have stories for her.

Her ancestors were Scots Presbyterians who farmed in Iowa and the land was deeply important to them. Her mother was a teacher and was proud that she could buy herself a car. She married a local man who ran up debt, borrowed against the farm, and finally ran off with another woman when the author was a baby. To her deep shame, her mother lost the farm and a couple of years later learned that her (ex) husband had killed himself. She never remarried, and died in her 50s.

Scot had grown up and left for graduate school, and ended up in Oregon, but she also had an unhappy marriage with a man who abused her. When she took this trip she was in her 60s, had remarried, and had two adult kids. Her brother had descended into drugs and alcohol and they weren’t in touch. In Iowa she visited historical societies and read church records of trials for fornication, and Native American accounts of life before white people came. She visits caves where early people wintered and speaks to a Native American man at the Mesquakie settlement. He talks of how their problem has always been how much of the outside they let in and whether old ways will be lost but says “It’s like a fire. Even when the fire dies down there’s always that little heartbeat. … Our fire as died down before. As long as that little center is still red, all God has to do is to blow on our coals and the fire starts up again. In our traditional religion, we call it the ‘fire of our people.’”

There’s no big discovery or revelation, but she finds peace in the plains and rivers, memories, and family bonds.

My mother’s family was similar to hers - farmers in Ohio, Scots Presbyterian (so I recognize the hymns she quotes). But my grandfather was a younger son who wasn’t going to inherit the farm; he went to college and became an engineer. My grandmother lived in the town and her parents ran the store. They left for California in the 20s for the milder California climate. I never heard them say anything nostalgic about the farm.… (más)

"'The year I turned fifty-four,' writes Barbara J. Scott, 'my stations at Still Creek emerged. It began like this: For two days I thought my husband was dead.'

"Scot and her husband, Jim, have climbed many mountains together, and for her, mountain climbing has become the metaphor that defines their long marriage. The shock of Jim's brush with death in the H8imalayas releases a deep need in Scot to reexamine her own life's direction, both as an individual and in her marriage. Because the physical limitations of middle age are making themselves felt, she wonders how much time is left to her for teaching, writing, travel, climbing.

"Seeking to gather what she terms her 'scattered slef,' Scot retreats alone to a cabin deep in Oregon's Mount Hood National Forest. As she explores the forest, she encounters a series of special and beautiful places that she comes to call her 'statioons' -- places where she experiences a remarkable senseation of completge merging with the natural world. As the seasons come and go, Scot names her seven stations -- Old Growth Sculpture, the Green Cathedral, Four Alders with Perfect Posture -- and makes a profound ritual of visiti8ng them one by one, over and over again. In this ritual, at last she finds the deep stillness in which she can contemplate aging and death, mountains and marriage.

"Scot's story is a moving chronicle of one woman's longing to express her i8nnermost self and to find her place within the creative cycles of nature. It is also an eloquent plea for the preser45vation of more places where people can experience the beauty and healing power of the natural world."
~~front flap

An exquisite book, with the ebb and flow of the seasons, mirroring the ebbs and flows of the author's personal journey of inner exploration.… (más)

This was an interesting memoir set in a place I'm very familiar with. I found the authorial voice decidedly odd, and her description of a 20-odd year marriage in which neither partner ever talked about anything important, odder still. She moves out of the house and into a cabin for a year and they never actually talk about this, which I still can't wrap my head around. There's a lot of navel-gazing wrapped in pretty nature, and lots of mortality-contemplating. It all left me somewhat bewildered and bemused, but I was interested enough to finish it. 2.5… (más)