Jonathan Evison is the author of All About Lulu and his latest novel, West of Here. He will be the guest author on our February 19, 6:30pm Chuckanut Radio Hour at the Leopold's Crystal Ballroom. Click here for info.
I'm a camper. It's what I do. Between late February and mid-October, I'm usually camping. Sometimes that means hiking twelve miles and three-thousand vertical feet with forty pounds strapped to my back, and sometimes that means my ass falling asleep in a lawn chair, as I scribble mad notes in front of a campfire with a case of cold beer within arms reach. Sometimes it means parking my '76 Dodge motor home on a bluff at Kalaloch in a nasty squall, and watching the waves pound the shoreline, while the moho rocks like Jericho. These camping trips are my lifeline as a writer, and as a person. Without these trips, the wilderness of my spirit might have been tamed years ago. And probably I wouldn't be much of a writer. Most certainly, I'd be hell to live with.
My expeditions almost invariably begin by crossing the Hood Canal toward the steep leeward face of the Olympic Mountains, and driving west down the Olympic Peninsula to camp in one of the river valleys—Dungeness, or Elwha, or Sol Duc, or Hoh, or Queets, or Quinault. The interior of the Olympic Peninsula is some of the most rugged terrain in North America, and some of the most pristine wilderness you're likely to find anywhere. The Olympics were among the last unexplored mountain ranges in North America, and clearly one of the most unique. To this day, there's no passage over the mountains but by foot.
The fact is, were the interior not so rugged, it likely would have been logged into oblivion before it ever won National Park status. Everything around the edges has been decimated. For fourteen decades, the peninsula has been logged continually and heedlessly in all directions. Along the shores of the canal, the strait, and the coast, upriver through the bottomlands, and over the foothills. Perhaps the mightiest stands of Douglas Fir and Cedar and Sitka Spruce to ever take root on earth were plundered for profit. The Elwha River was dammed. The Salish Indian Tribes were displaced, and in some cases lost not only their ancestral lands, but their federal recognition. The grizzly and the wolf were all but totally eradicated. The salmon runs were fished nearly to extinction. Most anything that once flourished, perished in equal measure. But the robber barons still couldn't tame the heart of the peninsula—too rugged.
Now, in order to get anywhere near the heart of the Olympics, you've got to endure a pretty ugly drive—more of a stubbled moonscape than anything else, stretching thousands of square miles around the periphery of what is now National Park. The towns ringing the peninsula, once thriving, steaming lumber and mill hubs like Shelton, Port Angeles, Forks, and Aberdeen aren't much prettier to the untrained eye. These ragged towns hit the financial skids decades ago with the moribund timber and fishing industries. And though these towns may be reeling economically, may be a little rough around the edges, they have a lot of fight left in them in spite of the damage done.
This clash of destiny and fierce reality is the story of the Olympic Peninsula. It sounds a lot like America's story. The story of a culture haunted by its own destiny. The story of a culture forced to reckon with its own mistakes. And yet, it also the story of a culture which still manages to hope—some might argue to the point of delusion (though I'm not one of them). You'll find the root of my optimism growing somewhere on the banks of a nameless creek near the heart of the peninsula. As long as that exists, I have reason to hope.
In 2007, I set out to write a big, shaggy, egalitarian novel about my beloved Olympic Peninsula—a novel Walt Whitman might have liked. Not a historical novel, but a mythical novel about history, or more precisely, a deconstruction of what we generally call a history. Rather than employing a wide-angle lens for the task, I wanted to present a kaleidescope of perspectives, and events, and convergences, and possibilities to tell this story. After a lot of hair-pulling, I surmised the best way to frame all of this potentially overwhelming information, was to firmly plant all of it in the place itself. That way, the reader would never lose their bearings for long, no matter which timeline or character or event I threw at them. This allowed 'place' to assume the traditional role of protagonist, enabling me to treat all the other characters democratically, and with roughly equal narrative weight. Because in my experience, too many histories favor one side of the story.
I wanted this novel be full of wonder and adventure and mystery and humor, because these are the things which sustain us. I wanted this novel to surprise and sadden and give thanks to the undying spirit of wilderness which lives inside of all of us. I wanted this novel to be as big and beautiful and complicated as the peninsula which inspired it. A tall order, but I did my best. I'll leave it to you, the reader, to decide whether West of Here fulfills any of these ambitions. Me, I'm going camping.
January’s list of most expensive sales includes a lot of classic authors – Joseph Conrad, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Faulkner and Anthony Trollope to name a few – as well as some more modern and obscure items. Topping the list was a 24-volume limited, numbered edition set of The Works of Joseph Conrad signed by the same.
Freebie Friday has been on hiatus for a few weeks — demands of a new assignment have slowed my postings — but is back today with a chance to win 
