Beautiful Art

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward is a sweeping and harsh tale of a family in the days leading up to a hurricane that Esch’s often-drunk father is certain will be the big one. He wants to prepare, but Esch and her brothers are worried about other things—Randall is preoccupied about basketball camp this summer, and Junior follows his siblings around as Skeetah frets over prized fighting pitbull China and her new puppies, and Esch tries to hide her pregnancy from her family and from Manny, the father.  

Salvage the Bones is a difficult and harsh novel. When I was reading it, I had the vague sense that I didn’t like it—it has a slow start—and yet when it was done, I felt the novel and its characters hanging on me like humidity, like a mist of sweat holding onto my skin. The twelve days leading to Katrina are full of a pregnant, heavy anticipation that doesn’t actually much heed the hurricane—until the final days, only Esch’s father is worried about what is to come. The National Book Award–winning novel exposes Katrina’s horrors by making us fall in love with the poverty-stricken, motherless family that is haunted by its past; by letting us grow accustomed to Skeetah’s stubborn obsession with his dogs and Esch’s stubborn and strong persistence. The drama of the tale seems to weigh most on Esch’s pregnancy or the health of Skeetah’s puppies, and in precisely that way does the novel catch the real point of the hurricane striking: no one was ready, even those who wanted to be ready. We know the hurricane that is coming, and we know what it will do as readers, and yet we too are so caught up in the drama that we aren’t ready for Katrina when she arrives. I have my nitpicks with this novel, but it has stuck with me, and kept me thinking days after I finished it. 

Snow on the mountain by William Horton Via Flickr: Snow emphasizes the texture of the Cimarron Mountains as seen from Owl Creek Pass Road near Ridgway, Colorado.

Rim Rock Drive / Colorado National Monument 

When I’m told I need to find another available clinician to take over a crisis walk-in if the session is taking longer and begins to extend into the time I’m supposed to meet with my scheduled client, I’m just like…

Close, closer, closest.

Where the forest follows the shoreline. #FilsonLife

SHELTER. @maddiebrenneman and @ngkelley chasing trout and dreams in Southern Colorado. #TrustTheWild | #LiveTheMountainLife Photo: @ngkelley by western_rise