Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 408: North to Trees, South to Gold with Ruby McConnell
742 Plays6 months ago
Ruby McConnell (@rubygonewild) is one of our great environmental writers and her latest book is Wilderness and the American Spirit. It's published by Overcup Press.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Social: @creativenonfiction podcast on IG and Threads
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Show Promotion
00:00:00
Speaker
Okay, but listen, though, CNFers, I'm not one to put ads on this show. I don't actively court them. I only do them for cross-promotional purposes, by and large. No taxes involved there. My fear of the IRS will take me from, will actually keep me from taking money, if possible. If I can do something for free that someone would give me $1,000 for, I can't get audited for free. This show makes a lot of time.
00:00:28
Speaker
takes a lot of time. And part of what keeps the lights on is if you consider hiring me for your work. My pricing is such that clients often pay me more when it's all said and done. I don't know what that says about me, but a generous editor helps you see what you can't see. So you can go to brendanamare.com, pay, and email me and we can start a dialogue and see how I might be able to help you. Because it's like more fun than taking feedback in a ballet class.
00:00:57
Speaker
That's what I'm doing. I'm like, that's just words. It used to be about my butt, like. Oh, hey, CNN efforts.
Ruby McConnell's New Book Discussion
00:01:10
Speaker
It's a creative nonfiction podcast, the show where I speak to primarily badass writers about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan Amerit and I've run out of ways to undercut myself here, but I'll keep workshopping ideas. You know, I don't give up.
00:01:26
Speaker
Ruby McConnell is back on the podcast to talk about her new book, Wilderness and the American Spirit. It is published by Overcup Press. The book is steeped.
00:01:40
Speaker
in the Oregon West and follows the Applegate family via the Applegate Trail and how map making in the westward expansion beautifully encapsulates the trajectory and ethos of the United States. It's a nimble read and you should go buy it, dude. You know, any links I share are not affiliate links. I don't play that game. So go to your favorite bookseller and buy it.
00:02:07
Speaker
Man, what is your book budget in a given year? How many books do you buy? 10 to 15 in a given year? I don't know. RubyMcConnell.com is where you can learn more about Ruby. You can find links to all her books, including Ground Truth and A Woman's Guide to the Wild. She's on social media at Ruby Gone Wild. Just about everywhere, friend.
00:02:33
Speaker
show notes to this episode, and more at brandonomera.com, where you can also sign up for my monthly rage against the algorithm newsletter, a riff, some books, some links. It literally goes up to 11, man. Writing prompt, happy hour, first of the month, no spam, so far as I can tell you can't beat it, and there's also patreon.com slash cnfpod.
00:02:59
Speaker
And you know what I do that is super cool and a lot? And you end up getting like a Titanic discount. It's just stupid. Depending on your tier, I offer one on one time. Sometimes a lot of one on one time. You'll be helping keep the podcast lights on, but you're getting something in return.
Support for Writers: Services and Feedback
00:03:18
Speaker
to talk things out. I mean, I'm not gonna actively edit a significant chunk of your work, but if you've got something on your mind, be it just about writing or just cultivating a practice or finding a less icky way to promote and do the marketing stuff, we can have that kind of dialogue. Just from my experience and from what I've learned from others, if I can bestow some of that experience with you and maybe turn a light on for you,
00:03:47
Speaker
I'd like to offer that in exchange for, you know, the few bucks that you throw into the CNF pod coffers. So, something to think about. All right, oh my God, is that it? That's it for my intro? Holy cow, holy cow. All right, parting shot on the limbo time after turning in my book earlier this week. I think that's it, we're gonna go hear from Ruby. Like right now, all right?
00:04:25
Speaker
Just so you know. Any time I get feedback from any editor, including especially copy editors, I schedule 24 hours of angry ranting slash ignoring slash pouting. That's, I think wise. I think that's very wise. Before I even address it, I just go, these people are going to miss me.
00:04:51
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah, like I just the last 24 hours roughly. I've just been like a nervous dog licking his paws He's like gnawing at his feet just You know like someone should help that that dog's really fixated. It's not good for him. He's practically bleeding out someone help him He's gonna let him do it
00:05:16
Speaker
If it makes you feel any better, part of what hardened me was that an undergraduate, I had this really hard woman that was my thesis advisor, and she would edit. She would just X out entire pages in red with no comment. Oh, God. It's so brutal. Why do we do this to ourselves?
00:05:44
Speaker
Cause it's like more fun than taking feedback in a ballet class. That's what I'm doing. I'm like, that's just words. It used to be about my butt. Like. Yeah. Like that is like, uh, this is, you know, there's body shaming and word shaming. Like pick your poison.
00:06:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's brutal. You'll be fine. You're talented. Remember that it's their job to find and illuminate the faults. It is not their job to tell you what the strengths are. They let the strengths stand without comment.
00:06:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great way of phrasing it. And I think what bums me out is I'm so grateful for the attention that my editor has given me here. It's all in service of the book at hand. I understand that it's not an indictment on me, though it always feels that way. It's just the nature of this thing.
00:06:46
Speaker
It's it's that my my instincts were So off true north like you know I was on a path that I felt was true And then you find out that you've been you were off by two degrees But you followed that path for a long time and now you're way off course and
00:07:07
Speaker
And that was your instinct. And then to realize that your instinct was trash, and it's like, oh, fuck. Now how do we steer this back to a more truer course to get to our destination? And I'm just upset that I put someone in the position to have to make these comments, because my instincts were three degrees off. And that's what drags me down.
00:07:31
Speaker
But it's not, I mean, that's just like, you know, the forest for the trees. And that happens with big projects. Yeah. I mean, it just does happen. And like, honestly, like sometimes I'll hand something to somebody to read. And then like this. And this happened to me. I was like, I'm going to hand this to a beta reader. And then I was looking over and I was like, hmm, there's like 10 completely incoherent pages. Like completely incoherent.
00:07:59
Speaker
Even I have no idea what the fuck I thought I was talking about. And it's like, you know, you've already sent it out into the world. And you just go like, well, you know, I mean, that's for me, I just go, that's what the delete button is for. I delete easily. So I just, that's how I fix things. And I like to move things around structurally. And sometimes that fixes it too. You never know. Sometimes there's an elegant solution.
00:08:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sometimes it's very, it's very simple. And I think in my case, it's gonna be a shit ton of addition by subtraction. And it's like gonna be cooking down the sauce, you know, boil that water out, man. And then, you know, what we're gonna be left with is something nice and concentrated. And so yeah, there's, I mean, I think I told you, I mean, I sent this poor man 170,000 words and 555 pages.
00:08:58
Speaker
Yeah, but I feel like that's easier than writing to a blank page. You'll be fine. The good stuff is already there. Now you're just chiseling.
00:09:08
Speaker
Yeah, well, and I think I told you too, the first half of the book was the panic of not having enough material, so it's pretty bloated. And the second half, I worry that it feels rushed because I'm like, this is going too long and this has to end. And so certain things I'm like, you know, that would have been cool to write about, but there's just not enough room and not enough time. Hopefully that's not important to the story or maybe someone else can pick up that football and run with it.
00:09:33
Speaker
it can't fit into mine. And so hopefully the second half doesn't feel like, oh, you can tell he's trying to sprint to the finish where the first half is like, oh God, he is, it's just, it's so bloated. So anyway, that's where we're at. That's why I'll probably start chipping into that later today and then the grind for the next month is like NFL head coach hours. It's gonna be like 15 hour days.
00:10:01
Speaker
Super focused can we get this done gotta get it done, right? Yeah It'll be okay. I promise it'll be okay. You'll be fine. Oh, thank you. I need I hope you can hear how relaxed I am about that. I'm like, it's gonna be great I have all the faith in the world in you Any concern I'm like you'll do it no big deal you've got this like I know you have this I know you have this because you're interested in it and you're like
00:10:27
Speaker
a very good writer and you've done your work. So I'm just not concerned about it at all. You can worry all you want, but just know that I'm not. Okay, that's good. I will outsource calmness to other people.
00:10:43
Speaker
You can even check in and be like, are you still unconcerned? And be like, yeah, no problem. I've totally been not concerned and not even thinking about it, Brendan. Everything's good, dude. Everything's fine. Keep going, man. You're fine. Yeah.
00:10:59
Speaker
You know what I was thinking about of late? For years and years and years, I've always, I've been something of a daily journaler and a daily writer, and I write a lot. I don't publish a lot, just nature of things, but I write a lot, and I'm beginning to question the utility of that, especially after a certain time, to maybe pivot more to,
Exploring Writing and Editing Techniques
00:11:24
Speaker
More study of really good writing, like really like mechanic level or old school computer hacker, like pull off the back panel and all these gears and things and sounds and weirdness and take it out and put it back together. And I almost feel like you get to a certain point that if you write too much, then maybe all you're doing is imprinting what you already do, not imprinting bad habits necessarily, but imprinting
00:11:54
Speaker
doing a bit too much of maybe self imprinting instead of maybe that film study and you know for you how is that something that you routinely do or think about like you know I'm going to sit with this this long piece and I'm going to really unpack it more and I could probably learn more from unpacking that more than like you know just mindlessly writing.
00:12:16
Speaker
I mean, the part of me that wants to really impress people wants to say, yeah, I do that. But honestly, I don't think I do. I mean, I will say that there are, I go through periods where I am either producing or sort of feeding.
00:12:42
Speaker
And, but I think that that has more to do with content and, you know, idea synthesis than necessarily with study of language.
00:12:59
Speaker
If that makes sense, I mean, and at the same time, though, I will say that, you know, I come from a reading family, I was a voracious reader, and I did a lot of comparative literature classes, you know, all the way like through graduate school, even when I didn't have to. And so maybe, maybe I feel like
00:13:18
Speaker
I had that piece of training already. At the same time, I also feel like I don't have an MFA, and I didn't come into being a writer through a traditional pathway. And I hear that kind of deep language study from people who did. And often, I feel like it takes them too far to that direction. And they're so busy following the rules and structure of what makes, quote, good writing. Yeah.
00:13:45
Speaker
they become afraid to put things on the page because they're editing before they're putting their ideas down. Yeah, that makes sense. And I feel like having been in a newspaper background, I'm almost at the opposite end where it's just like, right, right, right, right, right. And just good enough is great.
00:14:09
Speaker
And so there hasn't been as much study in terms of, oh, I want to – this is a cool profile in The New Yorker. I really liked it. All right, let's get a highlighter out and just look at all the – highlight the scenes. All right, and then see how much color pops out. Like, oh, that's why I like this so much because there's like 10 scenes in this whole thing.
00:14:29
Speaker
And the quotes are more dialogue versus just quoting someone. And I was like, okay, I'm starting to see this, and now maybe I can mimic this. And so that's kind of what I'm thinking. It's like maybe all great quarterbacks, they have the physical talent, but they also spend hours upon hours of breaking down film and defenses and so forth. I always lean on that as a metaphor.
00:14:55
Speaker
And it's like, okay, you can have all the writing ability you want, but you still kind of have to do a little of that film study. Well, do you feel like because you came out of newspapers that you have been coached and then practiced and conditioned into kind of that normative central voice? I mean, I haven't ever been asked to write large volumes in that normative central voice. I typically write for outlets that encourage me to keep my own voice.
00:15:23
Speaker
And so maybe I'm less hungry for that because I haven't been asked to strip some of that away. Yeah, I've done. I was lucky in that I was able to write a lot of opinion pieces and columns. So I was able to flex a certain voice element into a lot of stuff. There are some bare bones reporting type stuff where you want to receive back and be a bit more detached.
00:15:50
Speaker
I just I so deeply crave to write those kind of like 5,000 word profiles that you typically read in glossies and so sometimes I I really like to try to You know break those down because I really haven't had that much Or really any experience with that and I just I just enjoy those so much and I'd like to be a part of that playground and
00:16:11
Speaker
So yeah, but I would say the MFA route, that set me back a couple years of trying to be like this kind of pretty writer or something, try to sound writerly. And that's been a problem for me for years, being overly...
00:16:31
Speaker
Overly write it trying to sound writerly in a instead of just surrendering to story I always have to remind myself to do that the real writing is in the reporting and the observing and then you just kind of take dictation from your research and There you go Yeah, and see I came out of science. I mean like if you want boring Read geology books For real, you know and and so like for me it was I
00:17:00
Speaker
It was very freeing to get to walk away from the scientific voice. And I still have to fight. I'm prone to sentences that are too long. I'm prone to lists that have too many details for people. I'm prone to some things that are very, you know, I'm prone to using words that are
00:17:23
Speaker
outside the sort of normal range of the unexpectedly weird that make people think I'm either affected or...
00:17:31
Speaker
I have a cousin that's like, did you swallow a dictionary before you read this? Mainlining a dictionary. Trust family to put you in your place. But, you know, I mean, and a lot of that, you know, it comes off when you're writing for a mainstream audience as affect or pretension. But if you're writing for a science audience, it's how it's done.
00:18:01
Speaker
And with geology in particular, it is a language-based science. It's a descriptive science. And so they're not using it necessarily to to toot their own horns. They're using it because that's the tradition of descriptive geology. So it's really hard to break out of that and feel like you're giving people a complete picture.
Maps as Visual Stories
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah, and I love how, you know, you always work geology, not always, but you find ways to work geology into a lot of your work, and that's true of your latest book. You know, geology is kind of like the story of the rock, the story of the earth. And in this new book as well, you write that map making as a form of storytelling, and that bubbles up throughout the entire thing.
00:18:48
Speaker
In what ways, maybe you can explain that and unpack that a bit, of how map making and maps are their own storybook. I love that question. Thanks for asking that question. Maps are a visual representation of humanities,
00:19:07
Speaker
understanding of the world at a particular point and place in the time space continuum. And it's not just our sort of data-based
00:19:24
Speaker
understanding it also like what what ends up being put into the picture on a map is also all of our fantasies and all of our biases all of you know all of our inferences because of course on you know on a on a visual scale for a map like we have data points and then really we're filling in between those points assumptions
00:19:47
Speaker
and inferences because we don't fact check or ground truth every individual pixelated point on the map typically, right? So because we're making inferences, we're bringing with that all of our lived experiences and all of our biases of perspective and all of our gaps in understanding. And what you choose to put on a map
00:20:13
Speaker
changes the story of a place so dramatically. If you look at a map of the Pacific Northwest, people love those old relief maps of the Pacific Northwest that show topography and vegetation and water so brilliantly. And if you put one of those maps next to a map that's just showing infrastructure,
00:20:39
Speaker
and neglect some of the coloration and neglect some of the vegetation. It tells a completely different story of the identity of the place, even if the two maps are representative of the same year in time and the same area. Because you're choosing certain layers of information to use GIS speak. And each layer of information that you add or subtract, there's an entire story there. Because it's not a static thing.
00:21:07
Speaker
Yeah, later in the book, too, you know, you're really alluding to it now. It's an image of reality based on measured truth, but like light passed through a prism, it's distorted and refracted. It's kind of a funny tongue-in-cheek sentence right here, too. It's like, just what someone wants you to believe, man.
00:21:26
Speaker
Great. And it is, you know, I mean, it's and maps are often, you know, maps are disputed and maps are, you know, have historically been used to, you know, you change the map, then you can change people's beliefs about, you know, whose territory that is, or who does have control over that, or where does that border land, you know, so it is something that people want you to
00:21:49
Speaker
believe and buy into. And then we think about the ways in which that's a story that was in the news recently with the storms in California, where once again, because there were storms, Google Maps was rerouting people. They were rerouting them into imagined routes. And this is an ongoing discussion that we've been having about our reliance on this new map technology, where people do blindly believe
00:22:18
Speaker
digital maps in digital directions in a way that maybe you would think more critically about a paper map that you understand might be slightly out of date or that demonstrates more uncertainty rather than someone saying turn right. It seems very correct because they're so definitive and it can really lead people astray just because you have this faith in the map itself and in the story that the map is telling.
00:22:47
Speaker
There's an episode of The Office from way back in the day where Michael is in Dwight, they're driving somewhere and they're blindly following the GPS thing and it's leading them right into a lake and he just follows it straight into the lake and it's just, you know, it's absurd but it's kind of, in a way it's kind of true when you just put your blind faith into the technology instead of maybe stepping back to a more, you know, analog form of navigation.
00:23:16
Speaker
Well, right, and thinking critically about it for yourself. But there's something very different between looking at a map and charting your own course and knowing that the map exists on a screen, but hearing a voice tell you what that charted course is. You take it as an instruction as opposed to a decision.
00:23:39
Speaker
that you're making when you're navigating off of a paper map. And I think that those are really different things. And that psychologically, it changes what parts of our brain are engaged in that.
00:23:51
Speaker
Yeah, and speaking of charting paths and so forth, there's the core Applegate's, which are this family that charts the course west to Oregon Country, and they are a presence throughout this entire book.
00:24:13
Speaker
You know, and you having grown up in Ireland, Ireland, you are Irish, but having grown up in Oregon, you know, you're steeped in a certain measure of Applegate in this. And so what did what did you learn about the Applegate's and in your research? And, you know, just what, you know, what were you hoping to illuminate using them as a vector here? Well, two things I learned everything about the Applegate's in the course of this book. What the reason I went down the Applegate brother
00:24:43
Speaker
rabbit hole was because I am from Oregon, and I had heard Applegate, but I had never heard the story.
Historical Insights: The Applegate Trail
00:24:52
Speaker
And neither had most of the Oregonians that I spoke to. And so the idea that there was another Oregon trail, a southern route of the Oregon trail, and that there was these three brothers that could have had such a large impact
00:25:10
Speaker
on Oregon Country, and their names, you know, their names are on rivers, and their names are on streets, and they're, you know, it's just everywhere, and that we wouldn't really know what it was really intrigued me, you know? So I started with the road, and I started with literally searching for the road in real life, because it's actually not particularly well marked that route.
00:25:33
Speaker
And that curiosity that I uncovered, I was like, oh, well, this was charted by these really interesting brothers. And what I came to understand about the Southern Oregon Trail Road that that's different from the Northern Oregon Trail Road is that
00:25:48
Speaker
The Applegate Trail is in current day along a swath of the American West that isn't filled with big cities, isn't particularly developed with respect to the rest of the country. But it's incredibly important
00:26:07
Speaker
in terms of how Americans interact with the natural world. So along the Applegate Trail is our country's whole history of infrastructure development
00:26:22
Speaker
road building and travel. Along the Applegate Road is our country's whole history of expansionism, of, you know, quotes, you know, settlement and land acquisition. Across the Applegate Trail is our country's whole relationship to extraction of resources,
00:26:44
Speaker
to resource allocation and that's timber, that's mining, that's water. Also across this whole swath is where we see the consequences.
00:26:58
Speaker
of all of that American history playing out as we see the long-term toll of the American boom and bust economy, as we see climate change impacts, particularly hitting that particular swath, which has areas that are very prone to wildfire, very prone to drought.
00:27:20
Speaker
and are some, you know, some of the largest environmental issues of the 21st century are playing out across this same swath of land. And so when I put those two pieces together, my fascination with how can something that's really become so important kind of fade from modern history along with we need to be talking about these very issues that are represented along this road is how I ended up with this book.
00:27:45
Speaker
Yeah, and there's, you know, when you bring up, you know, the boom and bust of the extraction industry too, you also, you know, throughout the book and it's through line, you know, you come up into this, you know, the boomers and then Gen X versus the boomers too. And so I don't know, just kind of, you know, take us to that, you know, that landscape too and how, you know, and just how that is fraught and
00:28:14
Speaker
in America. I like how you said it just a little bit quite, you know, the boomers. You know, I know for all the edge off of it. And I'm not trying to start a culture war here at all. Yeah. I mean, one of one of the things. So I the book progresses through time and one of the pivotal moments in the American relationship
00:28:40
Speaker
to the landscape happened sort of with the boomers when they were young in their back to the land phase. But then also, as we all know, that generation has gone through several stages of metamorphosis and what drove a lot of that late 20th century development and consumption. And then there's the poor tiny generation of Gen X
00:29:09
Speaker
coming behind them who I assert recognized early on that we were inheriting a troubled legacy from the excesses of the mid-century and the excesses of the creation of the United States in particular. But I think that this, you know,
00:29:34
Speaker
has implications for, you know, a lot of other places. So I talk about in the book that sort of the difference being that boomers were sort of raised in that post-war, you can have everything, you know, the world is sort of like yours for the taking and Gen X being raised in the era of there's a hole in the ozone layer and it's because of your high bangs and hair spray.
00:30:02
Speaker
Right? Like it's directly tied to, it's directly, it's your fault. And it's, and it's because of, you know, the fluffy stuff that you kids are into and you need to learn to take responsibility and that we grew up and we grew up in this sort of era of consequences. I mean, another good analogy for this is the free love era of the sixties and seventies, but Gen X growing up during the AIDS epidemic.
00:30:26
Speaker
which is also an environmental crisis because matters of the body are environmental matters. And so it's that same thing where you say, and so what happened was that Gen X, I think quite rightly, sort of changed the environmental narrative and changed the way it was being talked about and changed the way that environmental issues were looked at and certainly the way that protest was conducted moving into the 21st century.
00:30:51
Speaker
And it's been interesting. Yeah. And you bring up this idea of post-millennial environmentalism. And I'll try if you could unpack that a bit and explain what that means in the scope of the story, but also just the scope of what a new wave of activism might entail.
00:31:10
Speaker
My definition of post-millennial environmentalism is the development of an environmental ethic and an environmental form of engagement that recognizes that in
Environmentalism and Systemic Change
00:31:23
Speaker
the previous millennium, we were in an age of warning and we were in an age of education and coming to understand. But in the 21st century, we are firmly at the age of consequence.
00:31:39
Speaker
and the way you respond to impending doom versus the way that you respond to imminent doom or the forward edge of consequence are necessarily very different. It's the difference between installing smoke detectors in your house and climbing out the window in a hurry. And what I argue is that we don't have the time
00:32:06
Speaker
And we don't have the resources, and we don't have the degree of security that would allow us to move slowly, make really individual, you know, super specific, you know, like in the pre, in the 20th century, it was like, save it, let's just go after like one animal at a time.
00:32:30
Speaker
and protect just their habitats one at a time and in the 21st century we're losing all of the coral reef at once and we don't have time to be that measured or that specific and we don't have time to
00:32:45
Speaker
you know, do long form education. What we need to do is start really looking at small scale, medium scale, large scale changes, and we need to be action based and action oriented and think from a global responsibility place in a way that we didn't need to in the 20th century, but that we thought might be a good idea. Now it's an essential idea.
00:33:11
Speaker
towards the end of the book when you write about the quieting that came as a result of the early pandemic you know you saw the recovery of the planet when planes were grounded among other things where cars were you know they were just left in the garage you couldn't go anywhere and then you saw the earth start to heal itself and probably even though the backdrop was terrifying early on there was an element of
00:33:41
Speaker
Like you said, a quieting and maybe even a bit of peace as we were forced to actually slow down. So the evidence is there that it's possible. It's just, you know, everyone was in a rush to get back to normal without questioning whether normal was worth getting back to.
00:33:57
Speaker
That's it. Exactly. And you know, it was such a striking moment for me because, you know, I started working for Greenpeace when I was 17 years old, knocking on doors and you get a lot of pushback, big surprise. And a thing that people said to me as a young environmental activist often was, what do you think is going to happen with just people are going to wake up one day and stop driving cars? It was a thing that got shoved at me a lot.
00:34:23
Speaker
And then the pandemic came and I woke up one day and everyone had stopped driving cars. And for me it was an epiphany because I thought I wasn't being naive. This is, it is willful.
00:34:42
Speaker
If push comes to shove and we decide that there is an urgent necessity, it turns out that people will and can change their behavior. And I had just been told for so long that that was an impossibility.
00:34:56
Speaker
And then here it was not being an impossibility. And in that space where we had nothing but time and silence and stillness, what we had and maybe I think did not realize was also choice. And I think that the thing that we missed in the pandemic was the recognizing that we always have that choice.
00:35:23
Speaker
Well, it's kind of like the GPS guiding Michael Scott into the lake. You know, when you blindly follow a certain current, you lose the agency that you can in fact, you know, alter course. You're set on a road and you keep walking the road. And at some point you have to question the route. And at some point you have to ask yourself, what is my final destination?
00:35:49
Speaker
on this road. That's the reason that I used the Applegate Road as a long-form analogy, because I'm trying to get people to realize that particularly the United States has been on this path from the beginning.
00:36:07
Speaker
And we haven't really taken the time to stop and evaluate it or to really take full stock of where we've arrived. And on any trip, that's best practices to do.
00:36:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I always think of, not always, but when I'm thinking about this, you know, when we blindly just widen roads to accommodate more vehicles and they always fill up, it's like if that infrastructure, to turn it on a tidbit, oh, the traffic is so bad, let's make more room for them. It's like, what? Maybe if you actually made it smaller.
00:36:44
Speaker
It would and you change the rubric of the infrastructure then you're forced to remove. Cars in the ad public transportation incentivize people to either walk or ride bikes if you're able and I understand that there are some people are not far away and there is things that it's not always.
00:37:02
Speaker
possible but that's if you start to fundamentally change how maybe cities are in towns are designed to incentivize people to think a different way then suddenly that can become a new normal that that is that is healthier for you know the the public and the body in the environment that's exactly it yeah and and so like that it's that idea of
00:37:27
Speaker
What are the options and then and then for me to to depoliticize that to recognize that these are shared the environmental issues in the 21st century are matters of shared survival and that while politics may create a a discourse environment that make us think
00:37:49
Speaker
that we are somehow at odds with one another because perhaps our solutions to this shared problem of survival are different from one another and come from different places of motivation. The reality is that we can't, discourse aside, we can't escape the problem of survival and we will have to find solutions. And those solutions will have to be applicable
00:38:18
Speaker
across lines of inequality and across lines of, you know, historic problematic or atrocious behavior and it's going to have to cross boundary lines of money and it's going to have to cross all of these other barrier lines that we have, but ultimately we will not be able
00:38:36
Speaker
to escape the issue of survival that we have created in terms of, you know, our non-sustainable relationship to the natural world. We will not be able to tweet our way out of these issues. Yeah, at what point did you know over the conception of this book that the Applegate trail and the Applegate's were going to be kind of your connective tissue and your through line through the story?
00:39:05
Speaker
That was the first thought about the book. I had been looking at the Applegate Trail. I had been walking it, I'd been hiking it, I'd been doing a lot of looking at it just because I was fascinated with it. And what happened was, actually what happened, this was the first thought. I thought, well, I was reading the entire environmental canon, quote unquote, entire. I was reading a large volume of the environmental canon all at once for reasons I don't even wanna discuss.
Narrative Framework of the Applegate Trail
00:39:32
Speaker
And I was looking at the Applegate's.
00:39:35
Speaker
I realized that the Applegate Trail proper, the beginnings and ends of it more or less, plus or minus, were bookended by both Burning Man and the Oregon Country Fair, which may not have had any meaning to anyone besides myself, but to me it did.
00:39:55
Speaker
as if the story wasn't very Oregon-centric like that you know the bringing in the country fair is like all right we are we are fully grounded in Oregon. But that's important because the Oregon Country Fair was like really one of the first
00:40:15
Speaker
summer arts and music festivals that used that sort of alternative economy and embraced that sort of broad-based alternative and lifestyle thing. And out of the country fair has grown like this whole festival, you know, and the Renaissance Fairs that it was based off of has grown this whole festival culture that really the culmination of which is Burning Man. So to me, it was very interesting that
00:40:43
Speaker
that these two sort of radically based things could happen on either end of this swath of land that kind of encapsulates that picture of American history so well, because anyone who's been to these immersive summer festivals and spent a lot of time at them will tell you that ultimately, especially the festivals that go on for many decades become microcosms of society.
00:41:12
Speaker
And within, you know, you get all of the same sort of hierarchical problems. You get internal politics and you have, there's land disputes. There's, you know, you have to have discussions of all of the same discussions that happen in the broader society happen in these places. And I thought, well, that's so interesting that here I have this really interesting trail that this road that I see as this symbol
00:41:41
Speaker
this ongoing symbol of, you know, American Western colonial modern culture through time. And it's being bookended by these by these really interesting dichotomous microcosms. And I thought there's there's stories in here. And I was reading the environmental canon. And I thought. You know, it's it's not real peppy reading.
00:42:12
Speaker
It's dry, and it's wonderful, and it's often beautiful, and it's often inspiring, and it's not written for an audience that already isn't on the bus. Yeah, and speaking of on the bus, you know, you bring Kesey into this story, too. It's like, you know, further, further grounding the story in Oregon lore.
00:42:39
Speaker
let me know the story all the stories happen on the upgrade trail so i wasn't you know but yeah i mean and i and i was uh... you know the place based writer knows uh...
00:42:49
Speaker
bent on that, but Ken Kesey is important as a touchstone sort of catalyst of American mid-century culture. And to not sort of give a hat tip to what he did to
00:43:11
Speaker
to shift mainstream culture in the second half of the 20th century, I think would have been really remiss. But also, if you were looking to show that a road that passes through what people in the rest of the world would say the middle of nowhere is important, then you have to point to people like Kesey, who lived in that middle of nowhere,
00:43:35
Speaker
his whole life and you know gosh I think I hear a Kesey reference in popular culture almost daily you know I mean it is just ubiquitous and and I think that it's interesting because he his body of work deals with issues of normative behavior issues of of
00:43:57
Speaker
the body and of the mind and issues of resource extraction. That's the stuff that Kesey wrote about and those are the issues that I was grappling with. He's not an environmental writer, but he sure did write about logging and he sure did write about
00:44:13
Speaker
resource extraction. And he talked about, you know, also issues of societal rules and what are environmental issues, if not the way the consequences of our societal rule, our societal rules and how we engage.
00:44:32
Speaker
Yeah, and some of the societal rules that you write, it's just like consumption as a patriotic art form, which is just, it's the hamster wheel that so many of us are on, even when you try to get off of it.
00:44:47
Speaker
It's gravitational momentum is just so it's so strong. I mean you need to buy shit, but it's like to what extent and how damaging is our everyday consumption be it the electricity using to power this podcast versus you know I really Jones and for you know that that smoothie from Jamba Juice
00:45:10
Speaker
Right. And it's really hard to disengage from consumer culture because we've wed consumer culture to our celebrations, passages, holidays, and traditions. And status too. Right. And so it's tied to status. It's also tied to entertainment.
00:45:31
Speaker
If you're trying to live a life that even minimizes consumption, you're forced with challenging the status quo that's tied to birthday parties, that's tied to holidays, that's tied to simple rules of engagement.
00:45:51
Speaker
with how one might spend time with friends or family members. And those kinds of violations of the social contract are very hard to navigate. And it is interesting when you think about the fact that really consumption and the assumption of consumption is written into our social contract.
00:46:16
Speaker
It just extends to the landscape, too, of the rebranding of the West to capital W, the West, as a place to play, get away from the slums and filthy water of the eastern cities. And it was just like the commodification of the land itself, you know, driving people there has its own repercussions. Some good, a lot bad.
00:46:44
Speaker
Right. And then also once you've commodified it, well, then that becomes a limiting factor. Then in order to access that commodity, one has to have resources. So then you've introduced a whole other layer of inequality that didn't necessarily exist before because you've created that value commodity. And so now there will be competition over it, and there will be exclusion over it, and there will be the hoarding of it, and there will be the wasting of it.
00:47:12
Speaker
And it's a problematic way of relating to something on which we rely on for survival.
00:47:21
Speaker
Throughout the course of the book, it feels continuous, contagious of a thing, but it is on subject matter on its surface. It sprawls into areas that you kind of don't see coming in. That could be something like Dennis Day, this mouseketeer who settled with his husband and partner in Phoenix, Oregon.
00:47:47
Speaker
even 9-11 among other things like there are these all these things that feel like discordant coordinates on a map but you know you're able to connect those and especially with the cartography metaphor so for you when you wanted to pull all this in how did you keep it from feeling or from not feeling like it was you know a Mustang you know bucking out of control and like felt whole in this between these covers
00:48:16
Speaker
Yeah, I mean it's a testament to good editors too. Let me say that my editor at Overcup, Pat McDonald, I was not completely cogent when he received this as a pitch.
00:48:34
Speaker
And he said, you were so clear about the vision and I was not as clear, but you were so clear that I did part of this on faith. But he brought in the idea of, so there's story chapters. I had always had this idea of I wanted to tell stories and I want every story to grapple with matters of the human spirit.
00:49:00
Speaker
with matters of the human body, with issues of the land, and with issues of patriotism, right? Because American spirits like this really broad thing and then I said there's going to be these story chapters and then there's going to be these exposition chapters that kind of give people context and move us forward, move us forward in time,
00:49:22
Speaker
and allow me to then get to the next story, because the stories sort of, they progress through time. And Pat introduced, he's like, he was like, he got, he's like, this is a lot, this is a lot. And he said, he got it, he said, if you're going to take people, he said, if you're going to use this analogy of being on a road, and if you're going to set this up, like you are telling these stories,
00:49:46
Speaker
as a traveler, as a traveling story. He's like, and you want me to come with you on this ride, then you need to give me signposts. And I did. I did literal signposts through the book that sort of reoriented people and where we were in time, where we were in space, and sort of helped me connect those dots a little bit. And once we put those signposts in, it was, I mean, they're what, maybe like a paragraph? That you would not believe
00:50:17
Speaker
the huge impact that that elegant solution had on the readability of the book.
00:50:28
Speaker
and keeping people, keeping the reader with me. And it just made this massive difference. And we did a couple of really elegant tweaks like that that were structural changes that made it really hold together more easily. And then that other piece that you're talking about, what I call
00:50:49
Speaker
In my work, I call it my peg. You were talking about how I go back to maps. So the story chapters have all those shared elements. And then the exposition chapters, where I'm really talking about history and environmental philosophy, each one of those chapters has a map element, where I use a different aspect of the art and science of mapping as
00:51:17
Speaker
sort of a lens for whatever it is. So I tell a Kesey related country fair story and there's an associated signpost that gives people a little bit of information about where the Oregon Country Fair takes place on the Applegate Trail and what year we're in. And then there's a supportive chapter behind that or next to it that deals with issues of perception.
00:51:47
Speaker
and issues of projection in terms of mapping that also come up when you talk about Ken Kesey, The Grateful Dead, LSD, and the psychedelic 60s and 70s. And so I was able to put that concept of perception shifts in two different ways there for the reader. So there's a cogency and a continuity there being provided by the map content.
00:52:15
Speaker
that ended up working really well. And then also it sort of, for me, played the role of continuously saying, you know, remember that I'm here, I'm a real person, and my perspective is that I am writing as a geologist, and that's my specialty, and so that's sort of reminding people that's why I'm here. That's why this is in my purview, because, you know,
00:52:38
Speaker
I'm not an expert on the Mouseketeers, but I am an expert on this landscape and I am an expert on the mapping and that's part of what we're here to talk about too.
00:52:47
Speaker
And speaking of signposts, you know, the prominent one, you know, literal, and I believe it's got a very metaphorical meaning to it, is this idea of north to trees and south to gold.
Symbolism: Materialism vs. Nature
00:53:00
Speaker
And, you know, that's a literal signpost. But it also to me strikes me, you know, climbing the ladder of abstraction that, you know, north to trees mean it's kind of like enlightenment, finding nature.
00:53:11
Speaker
South to gold feels like you know hell and materialism and that you know that in the direction that'll take you and It's just an interpretation that I overlaid on and I wonder if that like kind of came to you as well It is. Thank you for saying that you are picking up what I'm putting down Yeah, that's it. That's it entirely that so like that image of
00:53:34
Speaker
That was an emigrant trail sign, and the way that the emigrants west talked about that was it would be, at some point, the Applegate Trail splits, and you'd either go south to California and gold or north into Oregon and trees. And I talk about that, and that's part of Oregon folklore, about pioneer folklore, that that was that decision point. And then I use that analogy over and over and over again,
00:54:00
Speaker
and try to bring it up as often as possible. And it's two ideas. It's that idea of choice. Remember we were talking about that with the quieting? That idea that we have choice and that we're making choices and that really, in the age of post-millennial environmentalism, those choices are between that, like,
00:54:21
Speaker
continued path towards gold and money that we're on and and the impacts that we know come from that to the environment and ultimately ourselves or that idea of we could turn north to trees and for me as being someone from Oregon it's very satisfying that
00:54:41
Speaker
In this book, that call to trees is into the heart of Oregon country where I am. That feels very visceral and real and immediate to me that we're talking about a thing that walking into something that I know exists. It is a place that we can go because I live in that place and I see what it can be if we make that choice.
00:55:05
Speaker
That's wonderful. I think that's a great mark of punctuation to end their conversation with respect to this wonderful book you've made. Just another in a long line of the McConnell canon. Thank you so much. You're such a careful and close and considerate reader. I'm always so appreciative of your take on my work and every writer's work because you do such a good job.
00:55:34
Speaker
Well, thank you, Ruby. That means a lot. And as I bring these conversations down for a landing, I always love to ask a recommendation of some kind. That's something that you're excited about, that you want to share with the listeners. And so I'd extend that to you as we close our talk.
00:55:49
Speaker
Two things come to mind, one I just read, it's been out for a while and I'm sure people know about it, but I just read Ready Player One, which ties into our conversation of Gen X and sort of imagines what society could be like if perhaps we turn
00:56:07
Speaker
South to gold. The other book that I tell I always tell people to read that also grapples with this question that was life changing for me that I think is essential reading for everyone is Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, which also presents been in a fictionalized science fiction way. These kinds of two scenarios and she just does so absolutely brilliantly. And I think everybody should read that book. It's wonderful.
00:56:38
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, Ruby, as always, thanks for the time and coming on to talk shop and talk your latest book. So best of luck with it. And yeah, just as always, thanks for the time. Yeah, thank you. All right. Well, thanks, Cian Evers, and thanks to Ruby for always being such a wonderful guest on this little podcast that could. She always comes and plays ball, and it's always a good time.
00:57:04
Speaker
When Ruby stops by CNF pot HQ, she could actually literally stop by physically CNF pot HQ, but we still did the remote thing. Uh, turned in the book on Sunday, April 14th, a day early. I was so sick of it that I couldn't look at it any longer. It had to go.
00:57:25
Speaker
I let my agent know, but I haven't heard from her. I kinda thought she'd wanna know, or I might be happy, because it means I'm at the second of the three conditions of my book advance, which means she's gonna get paid about 9,000 more dollars or something. It's a lesson we can all take. You submit your book, and you're still you.
00:57:46
Speaker
No fireworks go off. Nobody carries you off the field in triumph. There's no confetti. Damn. Maybe there's, what's it, a funfetti? I'd love a funfetti cake, but there isn't any of that either. I didn't even tell anyone for at least 24 hours. I toasted in an athletic brewing free wave. Hazy IPA to myself. Can't leave the house with my wife because of our dog situation, so it wasn't like we could go out and celebrate the milestone.
00:58:16
Speaker
and submitting a manuscript is a milestone, make no mistake. You know, I wrote and researched a 550-page book in 14 months. Now that 555 pages was cut down to around 400 Microsoft Word pages. Ah, let's see, I spent a little over a thousand bucks on a researcher genealogist to help with things, and I spent another 2,000 on
00:58:42
Speaker
the edit of my rough draft, all of which I think were heavily discounted. And I spent several hundred dollars on various subscriptions to newspaper archives and magazine archives. I did an unsettling amount of work from my office and not enough in-person stuff, but I did manage to do some in-person things and there's just such a different kind of energy to that. I like that kind of stuff.
00:59:07
Speaker
Yeah, I spent 90% of my repartorial time on the phone, if not more. Anyway, I found every reason to beat the shit out of myself instead of giving myself credit here and there. It's just gotta stay on brand. I complained that I didn't have enough time and as a result wasted a lot of time in the process.
00:59:24
Speaker
Is the book any good? I think it will be. We put a little too much judgment on ourselves too early in the process. I shared none of this book with anybody until I passed it off to a paid editor. I basically only talked about the book with two people over the year, not including these self-loathing rants in the parting shot. I don't have a robust network of people to talk to. You would think so, but I really don't.
00:59:52
Speaker
All of this is to say that getting the chance to write a book is a wonderful privilege, and I hope it affords me the chance to write another. So this week in that limbo time, I started research on another biography to see if there's enough there there. I think there is, but I have to do a lot of front-loading to see what the potential arc is. The lesson I learned from the prefrontal book proposal process was
01:00:16
Speaker
I didn't do enough critical research to at least half develop the image, right? And so on this next one, I'm going to set up my same, like, omnibus. I always have a hard time saying omnibus. Omnibus master spreadsheet. Maybe I should just say master spreadsheet. I'm going to set up my master spreadsheet, which acts like a timeline and a wireframe. And you start to see the arc of a life.
01:00:46
Speaker
And then you can sketch out maybe an overview and a robust sample chapter or two. You know, those are the big things in a book proposal that get that. I think that any editor is like, okay, that's that matters. We can see the style, we can see the vision and your capacity as a writer.
01:01:04
Speaker
those things. And then maybe I can overlap book advances where my next advance initial payment could come as I'm getting my third and final one from the current advance. You know that's the plan and wouldn't that be nice. You know there's still a lot to do with the prefontaine book.
01:01:25
Speaker
kind of nervous about what my big book editor is gonna say and to what extent it might have to be overhauled or you know prematurely turning him gray you don't know that's that's kind of thing you just don't know until you know and then you're shitting your pants but I very much I'm very much looking ahead to the next one already you know it's no sense in
01:01:54
Speaker
and waiting, you know, trying to, you always want to try to light the next cigarette with the burning, retreating embers of the previous one. So this next one, if I'm lucky to write it, if I can find something there, there, it's baseball driven. Not the memoir, of course, but a biography, kind of a double biography. Oh boy, am I giving too much away? All right, stay wild, see you in that first. And even if you can do interview,
01:02:24
Speaker
See ya.