Uplake: Restless Essays of Coming and Going

by Ana Maria Spagna

Overview

For many years, Ana Maria Spagna has stayed put, mostly, in a small mountain valley at the head of a glacier-carved lake. You’re so lucky to live there, people say. She is lucky. But she is also restless. In Uplake she takes road trips, flies to distant cities, fantasizes about other people’s lives, and then returns home again to muse on rootedness, yearning, commitment, ambition, wonder, and love. These engaging, reflective essays celebrate the richness of it all: winter floods and summer fires, the roar of a chainsaw and a fiddle in the wilderness, long hikes and open-water swims, an injured bear, a lost wedding ring, and a tree in the middle of a river. Uplake reminds us to love what we have while encouraging us to still imagine what we want.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295743226
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	02/15/2018
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ana Maria Spagna is the author of several books, including Reclaimers and Potluck: Community on the Edge of Wilderness. She lives in Stehekin, Washington.

Table of Contents

Prologue 3

Slow Connection 7

More Than Noise 17

Winter Flood 27

Confessional Roots 37

So Many Rings 53

Breathe 67

The Fiddler on the Rock 79

When We Talk about Courage 85

Where You'd Rather Be 97

How to Brine an Elk Steak 107

Post-Strayed 117

Away from Shore 129

The Tree in the River 141

The Injured Bear 151

Flight Delay 163

Together We Pause 175

Here in the WUI 185

Fire One, Fire Two 193

Pierce 205

Acknowledgments 229

What People are Saying About This

Susan Marsh

"Uplake stands out for its honesty, accessibility, willingness to dig deep in contemplation, and well-wrought essays about the small self in a large world."

Editorial Reviews

"Rarely can you say with a shard of truth that you remember the first time a writer’s work hit you in the head and the heart with a nearly audible slap, but I remember the first time I read a passage from Ana Maria—it was in a magazine in which all the other stuff was careful and remote and only news, and her essay was sharp and blunt and had mud and sawdust in it. I remember that. I learned from her essay, yes, but it wasn’t just information; I could smell the place she was writing about, I could feel her sinewy flinty impatient passion for it."

Ecotone - Brian Doyle

"Rarely can you say with a shard of truth that you remember the first time a writer's work hit you in the head and the heart with a nearly audible slap, but I remember the first time I read a passage from Ana Maria—it was in a magazine in which all the other stuff was careful and remote and only news, and her essay was sharp and blunt and had mud and sawdust in it. I remember that. I learned from her essay, yes, but it wasn't just information; I could smell the place she was writing about, I could feel her sinewy flinty impatient passion for it."—Brian Doyle, Ecotone

From the Publisher