#mink river

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

On a clear day the Oregon coast is the most beautiful place on earth—clear and crisp and clean, a rich green in the land and a bright blue in the sky, the air fat and salty and bracing, the ocean spreading like a grin. Brown pelicans rise and fall in their chorus lines in the wells of the waves, cormorants arrow, an eagle kingly queenly floats south high above the water line.

Brian Doyle, Mink River

[babkaioshka]

Reeds, Mink River Estuary by Bob Segal Via Flickr: The Mink River Estuary features one of the most pristine freshwater estuaries in the country.

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

Rained gently last night, just enough to wash the town clean, and then today a clean crisp fat spring day, the air redolent, the kind of green minty succulent air you'd bottle if you could and snort greedily on bleak, wet January evenings when the streetlights hzzzt on at four in the afternoon and all existence seems hopeless and sad.

Brian Doyle, Mink River

[queerwyrd]

There are stories in the air as thick as birds around me, he would say. I will save those stories from starving he would say. I have a great hunger for stories, he would say.

Brian  Doyle, Mink River

[kayteeaay]

List any ten speeds for the first time: summer morning, winter dusk, boring lecture, first time making love with a woman you actually really love, drunkenness, moment of death, car crash, heart attack, any and all meetings of more than seven people, childhood, and not one happens at the same speed as the others, some are blindingly fast and over instantly and others drone and moan on until you contemplate removing your spleen with a pepper shaker just for entertainment’s sake.

Brian Doyle, Mink River

[broadlycast]

Mink River - Brian Doyle (uno)

This book is like my bible of literature. How it sees the extraordinary in the mundane. How the author uses not only his choice of words but they way he says them to enhance my understanding of time, character, place, mood, presence, being. How each character has flaws, has strengths, has beauty, struggles, is human. Or not. A protagonist can be a crow and/or many other beings—rivers, bears, fish, animals and movements of all persuasions—, and that they have voices or thoughts is so achingly earthy and effervescent. Above and below all at once.

“Moses, sitting on the football helmet at Other Repair, issues a speech as Owen planes planks. Human people, says Moses, think that stories have beginnings and middles and ends, but we crow people know that stories just wander on and on and change form and are reborn again and again. That is who they are. Stories are not only words, you know. Words are just the clothes that people drape on stories. When crows tell stories, stories tell us, do you know what I mean? That’s just how it is with crow people. We have been playing with stories for a very long time. There are a lot of stories that haven’t been told yet, did you know that? And some stories get lost and don’t get told again for thousands of years. You find them sometimes all lonely. That’s why we have wings, you know. To go find stories. There are some stories that only certain kinds of people can tell. For example the wolverine people, there are some stories only they know and if you try and tell one of those stories nothing comes out of your mouth. That’s how dancing and singing were invented, you know, to try and jiggle the stories out. O, yes, a very long time ago. And there are stories that can be told only under water, and stories that can only be told far up in the sky. There are some goose stories that can only be told when you go over the top of a mountain. There are human stories like that too, of course. Some human stories you can only tell at night and some can only be told to children, isn’t it so? There are caves south of here where there are human being stories scattered all over like pebbles on the beach. You wouldn’t believe how many human stories there are. I have seen that cave, but I cannot tell those stories, Owen. Yet there they are, waiting for someone to come along and pick them up and tell them again. Because stories keep going and going. They are some sort of food, I think. But what do I know, Owen? I am only an old crow person who used to have wings.”

I was drawn to Mink River without knowing the author, the name, the story. But I needed the book at that time, and since that time many times, to remind me of the lyricism of life and the love of home, appreciating the intertwining of lives and how they fold and unfold and envelope one another even as that messy tangle gets gross and dysfunctional but then comes out in the end realizing you never know what you need when you need it most and the testing of our relationships, with each other and ourselves is somehow the beauty of life, and how grammar doesn’t mean anything when you want to express yourself without the necessary functions of speech (a voice) but as if you were rambling on without taking breaths.

Reading this book means you hold threads of ten stories in as many pages while taking multiple breaths within a sentence. Doyle uses grammar to show the slide and rise of thoughts and stories. Sometimes you get lost in the mix of a conversation—who is saying what? But it makes you present with the speakers in such a way as if you’re at a party and overhearing a conversation, you might not catch every exchange but you understand the fantastic gist of it all. In some way, his writing becomes meditative, the capture and release of moments. Beautiful, you can treasure them, but they don’t alter the story even if they build your understanding of it. Just as a memory holds eternal for one and not another, some details will stick with you, but he doesn’t tell you which ones they have to be. 

“When they get to the top of the hill the wind says hey! and their eyes water with the salt and insistence of it.”

[broadlycast]

”Sometimes sadness swept over the town like a tide or a mist, fingering first one and then another until all of Neawanaka was quiet and still and chilled to the bone. At such times the library was empty and the church emptier, the strand stranded and the streets filled only with salt and wind. The pub was the last outpost of the defiant, with a handful of huddled patrons; but even Stella, not usually prone to prevailing sentiment, sat in the yellow kitchen behind the bar and stared out to sea and wondered at the wander of her life. As a girl she had hoped for only as much as anyone else: someone to love and be loved by, work that mattered, a child or three to be amazed and exhausted by, a home in the wild world where she would feel rooted and safe, warmed and webbed; but the story of her life was fits and starts, roads that led nowhere, lovers who lied, jobs taken out of desperation, insurance lapsing unawares, cars born four presidents ago. Too proud to lean on anyone, she soon trusted no one, and watched wary when man or woman tried to peer through the bars of her gates. By the time she was out of her twenties she was leery of love; by the time she was out of her thirties she was so lonely she would not mouth the word even to herself. When her mother died and she had inherited what there was of her parents’ estate she bought the pub, almost on first impulse, dreaming inchoately of communal verve and laughter, softball and bowling teams, dart contests, impromptu speeches, all you can eat, barbecues, business partners, church suppers, bus trips, surfing competitions, fiddles and guitars, hilarious wakes and solemn wedding receptions, smoking in the back and singing in the front, children and sawdust underfoot, plaques and trophies, framed photographs, decks of cards, regulars, chaos and hubbub, motley energy, a tribe of friends, an almost family; but as the years passed she increasingly found herself alone in the kitchen, staring at the bills, staring at the griddle, staring out to sea.”

Brian Doyle in Mink River

[broadlycast]

“I am of the clan of crow, Moses explains to Kristi. They are still sitting on the porch, Kristi stroking his back and Moses humming with pleasure. Daniel and the man with eight days left to live have wheeled inside for naps. I am no eagle, says Moses. God forbid such a thing. The clan of the raptor is a mean clan. Their minds are small. Their horizons are meat. They take pride in their violence. They tear and shred each other with no regret or compunction. Their hearts are limited. They have no sense of time. They have no perspective. They have no past and no future. They are never sad, having no past to mourn and no future to fear, but they are never happy. They glower and snarl. They live for blood. What kind of life is that? They glory in power. What kind of life is that? They have no humour and their affection for their children is measured out in meat. What kind of life is that? Whereas my tribe is motley and chaotic. My tribe is dense and tumultuous. We argue and tease and wrangle and goof and fly upside-down. We are brilliant and stupid. We are lonely and livid. We lie, we laugh. We are greedy and foolish. Sometimes we all sing together. We tease dogs. We can be cruel but never for very long. We just can’t sustain it. If we could sustain and organize our cruelty we’d rule the world. But what kind of life is that? We all fly home together at the end of the day. We have no kings. We have no outlaws. We have no ranking. We have no priests. We have no status. Age confers nothing in our clan. Size confers nothing. We have no warriors. We have no beauties. That’s just how it is. We all look the same. Our stories go on all day long. We remember everything. Our life can be maddening. It gets loud. We never agree on anything. We bicker. We play jokes. We take chances. I have often taken refuge with your tribe just to escape the hubbub of my tribe. Your tribe is better able to be alone. Lots of you are alone. Lots are lonely too. The old nun who raised me, who saved me from death in the mud, my dearest friend, she was alone and sometimes lonely, but she fought the loneliness with calm ferocity. She was a most remarkable woman. You look like her. She was a most remarkable creature. You have the same eyes. It is remarkable. Is her soul now in your body? I do not fully understand the ways of human beings. They are a curious and remarkable tribe altogether. They are capable of anything. I know that much. They are a constant surprise to me. They are a constant surprise to themselves also. They appear to live in a state of constant amazement. This makes them refreshing and infuriating. But there is a greatness about them sometimes. More perhaps than they know. Or a capacity for greatness. More than they know. It’s confusing but I know this to be true. I have learned that much in all these years.”

Brian Doyle in Mink River