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April 16, 2001 |
Hidden treasures in The Stations at Still Creeka review by Stephanie Hiller |
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I was contemplating moving to the Ozarks, an idea born of a dream and fed by a friend's description of available, and inexpensive, land there, when I received in the mail a review copy of Barbara J. Scot's new book, The Stations of Still Creek. Talk about synchronicities! My enthusiasm for the Ozarks had been tempered by the offer of a full-time teaching job, which promised -- at last! -- enough income to pay the bills. And here was the story of a woman very nearly my age, whose desire to pursue her writing was in conflict with the need for a stead income from -- yes, teaching! -- a job she had given up after 24 years. Barbara's story begins with the news that an avalanche has occurred in the Nepalese Himalayas where her husband has gone mountain climbing. He too yearns to be sprung from his job, and she vows to herself that if he survives she will go back to teaching so that he may have his freedom. Turns out he hasn't died, and now she is faced with the consequences of her unspoken promise. I am no longer married, but I was, and the conflict between my husband's needs and my own in the essential endeavor of producing reliable income is very familiar, as is the longing the author feels for solitude in nature. In her case it's an undramatic struggle -- the couple is not at war nor on the brink of impoverishment -- but the conflict is deeply important, an interior drama to satisfy self while honoring commitment to another. To engage the reader from beginning to end in a quiet foray to carve the right path through the woods of midlife is no small accomplishment, and Scot has succeeded. She holds the reader's attention, not by discussing on the issues like so many thoughts playing against each other, such as my own journal is full of, but rather by letting the themes emerge from the tangle of underbrush as she her creates her meditative "stations" in the Mt. Hood National Forest during her stay at the cabin there, "understanding at once that this task before me was not one of building but uncovering what was already there." It's not a religious journey per se, though the metaphor of the stations traces its origin to Christ's journey to the cross; and since Scot's husband is Catholic by origin, that association is not unintended. But Scot prefers the allusion to refer to Buddhist meditation stations, which is far more apt. Ill health is her challenge, and resurrection the goal, but it is not a resurrection after death. The journey is very much a meditation undertaken daily by visiting each of the seven places she has sculpted in her path if self discovery and maintains by her practice. As she visits them through the late winter months and into the spring, alone with her dogs, observing the play of light and studying the plants and fungi as they emerge from the snow, she explores the patterns of her life and gradually finds the resolution she seeks. A friend is dying; the narrative of his discoveries along his way out of life is interwoven with the author's as she finds her way back to her own. She is "practicing not-doing, practicing being still with the hours" accompanied by the lyrics of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the only book she has brought with her, and phrases from the Tao. "Can you cleanse your inner vision/ Until you see nothing but the light?" And the challenge her task presents: "Do you have the patience to wait/till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving/ till the right action arises by itself?" In many ways hers is the menopausal journey. Without once naming it such, Scot contemplates all the "stations" of that turbulent transition: her marriage, inextricably linked with the choice she must make for her career, the death of her friend, even, in one remarkable passage, her own naked sexuality. Without attending directly to the emergence of the divine feminine within herself, she pays homage to the goddess on solstice night. Without naming patriarchy, she dramatises the issues that drive her husband -- and the culture -- to produce and provide. In no way does the author appear to identify herself as a feminist. The reader might have chosen other terms, and yet, if one does not get stuck in semantics or ideology, one will find that the stations of Still Creek are the same tableaux through which we all must pass, if we discover the hidden treasures of growing old. And in that context, Barbara J. Scot is a wise companion for the journey.
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