How art reflects nature: an interview with David Guterson

The other good thing is that we have a diverse landscape here. I don't feel I'm writing about the same specific terrain over and over again. The first novel was on an island in a snowstorm, the second was in the sagebrush steppe in the Columbia Basin, and the third was in a deep rainforest. I haven't exhausted the landscapes of Washington state either; there's a lot to write about without repeating myself in terms of setting. I feel like a regional writer, but not by choice — it's just that I've always lived here.

CM: I've spent a lot of time on the Olympic Peninsula and, while reading Our Lady of the Forest, I was impressed by how accurately and evocatively you replicated that environment. Do you take notes while you're hiking, or actually write in the forest?

DG: No, I didn't write in the forest or take many notes. I do remember spending a part of a day with a guy who really knew his way around chanterelles. I took a notepad and a bucket, and the two of us went out to pick mushrooms. He'd explain things about the mushrooms and I'd write them down, and I took a few notes about the forest generally while we were doing that. But, just having spent a lot of time myself over the years in the Olympics, it's all already there.

CM: As I was reading Our Lady of the Forest, I kept a list of particular species that you mention: Nymphalis Californica, alder, club moss, salal, devil's club, ferns. What sort of natural history research did you do for this book?

DG: There's a book that I rely on, and have for a long time, called Cascade Olympic Natural History by Daniel Matthews. It's now in its second edition. Years ago, The Seattle Times asked writers, "What are the top ten quintessential Pacific Northwest books for you?" I mentioned this book among the top ten. That's the book I use to check on mosses and the names of things. It's a great book.

CM: Another element in Our Lady of the Forest that fascinated me was the way in which you wrote about the essence of the depressed Northwest logging town and the injuries that these communities have suffered over the past decade. Can you talk about how you were able to write about them so knowledgeably?

DG: For four summers, starting when I was 18 years old, I worked for the Forest Service on a brush disposal crew burning slash from clear-cuts. The town that I was in was called Randle. It's on Highway 12, between Centralia and Yakima, and between Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier. At that time, Randle was really a boomtown. We couldn't burn the slash fast enough. The mills were going 24 hours a day. In Morton and Packwood, the two nearest towns, it was the same way. They were going gangbusters on the logging. I've got long-term experience with these towns, beginning in 1974, when I was acquainted with people and knowledgeable about these places from having lived there.

Since then, as I've gone out hiking and climbing, I've passed through these towns and witnessed their demise. For nearly 25 years, I've been interested in this decline, watching the historical slide, traveling through and watching the disintegration. I think my depiction of North Fork in the novel comes out from all of that.

CM: How much of your novels depend upon their particular places? Could these stories be told as successfully in some other geographical location?

DG: I spend a lot of time putting landscape into my stories. I think if you change the landscape, you change the story. There's no way you can pull that element out without pulling out the characters or the plot or the point of view. Change any of those things and you've got a completely different story.

CM: Nicholas O'Connell, in his survey of Pacific Northwest literature, On Sacred Ground, concluded that literature from this part of the world often shares the trait of negotiating the relationship between people and place. Do you feel an affinity with this thesis?

DG: Well, I think that's true everywhere. People write the "New York Novel," the "Southern Novel," the "Western Novel" — set in the classic mythic American West — and the "Midwest Novel." I don't think it's unique to the Pacific Northwest that here we have a literature in which people are contending with landscape. It's universal; people are immersed in landscape and contending with landscape, and their lives are involved with landscape.

CM: How do you imaginatively enter into these worlds you portray? Whether it's in a Japanese internment camp, or a World War II battlefield, or a tavern in a depressed logging town, what helps you to go to these places?