Rock, Water, Wild: An Alaskan Life (review)

When I opened the pages of Rock, Water, Wild, I reconnected with an old friend. I’ve never met Nancy Lord, never had a conversation with her. But I’ve read all of her nonfiction books—this is her fifth—and have liked every one of them. Her prose is smart and smooth, provocative and powerful. What I like best about Lord’s essays is her ability to extend nature writing beyond the confines of the trees and sky. Her words get down to the minutiae of flora and fauna; she quotes a range of authors, alludes to scientific data, describes geology in depth, and—most important—she asks key philosophical questions about the relationships humans have with an ever-changing environment.

The latter strength is what I most appreciated in Rock, Water, Wild. For example, when floating down a wild Alaskan river, she identifies what has changed and what has stayed the same, even as she ponders an expanded mining site where pollution most likely will alter the landscape irrevocably. The mine sits in British Columbia; its discharge will affect Juneau. That’s a conundrum Lord cannot personally solve but can bring to the reader’s attention. Likewise, issues of bear habitat preservation. Likewise, questions of fishery rules and regulations. A trip to Russia raises questions about whaling policy and simultaneously transcends the language differences with something as simple as a fishing pole. Lord challenges the reader to think beyond the narrow confines of the conservation movement by acknowledging its real-life implications and also by embracing a natural world in flux from generation to generation.

One of my favorite essays takes Lord and her partner back to the site of Fishcamp (1997), her first Alaskan book. The life they led there no longer exists—salmon netting is too unprofitable, Nancy and Ken are no longer in their twenties, their beloved neighbors are gone, the underbrush is overgrown, the beach well-nigh abandoned. Thoughts about life’s natural transitions abound in this essay, always tied closely to the scenery and its inhabitants, animal and human. As is often my experience with Lord’s prose, when I finished the piece, I couldn’t stop thinking about it and the questions it raised. If anything, Rock, Water, Wild is more philosophical than Lord’s previous books—a trait that bodes well for her future writing. I do hope she stretches herself in that direction, because occasionally she revisits old haunts without moving beyond their original confines. The complexities of Native languages, for example, are explored in Fishcamp and then repeated in Rock, Water, Wild. The same holds true of the Harriman expedition so thoroughly experienced in Green Alaska (2000) and of whaling trivia in Beluga Days (2004). Lord’s writing is more compelling, I think, when she moves the context farther, and further. Nonetheless, I recommend Rock, Water, Wild. Most of it is quite new, an accomplished collection of essays that challenges the reader in evocative and sometimes surprising ways.