Review by Martha Quillen
Mountain life – August 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine
Living on the Spine – A Woman’s Life in the Sangre De Cristo Mountains
by Christina Nealson
Published in 1997 by Papier-Mache Press
ISBN 1576010031
LIVING ON THE SPINE is a personal, introspective collection of reflections that read more like poetry than prose. The back cover asserts, “If you dare to nourish yourself with a woman’s truth, the colors of solitude, and Nature’s randy humor — grab this book, take it home, and go to bed with it. I guarantee satisfaction!” Susan S. Weed, coauthor of Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way and Healing Wise.
Another mini-review proclaims, “Christina’s words are fresh and clear as the water of a high mountain spring: deep and warming as the cave of a winter bear first-suckling her naked young.” Brooke Medicine Eagle, native Earthkeeper, ceremonial leader, and author of Buffalo Woman Comes Singing.
And Nealson’s publicist calls it, “The story of one woman’s spiritual quest that will resound with the many women searching for meaning and a connection to something besides their roles as mothers, wives, and girlfriends.”
Stop right there.
Before I start, I should admit that I read this stuff and instantly concluded that I was not the right reviewer for this book. But Christina starts her book tour soon, so there was no time to find a more appropriate reviewer and still publish a timely review.
So here goes — but be forewarned:
In all honesty I think all this self-discovery is a delusion. And to make matters worse, I’m pretty much a traditionalist who embraces this latter-day effusiveness about Mother Earth and Father Sky with far less enthusiasm than I greet Jehovah’s Witnesses at my door. (In short, I try to be polite when someone suggests holding hands and chanting to some deity I’ve never heard of, but it sure doesn’t make me feel comfortable.)
Yet even so, I liked Nealson’s book. I admired the craftsmanship and the way the language complemented the story. And I found it poetic, expressive, and easy to read.
But unlike those other reviewers, I can’t claim I found it uplifting or inspirational. I suppose that’s because my own philosophical outlook clashed with Nealson’s almost every step of the way.
First, I couldn’t understand how a middle-aged woman could be so devoted to fertility goddesses.
Sure, I got the picture — women are essential. They are givers of life. They are beautiful, sexual vessels of creation.
And I could certainly see why such a credo inspired the author more than the old patriarchal notion of women as obedient handmaidens.
But after awhile, Nealson’s homages to bleeding, womanhood, and fecundity left me cold. To me, her reverence for womanhood was interesting, but daunting. I suppose that’s because I really don’t think of men and women as that different from one another in a spiritual sense.
Also, I guess I kind of like that old-time concept that we all, male and female alike, are something more than just our mortal remains.
Furthermore, I found Nealson a bit too starry-eyed for my taste. Take this excerpt for example:
“I wasn’t sure you were interested in me,” I said. “You didn’t look into my eyes the first time you came over.”
“You were too beautiful, Christina,” he answered.
I am still digging out from under his gaze. And the first wet, hard kiss, when he held my face between his hands.
Romance is fine, but like a lot of women looking for themselves, Nealson finds a man instead. Although Nealson tempers the effect with erotic passages, all in all she gushes over the man across the mountain like a fourteen-year-old girl waiting for the phone to ring.
And in Nealson’s case, although she spent five years near Crestone, she writes only about the year she found a man. Which made me wonder whether — if self-discovery lies in finding the right man — it might be more efficient to read a dating manual. Of course, I realize as I make this criticism that I’m pretty cynical and Nealson is very romantic–which may be why she weaves such pretty prose.
But I’m afraid that Nealson’s odyssey into nature didn’t exactly hearten me either — although some of her descriptions were eloquent. Take for example:
Dry, white silence haunts the land.
Nothing moves. Nothing. No junco wingbeat. No cottontail romp.
Snow so light, the wake of wind from my eyelash would bury fence posts under drifts.
This, as piñons chatter green.
In this same issue, Ed reviews Patty Limerick’s book of revisionist history, which I bring up because I think a lot of nature writers today are creating a mythology that’s just waiting to be revised.
In the old mythology, men liked to see themselves as valiant frontiersmen conquering the wilderness, and now people like to see themselves as spiritual pioneers who have given up our greedy, technocratic society in order to rediscover their natural state.
But that’s merely an illusion. In actuality, Nealson takes her phone and vehicle with her to the wilderness, and once she gets there she builds a cabin with electricity and running water.
Today, a lot of people are running away to the wilderness, but they are not melding with nature, as they like to believe; they are threatening it.
In the end, I think I would have liked Living on the Spine better if the author had shown some indication that her inspiration came at a price. But instead Nealson writes quite movingly about the victim of that price:
My cinnamon-furred lover called again last night. The cats sat upright alert on the bed, eyes fastened on the window. When all was in wait, he appeared. Lumbering king. He is used to others staying out of his way.
He strode past the hitching post, around the solar panels, and stopped at the far side of the deck. I stepped outside with the flashlight, flashed the beam on him, and yelled, “Go! Go on. Away.”
He stood and looked at me.
The word is definitely out. Every wing that beats this airspace, every elk that crosses at midnight, every antelope ready to give birth; they’ve all told him, “She’s a soft touch.”
He is ten feet away when he takes one step toward me. I back up one step. His muzzle is long and pointed, just right for the huge rocks he will flip, and dig under tonight, looking for insects.
I do not want to be afraid, but instinct has a word with awe. It takes out a chart and shows me my placement on the food chain. Under his. Even though he’d prefer fresh raspberries to my flesh. Fool.
He takes a couple of steps in the opposite direction and breaks into a lope.
I return to a bed of toss and turn. It takes thirty minutes for the adrenaline to die. I pop erect at every noise, which is often, since the wind has risen and shifts all that is not attached. I finally close my eyes with the confidence that he is gone and he is not my enemy. His eyes did not shine violence. His claws have not scored the cabin. His silent, trackless walk so near my body leaves only a sharp, heavy odor in the air.
To sum up, I’d have to say I liked Nealson’s book, but I also found it very disturbing, especially the passages about that bear — because Nealson was wrong. The bear wasn’t higher on the food chain than she was. In reality, men eat bears a lot more often than bears eat men.
And people also destroy bears by moving into their habitat, and luring them onto their porches.
Any wildlife officer will tell you that a bear that becomes accustomed to humans beings will end up a dead bear. And so it was with Nealson’s bear:
I am poorer. Sick and poorer, without Cinnamon. Thick dark is gone. Nose sulks into flower-filled wind. He was the catapult into question, where comfort was not assumed.
Wilderness without predator is Disneyland.
Stop. Stop pretending it is otherwise.
A good idea. And while you’re at it, stop pretending that we can all move out into the wilderness to find ourselves without messing up the whole balance of nature out there.
Because we can’t, and I like nature writing better when it acknowledges that fact. So I recommend this book with reservations.
Enjoy the metaphors, the musings, and even the love story if that’s your partiality, but please don’t get too inspired.
–Martha Quillen
