Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray

I feel that I can relate to Ray, who found wonder and adventure in a place considered filthy or dangerous. I spent and still spend a lot of my time in hot pursuit of dark, dangerous places that remind me of the places in my recurring dreams. My places are abandoned, off-limits, dangerous, full of junk, filthy, and dark. In real life, you can find me in caves, mine shafts, abandoned tunnels, ventilation shafts, river-sides, abandoned buildings, factories, swamps, cemeteries, basements, and deep closets. I am always pursuing the cramped, the dark. It can get me in trouble and hurt me. It can make people lose trust in me or worry for me. But I am fine--and as wrong as I know it sounds for me to say this--nothing terrible ever happens to me.

Like Ray, I would have been at home, easily, in a junkyard. In fact, I often drive past them and fantasize about being in the bowels of them, always thinking to myself, this would be a great place to lay down and die.

On page 25, Ray mentions "surprise" concerning the wide variety of groceries her father would bring home. I love how Ray remembers and portrays her childhood through processes, for that is something I always encourage myself and others to do--to remember how to be a child. Surprise is such a beautiful thing and actually, it has a lot to do with my thesis on curiosity and Rachel Carson's child-like wonder.

One technique that Ray uses to instill a child-like persona in her writing is the use of lists. She uses some amazing lists in her writing. Here are a couple examples:

Axles, transmissions, a wheelbarrow with a flat tire, split plastic buckets, ahlf a toilet, a postmodern clay statue of a twisted man with a cigarette in his ear, wire cages, broken wood stoves, an upside-down washing machine.

...bathtubs, motors, an airplane wing, the bucket to a crane, tractor tires, sparrow nests, froze-up treadle sewing machines, kids' swimming pools going to crumbs, rusted harrows and plows. More motors. Transmissions. A small mountain range of bald tires and rims. Hubcaps. A gaggle of bent, broken, mutilated, unusable bicycle frames.

The interesting thing about her making tese lists as a writing, professional adult is that it reflects and proves that she grew up among a lot of junk.

Another way that she captures child-like wonder is that there are stories. There are little myt stories concerning how she and her siblings were "found" instead of born. In the chapter "Built by Fire," she tells a tale, personifying pine and lightning.

While reading this book, I didn't really feel like I was reading a "nature" book. The natural aspects of this book, I think, were tied in seamlessly. Compared to Gift's book, I think Ray did a better job at tying in her personal life with the natural world. It seemed more like Ray's life existed more naturally within nature and in Gift's book, it seemed more like an effort or a different part of her life. Something that is separate and has to be given an allotted amount of time.

What is interesting about Ray's book is that even when she isn't talking about nature, she seems to be talking about nature. The term "nature" seems to take on a persona that is more than just Abbey's snakes, desert, and politics, or Gift's weeds and out-of-placement. When reading Ray's book, I didn't feel as if she manuevered the metaphorical camera of this book to focus on something specific. I felt like everything in the book existed together within one scene. There wasn't any evident, obvious change.

What makes Ray's book different from other books I've read is that nature isn't just something outside herself and out in the world. It's in people, as well. When I read various stories about her father, how crafty and inventive he was, I felt like I was reading about a crafty, inventive animal...but an animal that is close, familiar, and intimate to the narrator. Same goes with her siblings or her college "lover" and the wild things he did and encouraged her to do.

I've been steeping ideas in my brain concerning what I want to write my essay about (for this class). I know that once I choose the idea I want to go with and sit down with it, it will flow out easily. It has been several months since I've written an essay. Before I even read this book, though, I thought that I would write about my excursions in these dangerous places in nature that resemble my dreams so well. So, it was really nice and relieving to read Ray's book. It's good to know that there are people who enjoy those parts of the world and also try to make all the various branches of their life--be them classes, friends, decisons--beneficial to the passions in their life.