What it Means to Thirst

by Shann Ray Ferch

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

These words by Mary Oliver are a wonderful place to begin a conversation about writing. If you love writing and have worked at writing, you know how painful it can be. In living our lives we are confronted by forces undeniably nuanced, formidable, and unwieldy. The work of poetry and prose is no less alarming. Trying to craft a sentence that might uplift, or give voltage, or generate torque or gravity or loathing or loss - we've embraced a dynamic and fearsome thing, haven't we?

So if the nature of our daily encounter with existence, or the nature of our daily encounter with the writing life could be captured in a question, it might be precisely the one Mary Oliver has given:

What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I believe both the question and the response are tied to gratitude.

I recall walking as a boy with my father in the Beartooth Range along the eastern front of the Rockies in southern Montana. We went to catch Golden trout, a delicacy of high mountain lakes and streams. The only problem was a five-mile climb, near straight up, along rugged switchbacks, rocky and severe. I was twelve years old and when my dad told me of the hike, and how hard it would be, I wanted nothing to do with it: too much work, too much pain, and in the end we might not even catch any fish. My thoughts were consumed with excuses and even anger at my father for suggesting we go for Golden trout, rather than the Rainbows that filled East Rosebud Lake (no hike at all) or Mystic lake (a comparatively easy hike over relatively flat terrain). But my father convinced me not only to go with him but to make the trip worthwhile, to enjoy the challenge together and enter the Beartooths with awe and respect. He asked me not to give in to everything in me that wanted to complain or blame. His own spirit of delight pervaded the air . . . he was in love with every aspect of entering the high country.

We began and he kept me in stride, waiting for me when we rested, helping me go forward again. The hike was far and away the most difficult of the hundreds we took together, and many hours passed before we crossed a final upward slant of mountain grasses. The tilt was so steep we grabbed at the roots of windblown trees, and scrambled slowly on all fours. At last the destination came into view and we pressed our hands into the earth, dug in with our feet and went step by step until finally we crested the lip of a massive rock bowl and stood and looked down on Silven Lake . . . a blue gem encased in the heart of the mountains, reflecting the heart of the sky.

Writing is just such a journey, one strewn with daunting obstacles, steep swings of overdone ego or lack of self-confidence, and a stubbornly embedded sense of anger and blame for self or others. But when we approach the life of the artist with love and humble desire, we find gratitude, the rich soil that gives life.

By the time we crested the jagged lip of the mountain, my thoughts had changed. Even now, decades later, when I think of my father and the mountains of Montana, I think of kindness, affection, confidence, care.

In Montana the sun is big and shines in a seemingly endless sky. Our imagination too, is expansive and imbued with a natural capacity for grandeur.

From this place we return to Mary Oliver's initial question:

What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Oliver's response is lovely. In her poem "When Death Comes" she offers this tenacious and radiant declaration:

When it's over, I want to say:

all my life I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

The open-hearted narrative of May Oliver's poetry evokes wilderness and mystery, an ultimate question followed by an ultimate response - one almost hears her asking us to love the world, and to love others more than our own lives. Her book Thirst, in which she mourns the death of Molly Malone Cook, her partner of 35 years, reveals the bright nucleus of the nature of love itself. In reading Thirst we see that in true writing, just as in true living, we are often called to face the flames of an unforeseen and fateful crucible. We are reminded that even in the roar of the great fires, gratitude speaks, unexpected and vital, and set the soul at ease.

Shann R. Ferch, PhD, is a Professor of Leadership Studies in the Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University. He is the author of American Masculine.