Working with Suzanne Stryk — The Path to the Middle of Somewhere

I met Suzanne through Orion magazine in a short “Lay of the Land” piece she wrote called “Salamandering.” I had often wondered if people's relationship with the natural world would be different if the news headlines on the front page were different, “7,000 Species Are Now Extinct,” “Knowledge of the Benefits of Insects Grows,” “Severe Weather Predicted,” “Walking in the Woods Shown to Improve Mental Health.” When I read Suzanne’s last paragraph, I knew I had found a fellow traveler:

Having found the yonahlossee [a large, woodland salamander], I casually turned a rock or log over now and then. I had come to know which were the most promising: too deep in the ground, nothing, too lightly set on leaf litter, nothing. Good knowledge, though no one will write a news story on my discovery. But what if someone did? What would the world be like if newspapers slathered with stories of crooked politicians and faraway conflicts instead featured stories about salamander life and those who seek it?

I immediately went to Suzanne’s website and wandered around gazing at her amazing art. The details in the paintings gather together various—sometimes seemingly disparate—elements of the natural world sent my imagination and curiosity whirling. On a black background, a Pandora moth and vine lie on the white strands of a gene sequence. The message, at least to me, was the wonder at a system made up of just four molecules (written as four letters A, C, G, and T), that can produce both a moth and vine. 

Pandora Moth | 2004 | 15" x 20" | acrylic and mixed media on birch panel

Among her paintings is the series entitled “Animal Works.” The paintings are not exact biological representations but something much more evocative, a mixture of the imagined and the real. The work entitled "Moth Cocoon" depicts a field notebook with the image of a female Promethea moth and information about its cocoon.  Above this reality rests the shadows of eleven other species. What they and their cocoons look like is left up to our imagination. I stayed and look at her work for a long while, and often found myself slipping into unusual thoughts and feelings about nature that brought up many more questions than answers.

Animal Works (Moth Cocoon) | 2003 | 20" x 18" | acrylic and mixed media on birch panel

Suzanne and I exchanged email messages and phone calls. At some point, she mentioned she had written a collection of essays, which included her art, that focused on her explorations across Virginia’s landscape and her encounters with its inhabitants -- both human and wild. We decided to embark on what I would find to be a remarkable collaboration. 

She sent me her manuscript. Over the period of about a year, we worked together on some initial editing, pulled together a publishing proposal, and shipped it out to medium-size publishing houses that looked promising. One of those was Trinity University Press, a publishing house I’d never heard of.  But in looking at their list, I was impressed. Among their authors, they had published Barry Lopez, the poet Gerald Stern, and Rebecca Solnit. They wanted the book, and we found ourselves fortunate to land in the hands of director Tom Payton and Sarah Nawrocki, TU’s managing editor. 

For the last year and a half or so, I have worked with Sarah and Suzanne to create the design for Suzanne’s forthcoming book, The Middle of Somewhere. It has been a pleasure to work with an experienced managing editor who gave clear guidance and careful review of my work as it progressed. It was very satisfying to work with Suzanne toward a vision we had created together. As a team, we navigated the sometimes complicated and mystifying process of producing a book. 

It is good to be back in the book world. The Middle of Somewhere is due out this Spring.

Migration: Finding the Hole in the Lake

One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring. 
A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence. A chipmunk, emerging for a sunbath but finding a blizzard, has only to go back to bed. But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges.”

                                    — Aldo Leopod, “March” A Sand County Almanac 

In 2018 I left a graphic design and communication firm that I helped create. Leaving the work I did for 15 years at RavenMark, work I loved doing, set me adrift. I hadn’t realized how much my identity was tied to the business, to my partner, to our non-profit clients, to the work itself. What direction should I head in now?

Each year in the early Spring and late Autumn I watch and listen for the flocks of branta canadensis, Canada geese, to cross the sky, honking their signals to each other. These bi-annual migrations are nature’s primordial signs of change. In the Spring the migration declares the rebirth of plants, the emergence of hibernating animals, the birth of young. In Autumn as days grow shorter and colder, the migrating birds announce plant life going dormant, some animals begin to look for places to sleep while others look for places where they will find food. For me it marks a withdrawing into a quieter time, a time possibly of finding a way to that “hole in the lake” at least by Spring

It is doubtful that I can claim the title of “prophet,” but there is no doubt that the bridge was burnt to a crisp.

Like the goose, I was flying in the pitch-black darkness, but unlike the goose, I had no idea of what direction I should go in. I’m sure animals experience fear, but do they experience doubt? I wouldn’t think they had this purely sapient luxury, if it can be called that. It is either do or die. Doubt is purely a human existential emotion and, I must say, a damn burden — that we had the capacity to just live without questioning. Life without the knowing of existence.

Even young, first-year birds can find their winter home without ever having been there before! Would, could, I have the same animal instinct to land where I find my winter breeding ground, my creative place? That is the question.

The Dog & the Deer

A small hill behind our backyard is the home of a few deer. I can often watch them from my studio window. It gives me pleasure watching these graceful animals quietly graze. I like the feeling of even a tenuous connection with something moderately wild (they are after all “city deer”) in the middle of a concentration of humans. I know some of my friends are enraged when their hostas are sheared off or their tulips are nibbled down to the ground. Some people would just as soon shoot them.

Last Winter, three deer, a doe with a badly mangled hind leg and what appeared to be two of her fawns, inhabited the back hill almost everyday. The lame doe got around okay. The hill, which has old apple trees on it, and the field behind it seemed to be enough to sustain her and her offspring. We know there are many more deer around the neighborhood. A herd of 12 or more was recently seen crossing the street and running over a neighbor’s lawn. But the doe and her two fawns were content with our back hill.

Along with the deer, we have a dog — a three-year-old Australian Shepherd. Paco is a good boy, but last winter he learned he could jump over the four-foot fence that encloses our yard. When we have a lot of snow, it piles up against the fence. So, when we noticed that he could practically walk over the top, we shoveled the snow away from inside the fence. But evidently the snow pile on the outside of the fence looked like an easy reach for an Aussie whose genetics have given him the ability to jump on the back of a steer.

On a bright snowy Sunday afternoon, I heard my nephew yelling that Paco had jumped the fence, and then I heard the frantic barking. I pulled my boots on and grabbed a leash. I could see the dog and the doe on the hill. I climbed over the mounds of snow and into the small field below the hillside. With every step my leg sunk down in the deep snow up to my thigh. I struggled to reach the hillside and screamed at the dog — a useless thing to do when a dog is over his emotional threshold.

I finally got close to the two animals but not close enough to grab the dog. The doe was standing. When she put her head down it looked like she was going to charge; the dog backed up. She looked terrified. The dog was in a frenzy.

Then suddenly the deer bolted with the dog in pursuit. She fell in our neighbor’s yard. The dog kept barking furiously but was still staying at a distance. I got close to the deer, but still not close enough to catch the dog. The doe looked at me; I looked into her large-black eyes wishing to God that she knew I was trying to help. She struggled to stand and once up limped toward the street. Paco’s herding instinct kicked into full gear. He kept circling her and moving her forward until they were both in the middle of the street. When I approached, they both moved quickly to the next yard.

The deer fell again. This time into a snowbank. The dog still barking and jumping wildly got very close to her this time. I leaned over and grabbed his collar. He jerked his head up, painfully twisting my fingers in his collar. I was able to get the lead on him and pull him away. The deer extracted herself from the snowbank. I watched as she slowly hobbled away. The dog was still on an adrenalin high as I walked him back to the house.

For the rest of the Winter, Paco was closely supervised and on a long lead when in the yard. He has a lot more training in his future.

I watched for the deer every day after the incident, hoping they didn’t show up again for their sake. The dog-deer encounter exploded my vision of a bucolic backyard and ushered in again thoughts about our relationship to wild things. We so want to be near them, to see them, to experience them but only on our terms. When they intrude on our world, the one we’ve pushed them out of, the one we’ve built on and inhabit, the clash can be painful — mostly for them.