Going to Ground: Simple Life on a Georgia Pond [Paperback]

Amy Blackmarr (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1998

Unfulfilled by city life, Amy Blackmarr, then in her mid-thirties, sold her thriving paralegal business and returned to her Georgia roots. She passed five years in her grandfather's remote "old scarecrow of a fishing cabin" beside a South Georgia pond, where she immersed herself in her surroundings and in her writing. With warmth, charm, and humor, Blackmarr mixes vignettes from her past with reflections on the present, describing the surprising generosity of strangers; life without hot water; her two dogs, one a "lush" and the other a cave builder; the occasional visit from an alligator; her days as a two-stepping cowgirl; pheasant hunting with her third ex-husband; and the life and death of her grandmother. In the tradition of Kathleen Norris's The Cloister Walk and Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Going to Ground is Blackmarr's ode to romance, to the beauty of nature, to the joys and fears of solitary life, and to one woman's discovery of herself.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

This elliptical series of descriptive essays offers an experiment of sorts: a graceful descent into the Thoreauvian life of mind and nature. In Walden, the prototypical ``pond tale,'' Thoreau says he went to the woods so as not to discover, when he came to die, that he had not lived. Blackmarr decided several years ago to quit her Kansas business and move back home to southern Georgia and a fishing-cabin retreat, with two dogs for constant companions; and in a deliberate echo of Thoreau, she says she did not want to wake up regretting, 30 years later, that she had not done the things she'd always wanted to do--in particular, to write and to be near her grandmother, MaRe. Blackmarr's metaphor of discovery and of connectedness to her grandfather's land--her ``ground''--is evoked throughout, but most literally in scenes that frame her story: first, her watching her ``hard-bodied little gray dog'' Max digging a cave in the dirt outside her cabin, and later, her dog Queenie's death and burial. Though not a traditional believer, she nevertheless does occasionally go looking ``for God sign, like a good tracker.'' The author, who herself describes this work as ``less narrative than scene, less word than image--less explanation than experience,'' is only selectively present in this memoir: as writer, hunter, arrowhead collector. That Blackmarr currently lives in a treehouse indicates she has not yet finished her quest. But when she describes her cabin's view of light glittering on the water, ``catching on the wet backs of turtles and in the feathery tops of the pale, tall grasses around the banks,'' and says ``I am my grandmother's voice,'' readers are likely to hear this as a welcome invocation, and to fall effortlessly under the entrancing spell of her words. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Lovely . . . Blackmarr finishes her pieces with understatement rather than fanfare. That keeps the electricity humming. And when she reaches for some universal truth she does it with a dart throw. --Chicago Tribune

[Blackmarr's] tendency to understate seems remarkably refreshing in this era of loud, obtuse moral posturing. Her feminine perspective offers a welcome counterpoint to Thoreau's, and her clear-eyed take on nature (both human and earthy) proves optimistic and well-written. Going to Ground is the kind of book that offers solace from the world by leading us back into it. --Arkansas Times

Going to Ground is about learning to see. --Kansas City Star --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (July 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140266925
• ISBN-13: 978-0140266924
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,578,850 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Going to Ground" is a book of sincerity and connection, October 18, 1997

By 

Julie H Rucker - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Going to Ground: Simple Life on a Georgia Pond (Audio Cassette)

Readers do not have to live in the south to appreciate the sincerity of the voice of Amy Blackmarr in her first collection of essays entitled "Going to Ground: Simple Life on a Georgia Pond." Blackmarr takes her experiences while living in her Grandfather's tar-papered, unheated fishing cabin located in the woods of south Georgia and shows the reader how nature, including human nature, can change one's life forever.

Though Blackmarr's pond is not Walden, she does find answers to some of her questions about life and death (her grandmother's and her dog's) during her five-year stay. She realizes that only true friends are willing to take a long drive into the country to visit in a cabin that has no hot water or heat. Often alone, she finds solace as well as wisdom in the company of Gene, her neighbor who farms the land, and Queenie and Max, her dogs. "Going to Ground" is both humorous and thought-provoking. But perhaps the largest compliment for Blackmarr is her ability to relate to her reader, to make the reader say, "I understand; I've been there, too."

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow - What a writer!, November 15, 2001

By 

K. Frazier "beach reader" (Laguna Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Going to Ground: Simple Life on a Georgia Pond (Audio Cassette)

I was very pleased with this book - Amy Blackmarr's style really impressed me. Each chapter is a short story of it's own, yet they are all about her life & experiences with the same place. I enjoyed every chapter, every story - There was even one which I loved so much, found it so profound, that I immediately reread it & then later read it outloud to my husband.
Great work, Amy! Thank you! I can't wait to read your other works.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provocative and deeply spiritual, December 10, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Kansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Going to Ground: Simple Life on a Georgia Pond (Paperback)

Kudos to Amy Blackmarr for a gently ironic, sometimes funny, touching and always honest look at the questions about life, death, and living that we all grapple with every day. She turns the ordinary experiences of her life at her grandfather's Georgia cabin into delightful, searching stories that I find new surprises and new meaning in every time I read them. Full of sensual details and images that take me right to where she is, standing on the back steps of a tarpaper shack, sipping coffee, looking out over a pond, or striking through the swamps watching for snakes and alligators! A great, fast read.