Good Morning Midnight: Life and Death in the Wild [Hardcover]

Chip Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 2003

Award-winning literary journalist Chip Brown tells the story of the life and death of a brilliant, complicated man-an outdoorsman with a troubled soul, a pioneer of the New England wilderness, who sought rebirth in nature only to end his own life on a snowy mountaintop in a gesture of chilling premeditation.

Guy Waterman checked out of his former life as a Capitol Hill speechwriter and father of three at midlife to pursue the passion that promised to deliver him from his demons: mountain climbing. Along with his second wife, he built a cabin nestled in the mountains of Vermont, without modern conveniences of any kind, in order to live purely on the land and for the land, and thereby to redefine himself in the extremes of frontier life. An accomplished jazz pianist who could recite hours of poetry, a genuine eccentric beloved by many, Waterman became the dean of the homesteading movement and the foremost historian of the mountains of the northeast. So when he methodically carried out his mountain suicide, those who loved him were left to wonder whether it was the action of a noble man, painfully aware of the encroachments of age and determined to die with dignity, or that of a tragic figure doomed by the code of the Hard Man-a man who could not find the strength to be weak and forgive his own limitations.

Chip Brown writes with exhilarating clarity about the thrill of mountain climbing and with compassion and intelligence about the mystery that begins when a life ends. Good Morning Midnight is a gripping story of survival in nature, with an existential heart.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Former Washington Post staffer Brown (Afterwards, You're a Genius) offers a vibrant portrait of multitalented, enigmatic outdoorsman Guy Waterman, whose son Jon's climbing-related death was chronicled in Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild. Beneath a title borrowed from Emily Dickinson, a ghostly mountaineer cover photo evokes events leading to the 67-year-old's carefully planned, snowy, subzero suicide in February 2000. Opening with the retrieval of Waterman's body from New Hampshire's Franconia Ridge, Brown traces Waterman's life and career. Inspired by Helen and Scott Nearing's back-to-the-land bible, Living the Good Life, Guy and Laura Waterman left New York City in 1973 to live off the land in Vermont. The conservationist couple collaborated on adventure-type magazine pieces and books and found an intimacy with the earth, but dark clouds of grief over losing his two sons (another son, Bill, died in a mountaineering accident, too) hovered. By 1992, Waterman saw suicide as a sensible option and wrote, I'm prepared to accept sixty years as a sufficient lifetime; and my intermittent glories as a piano player, politician, father, homesteader, and mountain environmental advocate and activist as concluded. His final message read, Do not take special efforts to save life. Death is intended. Mapping an existential journey through life and death, Brown has blazed a poetic path into Waterman's soul. Photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"...an engrossing and finely crafted narrative of Waterman's life..." -- Washington Post Book World, March 30, 2003

...for outdoor buffs and Hemlock Society members alike. -- Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2003

[Chip Brown] offers a searing, cerebral portrait of a man who worshiped at the alter of wilderness... -- Outside Magazine, April 2003

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover; 1St Edition edition (March 31, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573222364
• ISBN-13: 978-1573222365
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,403,834 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Motivational Status Of A Suicide, April 17, 2003

By 

Dr Lawrence Hauser (NYC, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Good Morning Midnight: Life and Death in the Wild (Hardcover)

Chip Brown is an exceptionally gifted writer. His prose is fluid, inventive, full of literary allusion and smart. In Good Morning Midnight he has turned his attention to the planned suicide of Guy Waterman, a famous mountaineer and outdoorsman, who froze himself to death one desperately frigid night in February 2000 atop a mountain in the New Hampshire wilderness. Although the book is biographical in the sense that it explores Waterman's life in toto, the central preoccupation is most definitely the motivational matrix of the choice to die made by a sixty-seven year-old man who was in relatively good health for his age and who enjoyed a rich life well worth continuing with in the eyes of those who knew and loved him. Why does a person make the choice of death? Is it a legitimate choice? What life circumstances eventuate in such a choice? How does the choice affect surviving family and friends? These are the questions Brown relentlessly wrestles with throughout his study. Along with the question of whether medical/psychiatric intervention would have made a difference in the final outcome. As a biography of a unique, multi-talented man Good Morning Midnight held my interest until the last page. I particularly liked Brown's attention to Waterman's two eldest sons who died (killed themselves?) in the Alaskan wilderness both before they were thirty years of age. The chapter devoted to middle son John Waterman, a famous climber in his own right, was absolutely riveting and marked the high point of the book in this reader's opinion. Brown posits that for Guy Waterman it was the loss of two of his three boys, and the remorse he felt about his role in their untimely demise, that ultimately drove him to consider his life not worth living. But there is so much speculation and hand wringing about motivation that after a while it became a chore to follow along with this layer of the text. I especially found Brown's concern with whether or not Waterman was clinically depressed and in need of treatment tiresome. Just because it is possible to 'treat' does not mean that we all must choose to be cured. Not everyone desires the intrusion of medical attention under all circumstances just because it is available. And not every bit of every individual's life need necessarily be understood down to every minute fragment of the psyche's intricate web of meaning and motivation. As Waterman's wife Laura wrote after the death of her husband, "Why rend the veil?" Amen! The idea that we must all live to the very last possible moment of our lives regardless of the quality of those lives is an overbearing injunction that has led to many of the problems of modern society, not the least of which is the all too pervasive, frequently gruesome hospitalization of death. Waterman led a full life and his death was thematically consonant with the overarching trajectory of that life. Although he made mistakes that came to haunt him in his later years, his choice to die at the moment he was ready to go seems a courageous act that might well be respected on its own terms rather than dissected ad nauseum by those without the fortitude to recognize that we are each and every one of us heading for the same destination and that it is the act of taking responsibility for our final station in life that quintessentially defines who we are and what we are in fact really made of. Whatever his shortcomings, Guy Waterman was made of the stuff of legend. May he rest in peace.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More Death than Life, October 22, 2003

By 

Arch Stanton (Bondurant, WY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Good Morning Midnight: Life and Death in the Wild (Hardcover)

I have long been a fan of Guy Waterman - the sort of man that many admire but few emulate. His wilderness ethic was beyond reproach in an era where few mountaineers could make the same claim. Bits and pieces of his family story have been told in article and essay format by such writers as Jon Waterman and John Krakauer. And of course, we are left with several collections by Guy Waterman himself. To that collection we can add this confused book, which seeks to be part Greek tragedy, part love story, mystery, part cautionary tale. In the end, it is only partially successful and the attempts at clinical psychology come across as particularly muddy and new-agey. The frequent asides early in the book caused me to put it down multiple times. Also, we spend much more time trying to get into Waterman's head than we do getting into his beloved home mountain ranges.

The first half of the book attempts to make a mystery out of something completely obvious - why Waterman would take his own life. In the end Guy Waterman was a man who chose to live his values. Rare in the world, to be sure. So it is not at all unusual that he would choose to die by those values, as well. Fortunately, the author backs off from this angle in the second half of the book, the narrative improves dramatically, and the book becomes more difficult to set aside. It becomes a father and sons book, touching and revealing, only occasionally bothered by high-reaching prose.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A memoir of great proportions, November 13, 2003

By 

Fairbanksreader "Fairbanksreader" (Alaska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Good Morning Midnight: Life and Death in the Wild (Hardcover)

As a resident of Fairbanks, Alaska, I am familiar with Johnny Waterman's legend. By exploring the lives of Guy Waterman and his family, this book provides a very insightful analysis of the family's history and relationships. The book shows a keen understanding of the psychology of mountaineers and those who love the frontier and outdoors. It examines the connection of life and death, the connection of hope with despair and the internal conflicts of one man that eventually led to his taking his own life.

What is special about Mr. Brown's biography of Guy Waterman, is that he refuses to paint a picture of pathology. Instead he describes Mr. Waterman as unique and grand in all his eccentricities and human frailties. Here is a man who is connected to wilderness in a spiritual way yet remains existentially alone and unable to connect with his own children in an enduring way.

This book is a page-turner, a psychological and philosophical thriller that had me mesmerized from beginning to end.

I found Mr. Brown's grasp of Alaskan wilderness accurate. He knows Denali and the Ruth Glacier in a personal way. He respects the power of wilderness without impressing his ego on it. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves memoirs, wilderness and psychological mystery.