The Stations of Still Creek [Hardcover]

Barbara J. Scot (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1999

"The year I turned fifty-four," writes Barbara J. Scot, "my stations at Still Creek emerged. It began like this: For two days I thought my husband was dead."
        
Scot and her husband, Jim, have climbed many mountains together, and for her, mountain climbing has become the metaphor that defines their long marriage. The shock of Jim's brush with death in the Himalayas releases a deep need in Scot to reexamine her own life's direction, both as an individual and in her marriage. Because the physical limitations of middle age are making themselves felt, she wonders how much time is left to her for teaching, writing, travel, climbing. Seeking to gather what she terms her scattered self, Scot retreats alone to a cabin deep in Oregon's Mount Hood National Forest. As she explores the forest, she encounters a series of special and beautiful places that she comes to call her "stations", places where she experiences a remarkable sensation of complete merging with the natural world. As the seasons come and go, Scot names her seven stations: Old Growth Sculpture, the Green Cathedral, Four Alders with Perfect Posture--and makes a profound ritual of visiting them one by one, over and over again. In this ritual, at last she finds the deep stillness in which she can contemplate aging and death, mountains and marriage.
        
Scot's story is a moving chronicle of one woman's longing to express her innermost self and to find her place within the creative cycles of nature. It is also an eloquent plea for the preservation of more places where people can experience the beauty and healing power of the natural world.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Barbara Scot, a high school English teacher and outdoor adventurer, was 54 when she heard the alarming news that her husband was believed to have been killed in a Himalayan avalanche. Two days later, she received word that her husband and his climbing party had emerged from the avalanche unharmed. In that short period, she writes, something odd had been set in motion inside her: a realization that life was short, that goals and desires abandoned to the needs of marriage and family and career were still important, that some things had better be done now before it was too late. Scot repaired to a cabin on the slopes of Mount Hood, Oregon, to think these matters through, and her self-reflection informs this memoir of a sojourn in the near-wilderness, a place where alder trees, cedars, and maples could take the place of an analyst's couch or a church pew. She learned much about herself, as she recounts in The Stations of Still Creek. She also learned much about the mountain world, lessons that pointed her to the way back home. That wilderness is a place for spiritual reflection and renewal is a commonplace. Barbara Scot lends specific weight to the truism with her thoughtful journey. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

A naturalist and author (Prairie Reunion), Scot, driven at the age of 54 to examine her inner self, spent nearly a year in the cabin she and her husband, Jim, owned at Still Creek, within the stunning beauty of the forest preserve on Oregon's Mount Hood, an hour away from their home in Portland. Choosing the Roman Catholic Stations of the Cross as an analogy, Scot found seven natural formations within walking distance of the cabin, where she went to meditate about her life. Interspersed with her personal ruminations are vivid descriptions of the changing seasons: of the salmon that spawned in the creek during the fall and of the winter snowstorms that decorated her stations with dazzling ice and frost. The major issues Scot confronted during this period were the state of her marriage and the certainty of death. Although she and her husband were united by their love for reach other and for the natural world, as well as by the deep pleasure they both took in mountain climbing, Scot refers to their relationship as "containing an unspoken agreement to avoid anything in conversation that matters" to their lives. Although Jim wanted to stop working to devote more time to mountain climbing, he kept his job in Portland and paid the bills while Scot retired from her teaching job and lived in the cabin. After their year apart, however, they went to Bolivia and hiked to the top of Cerro Charkini, a harrowing climb that, for the author of this richly expressive account, reaffirmed their relationship. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Sierra Club Books; First Edition edition (October 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578050421
• ISBN-13: 978-1578050420
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,054,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Still Creek runs deep., June 5, 2001

By 

G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Stations of Still Creek (Paperback)

"What an amazing change of season I had experienced by coming to Still Creek and gathering in my fragments of soul, my scattered self," Barbara Scot reflects while on her retreat in Oregon's Mount Hood National Forest. "My mud had settled, my water had cleared, my creative energy had renewed" (p. 145). I discovered this book on a recent visit to Portland, where Scot lives. Her book--a memoir, really--"is a story of mountains and marriage, of small rivers and stillness in the forest" (p. 8); Still Creek becomes a metaphor for a deep inner life.

Reflecting on "the lonely business of marriage" (p. 93), Scot observes that "whatever else marriage is, it is long. People who give up after a year or two haven't been married. Marriage means much longer, means still in the same house when one has been seriously ill or the job has failed. Marriage means climbing mountains together, and even if you say nothing as you climb you have both seen the first light shift from blue to mauve. It means having no clue what is going on in the other's mind, and at times clenching one's fists" (p. 44). In her own marriage, she practices "not-talking" and "letting things fall into place" (p. 77). For Scot, marriage is "leaving alone. It is leaving alone when one does not understand. Marriage means giving each other time with no questions; times of saying, What you are going through is yours and yours alone, and you do not have to explain it to me" (p. 120).

There are also reflections of death, degeneration, and renewal in the depths of STILL CREEK. This is a book that quietly touched me.

G. Merritt

1 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 2nd grade teacher, April 3, 2000

By 

patricia jo murphy (new brunswick, nj) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Stations of Still Creek (Hardcover)

found it to be interesting but does not tell about oregon and would like to know more about family.