Customer Reviews

The Stations of Still Creek

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"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

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