Where Rivers Change Directions

Author: Mark Spragg
Date Finished: 1/25/06

This book was on the table at the entryway of our library and since I said I'd give Spragg another chance, I picked it up. This is a collection of essays about Spragg's boyhood running a dude camp with his family near Cody, Wyoming. The essays begin when Spragg is about twelve and continue until he has grown, graduated from college and become an adult watching his mother die of emphysema.

The earliest essays are the most powerful; Spragg remembers and describes a beautiful and wild time and place. In many ways he is given more responsibility and respect than many men ever acquire; he and his brother lead guests on hunts without any additional supervision, responsible for the guests, the pack animals and all the equipment necessary to live in the mountains for a week. Yet, these pieces are filled with a sense of yearning for more. He senses his powerlessness as a child and longs to grow, to cease becoming a man and finally arrive at adulthood.

The essays at the end of the book convey a sense of disappointment with adulthood. Spragg's ideal of manhood described in the early essays is so powerful and larger than life, that it is almost inevitable that his reality will disappoint him. My impression of Spragg through these essays is that he lost his way for a while as a adult, unsure whether the boy that he was has a place in the world where he finds himself.

I often hate these kinds of essays and memoirs with their "if only we could go back to the good old days" longing. Perhaps I'm too pragmatic or even cold-hearted, but my first reaction is often to roll my eyes and mutter, "Oh, grow up," as I finish reading. This book was so beautiful that much of that reaction was tempered, but it is still there. Yes, being an adult involves replacing our childhood sense of anything is possible with a sense of everything is fleeting. But, we were put here to be beautiful, whether we are blossoming into full bloom or withering down to a faded seedhead. To long so palpably for the past is to deny the present. Read Spragg's essays for the beauty of the past he has captured, then go out and live in the present you have been granted.