Learning to fly
My friend and author David Gessner hosted another reading at the Brookline Booksmith this week. This not the first of Dave’s readings that Mary and I have attended, but the first of its kind.
“Do you want to interview me?” David asked on Messenger. “I’m tired of the same old format. Reading into a black hole for 20 minutes. Let’s mix it up.”
“Sure,” I say, not really knowing what I’m signing up for. I’ve been David foil before, in various ultimate team huddles years ago, in a book about the sport, in person at a reading at the Booksmith when that book came out. To some degree, we’re all David’s foils, but isn’t that the case with every writer? We the subjects of their musings with little control over the picture that’s portrayed.
“It’ll be easy,” he says when we review the format. “And you don’t have to have read my book. I’ll send you the Cliff notes.”
That’s good, because I haven’t, read it, not yet. I’ve read quite a few of Gessner’s books. A Wild Rank Place about his family’s house on the Cape, and relationship with his father. Return of the Osprey, about the miracle we all celebrated after pesticides all but eliminated this fabulous bird from our surroundings. Under the Devils Thumb about mountain biking in Boulder, and Ultimate Glory about his primal athletic pursuit of a spinning piece of plastic. I’ve been meaning to read Leave It As It Is, his recent book about Teddy Roosevelt’s dedication to National Parks, written in reaction to the destructive environmental policies of our last administration.
“How many books have you written since Ultimate Glory?” I ask.
“I’ve written three, and published two,” he says. “One’s on hold.”
“That’s over ten books,” I say.
“Twelve,” his reply.
Impressive for any author. I love that he returns to where he started, and once worked, the Booksmith, until he threw a pen at a customer.
“That guy deserved it.” Gessner defends.
We love Dave. His books. His take on life and the world that surrounds him. He’s our modern day Thoreau, commenting on the role of the natural world on our well being, on how we might behave in it; messages to consider in these times of climate disaster, pandemics and raging social injustice. He’s acutely aware of the good that comes to our souls when we give in to nature, take it in, commune with oceans, mountains, and forests. But also the good that results for the world when we sit still. His descriptions of a year of lock-down prescient, of what little we actually need to survive serve as reminder of what’s important—family, passion, and deep respect for the wild.
“You and I will talk about writing, about daily practice, about the discipline,” he explains. “What you’ve been doing.”
It’s true, I am living proof of what happens when you just sit down and write, for a set amount of time, every day, five hundred words. As Anne Lamott says, “it’s like learning to play the piano. No matter what, you get better.”
Note that she doesn’t say you get good, only that you get better. So far, that’s been enough for me.
David’s the one who encouraged me to take a course after I’d posted some random pieces on my Facebook page. He’d also been the one to inspire me to stop posting a daily picture framed by a single question.
“I realized that you didn’t actually respond,” he said. “It was the same thing, over and over again. So I got bored.”
Writers tend to blurt things out. Good ones do at least. Didion. Strayed. Lamott. They all profess that the more you write your truth, the more people will relate. Dave’s of that ilk.
The two of us have been in and out of each other’s lives for almost forty years, which is a thing. A better writer would use a different word than ‘thing’. We shared pursuit of athletic glory before he hung up his cleats to focus on his writing. A dozen books to show for that shift. Trophies on his shelf.
We didn’t understand or see Dave’s struggle. Defying his father’s wish that he go into business, or law. Ignoring the pull of the achievement culture that drags us all along. Forgoing money for a calling, Dave chose that different road, less travelled, to be a writer, an outsider. While many of the rest of us didn’t have the courage.
I kept at it, ultimate that is, and achievement, as Dave wrote and wrote and wrote. For me, all those tournaments postponed adulthood, and responsibility. Dave on the other hand, moved on, publishing book after book, teaching and inspiring students along the way. He left the sport he loved, but found joy on the pages he published.
This week, Dave and I meet again, this time with the written word as the link that draws us together. We will talk about the process. About discipline. About sitting down everyday, to journal, to write, to find our voices.
“We wont be able to see attendees on Zoom, so we’re going to have to keep an eye on the chat,” Dave tells me as we prepare for the event. “You and I will be on screen, but we can’t see anyone.”
I don’t expect I’ll need too many questions to keep this rolling. We’re talking about Dave Gessner here. A man who needs no introduction, no prompt to get him going. A man who has a lot to say. And a man who’s helping us all live better lives in nature, asking us to observe more, experience a deeper connection. And a man encouraging us to then do something with that experience, aside from punching a clock.
“I want to leave something behind,” he said when he encouraged me to do more than my daily picture and question —more than my effort to get people to engage on social media, which worked for a while, and then ran its course.
“What’s our legacy going to be?” he asked a while back, maybe not directly challenging me, but yes, directly challenging all of us. He the writer, the chair of his English department, the person at the front of the class paid to push, prod and inspire.
There have been a lot of old ultimate pictures posted here on Facebook recently, of when we first played, of muddy fields, and torn sweats. Dave calls this period his barbarian days, named after the cleats he stomped around the fields in.
The word barbarian suits him — Gessner a bit of a wild animal. His voice full and resonant. He’d have been a baritone, and reminds us of that with occasional renditions of Brandy. His personality bigger than the rooms he waltzed in and out of, or fields he played on, grunting while he raced around after the disc. Dave would make the greatest catch of the tournament, followed by the wildest throw of the day.
“Better live large than not live at all,” he must have been thinking, maybe still is.
Dave’s writing now teaches us different lessons than the ones we learned hurling our bodies around the fields of play. To live with, and not against nature. To slow down, as Thoreau did. To observe.
We’ve all had to live differently this past year. Many suffering, but maybe all learning something about ourselves. Dave’s the one now encouraging us to reflect on this period, writing books that remind us that observing the natural world feeds our souls, and maybe simultaneously saves our planet. The wild the very place that abates our destructive tendencies. Innovation and pace of progress not always all that they’re cracked-up to be.
I find books about nature to be generally boring, but not Dave. Anything but. Because he’s not a nature writer. He brings humor and insight to what he knows best. His place in the world. If Dave were a TV show, it would be called Late Night w/David Thoreau. Rank at times, always smart, and riotously hilarious.
I greatly enjoyed my time with Dave this week, a chance to think about what it means to be a writer, what it means to cross paths and thrown discs with this particular artist, and what it means to be coming out of a pandemic on fledgling wings.
Thank you David Gessner.
