Beginning
The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest ~ by Timothy Egan, 1990, history/nature, 255 pagesAll summer long Grandpa remains in the basement, two pounds of cremated ash in a plain cardboard cylinder. I can't get used to the idea of this powder being the guy who taught me how to land brook trout with a hand-tied fly . . . He had smoked himself to death . . . Fifty years of two packs a day, that's what did it. Finally, the emphysema literally asphyxiated him. My job is to bury him. Something appropriate, my Granny says, handing me the cylinder after the funeral. "Just throw him off the ferry or dump him into the Yakima River," she says "Whatever you think is best."
In the valleys of the Olympic Mountains, it can rain six feet in two months and tree trunks can grow as wide as garage doors. Timothy Egan describes his journeys in the Pacific Northwest through visits to salmon fisheries, redwood forests, and the manicured English gardens of Vancouver, as he blends history, anthropology, and politics.
P.S. On the second page in the fifth paragraph of the book, the decision about Grandpa has been made: "The volcano of Ranier, I conclude, is where he belongs." This beginning makes me want to keep reading to see what he does. How about you?
Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays
3 comments:
That's quite an opening. Like you, I want to read more to see what he decides. And then how it works out.
You weren't kidding!
The opening does want me to keep reading. My dad's ashes are somewhere in my mom's house. My dad and she made arrangements of where their ashes are to be scattered, but the plan of getting all us kids together to scatter never seemed to work out and now it's years later. I think my mom's plan now is that they will be laid to rest together.
I hope you have a great weekend!
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