Ask the Author: Gary Ferguson
Answered Questions (7)
Gary Ferguson
Hudson - Well, if it's stylish to be late, consider me stylish indeed. I'm so sorry that I didn't see your question earlier. First of all, the Gros Ventre area is fabulous - fully wild, but less "extreme" than farther north in the Bridger-Teton Wilderness. I was able to tend the Hawks Rest cabin by working directly with the Forest Service, through an arrangement where I would do certain upkeep and maintenance projects in return for being able to stay there. I'm not sure if they're still making those sorts of arrangements. Good luck! You can also write me via email, at ferguson@wildwords.net
Gary Ferguson
Thanks for writing . . . I'm so glad to hear you've been enjoying my work. You're spot on: my urge to combine my environmental science training with writing happened while I was in college. At the time I also had a strong desire to, whenever possible, experience nature "first hand." It's one thing to learn about biology or ecology in the classroom; it's quite another to then take that knowledge to places where you can not only see it with your own eyes, but where the full beauty and mystery of a natural system is laid out before you. (As Einstein once said, the mysterious "is the source of all true art and science.")
I've just finished a book on wildfire, which will be out next spring, and now am settling in to a much bigger project about how we humans might grow our ability to embrace a more sustainable future.
I've just finished a book on wildfire, which will be out next spring, and now am settling in to a much bigger project about how we humans might grow our ability to embrace a more sustainable future.
Gary Ferguson
Regular writing is one way to avoid writer's block in the first place. When it does hit, though, I often go back to a wonderful book called "The Artist's Way," by Julia Cameron.
Gary Ferguson
To have the chance to keep alive my sense of curiosity; and by so often writing about nature, to feed my feelings of wonder. To be regularly in touch with beauty, and community, and mystery.
Gary Ferguson
Read everything you can. Write regularly - once a day for thirty minutes is better than a whole day once a month. Keep in mind that writing is about growing your world, about enlarging the frame. With that in mind, do whatever you can to cultivate a sense of "beginner's mind." As an anonymous writer once said: To work on your art, work on your life."
Gary Ferguson
I don't believe in waiting for the muse to come around before I can get down to writing. Rather, it seems a matter of showing up at the page, every day if possible, which is where the muse seems most likely to find me.
Gary Ferguson
Joseph Campbell once said that sometimes you choose the myth, and sometimes the myth chooses you. In the spring of 2005 my wife and I were in a terrible canoeing accident in northern Ontario; she drowned. Curiously, just days before, out of the blue she turned to me and asked if I recalled the five wild places where, if something happened to her, she wanted her ashes scattered. This book is in part the story of those journeys. As I say in the intro, "At first, the journeys broke my heart. Later they helped me piece it together again." In the end, the wilderness showed me how to heal.
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