Bushwhacking: How to Get Lost in the Woods and Write Your Way Out

by Jennifer McGaha

When you stray from a trail and strike out into the woods, you are bushwhacking. The term implies a physical thrashing about—pushing past branches, slicing through thickets, leaping across downed trees—but it also implies a certain fortitude and resilience to seek places unknown. In Bushwhacking , Jennifer McGaha borrows the term, likening it to what writers do when faced with the equally daunting blank page. Exploring the wilderness of your inner life means leaving a relatively comfortable place and going where no path exists. Writers face similar, unknown obstacles when forging a route to a final draft.

Part writing memoir, part nature memoir, and part meditation on a life well lived, Bushwhacking draws on McGaha’s experiences running, hiking, biking, paddling, and getting lost across the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina to offer readers encouragement and practical suggestions to accompany them on their writing and life journeys. Each essay links one of McGaha’s forays into the wilderness to an insight about the creative process. An almost-failed attempt at zip lining becomes a lesson on getting out of one’s comfort zone. The thrum of a hummingbird’s wings, an autumn sunset, and a hound dog’s bay at a bear on the path are impromptu master classes in finding inspiration in the small, the ordinary, and the unexpected.

With humility, humor, and hard-won wisdom, Bushwhacking honors writing craft traditions and offers fresh insights into how close communion with nature can transform your writing and your life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing, Memoir, Nature

204 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 7, 2023

About the author

A native of Appalachia, Jennifer McGaha lives with her husband, five dogs, twenty-three chickens, and one high-maintenance cat in a tin-roofed cabin bordering the Pisgah National Forest in western North Carolina. Her creative nonfiction work has appeared in Brooklyner, Toad Suck Review, Switchback, Still, Portland Review, Little Patuxent Review, Lumina, Literary Mama, Mason’s Road, Now and Then, and others. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, running, mountain biking, sampling local beers, and playing with dogs.

From: http://www.yourimpossiblevoice.com/je...

Reviews

[Julene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bushwhacking: How to Get Lost in the Woods and Write Your Way Out, by Jennifer McGaha, is a book of essays that are about the process of writing. Each chapter is laid with an experience from her life, a hike is a typical example, learning to ride a mountain bike, experiencing zip-lining for her first (maybe only) time, or stories with one of her many dogs. She lives in rural South Carolina and knows the terrain. Within the stories she always comes back to a lesson she learned about writing, her first book was a memoir which I have not read.

She quotes from many familiar books about writing: Brenda Ueland's If You Want to Write, Annie Dillard's If You Want to Write, and Janet Burrows From Where You Dream; and she uses books for examples such as Ross Gay's The Book of Delights. The essays are easy to read and her style was helpful for me. At the end she has a list of 9 questions that are exercises one can use. Here is one of them:
6. Describe a moment in your life when you were lost (again, literally or metaphorically). Where were you? Who was with you? How did you come to be lost? How did you come to be found? And what did you learn along the way?

I was drawn to this book because of the title, and she brings her experience to good use in this book.

[Penny Zang · Rating 5 out of 5]

My new favorite book about writing—and so much more. Funny and just so beautiful. I’ll read anything this author writes.

[Chattynatty Van Waning · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my #nonfictionbookparty September read. The theme craft/hobbies. The first book I picked for this theme I DNF’d. So I found this book on my shelves and dove in. I picked it as one of my hobbies, active/right now, is hiking trails. A hobby I used to be more active in is writing. This book covers both. The author has her MFA, teaches writing, and has published books. She lives in Asheville, NC- in a cabin with loved ones- human and furry. I felt like the book was a good mix of her experiences on the trails, and suggestions on writing a memoir. It was a book that made me want to return to writing and continue challenging myself to get out and explore more trails.

[Heather Newton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jennifer McGaha's book Bushwhacking is a wonderful REMINDER book for writers. It reminded me of craft essentials that I had learned long ago but had forgotten to employ. And it reminded me to go outside and breathe and move. "Go back to the trailhead. Remember all the reasons you began this journey in the first place. Then put one foot in front of the other and start again with that same level of joy and wonder you felt back then, when everything was fresh and you were green and the wilderness beckoned to you."

[Lauren Harr · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're going to be out in the woods or struggling on the page, believe me, you want Jennifer McGaha by your side. Funny, thoughtful, and willing to share her best and worst, she is the best traveling companion a creative could have.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being an avid runner, hiker and backpacker, and owner if misbehaving dogs, this book resonated with me. I don't often read writing craft books but I put this on the shelf next to Stephen King's On Writing for its sage advice and motivation.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful weave of the lure of nature and the craft of writing. Makes me long for both.

I actually went back to this book a 2nd time to find a term I found in it that I thought I'd remember but didn't.

Moodling = Long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.

Brenda Ueland speaks of it in her 1938 book "If You Want to Write," encouraging writers to wander aimlessly, both literally and figuratively. This, she says, fuels the imagination, and a strong imagination is essential to good writing.

I excel at moodling!

Here's a further tidbit:

"Moodling" | The Writing Process (mit.edu)