Andrew Benesh’s Reviews > Coast Range: A Collection from the Pacific Edge > Status Update

The final essay, on newts and fire, is easily the best in this. It feels tight and focused, with strong images and meaningful reflections.

The embedded novella about the writing residency did get a bit better. The stories, counterposed images, and reflections were all interesting in their own right; however the unifying thread seemed invented in the last few pages. The author is very skilled at description.

I'm starting to think that this semifinal essay was the real core of the book, and the rest was filler. The narrative of the creative writing residency is interesting and threads events and experienced together nicely, but doesn't feel like it had a strong message yet. then again I'm only 20 of 52 pages in on it.

The mushroom and linguistics essay grey like it had the potential to be really good. But I don't think it will it's worked; the thesis was too diffuse and the examples insufficiently drawn out.

The story on steelhead recycling is really what I'd been expecting from this book. It captures the ecosystem, the changes in return, the flow of nutrients, the efforts to restore balance, and the people who endure it happens. It felt like a chapter from "Where the water Goes", which I greatly enjoyed. The parallels between the fish and the recycling men seemed a bit underdeveloped, but that's OK.

The Garden of Earthly Delights story, focusing on the cabins on madrones trees, is excellent. It humanizes the trees, captures the inevitability of change, and situates the trees and their carvers in a cosmic way. This feels like an Annie Dillard story. I wish they were all more like this.

While the idea of diving appeals to me, underwater dredging does not. The authors efforts to romanticize it seem to fall short for me. To me, the glimmer of hope in gold seems shallow when set in the historical society ecological context he lays out, yet the author doesn't seem to experience it the same way.

I have missed feelings on the hummingbird story. I like the information about the unique behaviors, physiology, and history. I found the authors personal connection somewhat superfluous; it's themes weren't as well reflected as in prior essays.

I really liked the essay on the salmon. The path from harvest to ceremonial meal is well traced, with a great attention to the parallels with myth and the transcendental ideas of the process. Regrettably, some of the description and dialogue of native participants felt a little degrading; I'd like to think this wasn't intentional.

This feels like a very somber Annie Dillard. The chiton piece was fascinating; the agates orcs felt like it was trying too hard to achieve profundity. A clearer mediation on formation, graduated change, impermanence, or value might have been more effective.