Our settings, our selves?
by robinhobb on Apr.29, 2010, under Robin Hobb and Sara Creasy
Hi Sara (and everyone else!)
I had a curious thought (I know, sometimes it’s curious that I have thoughts at all, but still . . . ) I’m wondering how significant a writer’s home ’setting’ is to what he/she writes.
I do a lot of foresty backdrops, and a lot of swampy ones. Now, the first settings I can remember are Berkeley, California on Alston way near the railroad tracks. Not exactly foresty. But then we moved to Terra Linda. There I roved around the hills behind our subdivision a lot more than my parents knew. They were open grassy hillsides. We could sled on cardboard on the shiny yellow grass in summer. Sometimes I’d crest a hill and see an entire vista of bright orange California poppies. And down in the little valleys between the hills, there would be oaks. Some times of the year, the forest floor would be absolutely coated with shiny brown acorns that rolled under your feet. But what I remember best from that part of my childhood is the man made wetlands.
Again, my parents had no idea I did this stuff.
Behind our house, once you climbed over the tall wooden fence, was a strip of unclaimed land with brush and weeds. Then you came to a four lane highway. The opposing lanes of the highway were divided by a wide, flat bottomed concrete lined drainage ditch. There’s probably a word for this but I don’t know it. Anyway, run off from rain and silt and so on kept a layer of shallow warm water flowing through them. The silt built up enough that rushes and tall cattails grew in there and lots of other stuff. So, my friends and I would dash across two lanes of traffic and then slide down the sloping side of the ditch, and suddenly we were in a different world. The concrete ditch trapped the warmth as well as creating this odd pool of silence. We could barely hear the traffic rushing by. The water was always really warm and we waded in it with our flip flops on. And there was so much alive there. Lots of frogs, toads and blue bellied lizards. Salamanders. All sorts of birds.
Frogs were my favorite to catch and hold. Blue bellied lizards were harder to catch. Often I ended up only with a twitching tail in my hands. But if you caught one, it could be ‘hypnotized’ by stroking its belly. I love remembering those times.
When we moved when I was about ten to Alaska, I finally got to be near real forest. Very different sort of place. Fairbanks is a wide river valley. Not too far from our acreage there was a big slough. Again, the proximity of water meant an abundance of life. This time the life forms were bigger. Moose. Rabbits. Lynx, sometimes. Ravens. Owls. Not so many frogs. In winter it all froze over and the snow would be hip deep. Then, it would melt in spring and we’d have ‘break up’ where the water ran everywhere breaking the ice. And then everything bursts back into greenery.
Those foresty places have been the back drop for so many stories I’ve written, published and unpublished. Sara, I noticed a definite ‘desert’ feel to one of your stories, followed by a jungle. Are you, like me, writing your childhood impression of the natural world into your stories?
Robin
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April 29th, 2010 on 4:33 pm
I think I’m still figuring out how my childhood figures into my writing. I grew up in suburbia in the UK, in a glorious Victorian house that gave me distinct ideas about what a home should be, from the secret rooms to the little “cave” made of ivy at the back of the garden where we held tea parties. Now… I’m fascinated by spaceships-as-home, with how people create a complete living environment within confined, isolated spaces, completely cut off from the natural world. Does it take a special kind of person to cope with that environment long-term, or can the average person learn to live that way, given time?
I’ve only lived in the desert for 5 years, and I’m still learning to appreciate it. What I miss more than anything is the weather. My favorite time of year is monsoon season, despite the havoc it wreaks on unsuspecting Tucsonians. (You’d think they’d be prepared, but it seems they never are!)
Driving through the desert is a desolate experience. For me, the way to appreciate nature here is to get up close and personal with it – avoiding the scorpions and snakes, of course. I’m still amazed by every gecko and hummingbird I see. It’s a vastly different experience from walking into a dense Australian eucalypt forest and being surrounded by so much life pressing down on you.
April 29th, 2010 on 5:47 pm
It must be quite interesting to think about whether it is what you are missing that is a trigger for inspiration or whether it is something new you are experiencing.
Fascinating! And I am really enjoying hearing about you Sara and you Robin and your childhoods and inspirations.
Sara, your first paragraph reminds me of the fantasy I grew up reading, CS Lewis, Lewis Carroll, Enid Blytons annuals and short stories, poetry particularly by Spike Milligan and AA Milne.
Alot of these had settings just like your old Victorian house, quite alien to me in the first place (being from the Sydney suburbs), so thus very magical even as a starting point without going into another world.
Robin, even the way you just wrote below about the settings you grew up in drew me in as though it was another of your novels! Your descriptions take me into a world I haven’t experienced, you are very talented.
Sara, I can’t wait to read your latest. Sounds fab.
May 3rd, 2010 on 5:10 pm
Sara, you raise an interesting point about space travel that I’ve often pondered. Would it take a certain sort of temperament to cope with the limitation of space (ironically) that would come with long-term space travel? I know NASA has all kinds of health & education requirements for their astronauts, but I can’t remember hearing a whole lot about the psychological requirements. I would think there’d have to be some. Same would go for submarines, I would think. 6 months underwater in a relatively teeny tiny space with the same people day in and day out. No plants, no sun. Could easily drive someone a little bonkers.
It makes me think about seasonal affective disorder, too. Living in Michigan, I know a lot of people who get the winter blues. It’s never really bothered me - yeah, I’d like to be warm and run around in sandals again, but there’s something to be said for the beauty of winter - but it knocks some of my friends on their keisters. It would seem to me that they probably wouldn’t want to sign up for long-term space ship residence.
May 3rd, 2010 on 5:41 pm
I definitely think there are people who can do shipboard life, and people who can’t.
Of course, it’s changed substantially since the day of sail, when ocean crossings took much longer, or the crew of a whaler might be gone for two or three years.
Nowadays, I can stay in touch with Fred via Email on an almost nightly basis. He tried to call me from Dutch Harbor last night, but evidently Verizon coverage isn’t that good up there. I won’t see him until August, but we are accustomed to that, and the email makes it much easier. I remember one summer, less than 20 years ago, when every single letter I sent to him was returned to me unopened, having missed his ship at the various ports. That was frustrating as ship-to-shore phone calls were extremely expensive then. And he always had to initiate them rather than me being able to call him for a crisis.
The crew has television now, and DVD’s, private as well as in the galley. Music is better, too, with MP3 players and good headphones that shut out the diesel noises. The one thing I always dreaded about living aboard was the constant bombardment of sound from the engines and generator. The stack went right up through Fred’s state room, and the noise was constant.
Modern food makes things a lot nicer, too. Fred grew up on his Dad’s fishing boat. So his diet as a kid was pilot bread crackers, canned milk, canned tomatoes, lots of peanut butter and canned everything. Fresh fish and venison off the beaches were really welcome. Nowadays, of course, with freezers and microwaves, food on the boat is a lot better, and on the NOAA vessels like the one he is on now the problem is eating sensibly when the cook is putting out big platters of good food all the time.
I think Fred would do just fine on a long trip to Mars or whereever.
Of course, a great deal of how well the trip goes depends on how well the crew gets along. One horrible cranky person can make a lot of people miserable in close quarters.
Robin