An Evening in Moab with Author, Adventurer, Naturalist and Poet, Craig Childs
Each year since 2005, I have visited Moab Utah in the fall. For my taste, the summers in Moab are too hot and the winters too cold. In the spring, the wind blows and the dust kicks up. In October 2006, I experienced almost fifteen inches of rain, but this fall the weather was as dry as a bone.
In October 2007, I was in Moab for a week and wanted to learn more about
the town and its culture. Checking the events calendar, I saw that
Craig Childs was in town, introducing his then new book, “House of
Rain”. Until then, my only connection to Craig Childs was 
hearing him speak on the NPR program, Morning Edition. Not having read any of his books, I decided to go and hear him speak.
That evening, I arrived early at the Moab Information Center. With an
auditorium that holds no more than seventy-five people, I was happy to
sit in the front row. In the left-front corner of the room stood a
stocky man dressed in clothing from the trail. As the attendees filed
in and took their places on chairs or the floor, the man softly played a
wooden flute. Only when he moved to the podium did I discover Craig
Childs was the flautist we had just heard. Craig’s lyrical flute had
created a mood for the slideshow and discussion to follow.
Demonstrating how important the book, “House of Rain” was to the career
of Craig Childs, his personal website still goes by that name. Never
using the phrase, “Great Disappearance” in that seminal book, his subject was the displacement Native American cultures from the Colorado Plateau around 1200 CE.
With
painstaking academic research and fieldwork, alone or with
paleo-scientists, Craig charted a course of migration that defined the
culmination of the pre-Puebloan era. With Craig’s written guidance, I
later visited and wrote about many of the places mentioned in that
book. From Homolovi to Hovenweep and Mesa Verde beyond, Craig painted word-pictures of each sacred place.
In October 2008, I had the privilege of attending Confluence: A
Celebration of Reading and Writing in Moab. Among the many guest
authors, Amy Irvine, Jack Loeffler and Craig Childs each taught
classroom and field seminars. The class was limited to forty budding
authors, each paying $450 for the honor of close work with three
authors. For his part, Craig Childs took our group a few miles 
north of Moab to a place called Seven Mile Canyon.
There, among petroglyphs and sacred sandstone grottos, Craig
encouraged each of us to feel the canyon sands barefoot before writing
that day.
In October 2012, Craig Child’s latest book, Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Everending Earth
arrived at Back of Beyond Bookstore in Moab. With a crowd of about 250
at Moab’s Starr Hall that opening night, Craig Childs proceeded to
electrify the audience with stories of catastrophe and redemption. From
a campsite on the rapidly melting Greenland Ice Sheet to the still
warm lava flows of Mauna Loa Volcano in Hawaii, Craig elucidated the
constancy of violent change occurring all over the Earth.
Not
wanting to use an electronic flash that night, I tried to photograph
Craig Childs in a still moment. Gesturing to his own image on the
screen behind him, I watched as Craig’s animated motions transported
him into his own photography. Craig on the stage merged into Craig,
sitting on the front porch of the doomed Greenland camp. Later, as he
swept his arm toward a small patch of island greenery surrounded by an
active lava flow, Craig Childs could have been Moses, pinpointing the
place where he had found the stone tablets.
Although I had videotaped parts of the presentation, I later erased all
of my video from that evening. Electronic media cannot do justice to
the poetry of Craig's words and voice. Standing barefoot on stage that
night, reading excerpts from his new book, I saw and heard the essence
of author and naturalist Craig Childs.
By James McGillis at 03:45 PM | Current Events | Comments (0) | Link
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