[reviews]
[masthead]
Jonathan Johnson, Hannah and the Mountain
(University of Nebraska Press, 2005)
reviewed by Jacob Powers
It is difficult to find a text that gives balance between
nature and family. Granted, each genre holds its own, but to find a book
that discusses both the love of the wilderness and the love of family
is rare. Fortunately Jonathan Johnson, with his memoir Hannah and
the Mountain, has successfully done just that.
Johnson’s narrative at first focuses on his goal to renovate a cabin
owned by his extended family for over forty years for him and his wife,
Amy, in the Idaho wilderness: "[We] came to the mountains because
our adult lives were rushing toward us and we wanted to go out and meet
those lives in a place that would keep us young and free and filled with
passion. After years of school we were ready to settle into the long story
of home." This feeling of home quickly takes a step forward when
Jonathan and Amy discover that she is pregnant with their first child.
Now, with the combination of extensive renovations and the limited amounts
of resources to do so, the intent to form a home suitable to raise his
future child in quickly takes off. Yet Johnson does it all in hope—hope
that his firstborn will experience the beauty and awe of the wilderness
that he and his wife adore.
Tragedy, however, ensues as the memoir
(which reads a lot like a novel) quickly disintegrates from its optimistic
dreams into the harsh realities of a complicated pregnancy. The baby is
carried too low, putting pressure on and stretching the lower uterus,
threatening a premature birth: "Amy’d been having pains low
in her abdomen all along...the hope was that the pains were the result
of these problems, not the contractions that could be causing
the problems." Yet all hope is not lost as Johnson guides the reader
through his and his wife’s pains and grief towards a strong anticipation
that they will be able to tame their dreams again: "We’ve got
our little cabin on land I’ve come to think of as an extension of
my own body...that will be more than enough for Amy and me to build a
life on. I will not create sorrows in a life where sorrows find me on
their own."
While most of the themes and settings in
the book take place Idaho, many are reflective of Michigan’s landscape
as well. Johnson writes of Marquette where both he and Amy grew up several
times throughout. There are also moments where he and his wife consider
where they would rather have the baby—in their own formed home in
the Idaho wilderness, or back in Marquette where their parents and past
lives are. But what stands out the most is Johnson’s connection
with a past friend and writer, Mac, who experiences the death of his sixteen
year old son when he died in an accident on the icy roads just outside
of Marquette. It is in this moment of the book where Johnson connects
his own experiences of a possible future father with the tragic loss that
Mac experiences: "Odds are that being a father will forever be like
walking on the thick crust on top of four feet of snow in the cold, February
sunlight." As the memoir progresses, it becomes apparent that the
love and fear of family cannot simply be contained within the borders
of our own state or within Johnson’s past life. Michigan may be
where Johnson grew up, but Idaho is where his home and life is now.
Although the story is one that has been
heard before, it is Johnson’s heavy experience in the poetic realm
and ability to capture emotions of joy and distress that makes Hannah
and the Mountain stand out amongst others. With an interwoven reflection
between the lyrical love of the wilderness with the preferable avoidance
of the busy city life, Johnson paints a landscape that is powerful and
unforgettable. Yet what lies in the foreground of Johnson’s affection
of the wilderness is that irreplaceable love and desire he has for family
itself—"If any of us are ever saved, whatever that might mean,
we aren’t saved by the stories we create for ourselves to inhabit;
we are saved by our loves." For Johnson, it is the family that makes
the life; the rest is replaceable.
___
Jacob Powers is a senior at Grand Valley State University, graduating in the winter of 2006 with a degree in Creative Writing and a minor in English. After graduating, he plans to take a year off and then apply to graduate programs.
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