Among the more than 50 essays, short stories, poems and folkloric reading material found in “Campfire Stories Volume II: Tales from America’s National Parks and Trails” are accounts of extreme danger, gobsmacked wonder and historical significance.
In the collection that celebrates six of America’s national parks, editors and spouses Dave and Ilyssa Kyu aimed to include as many voices as possible.
The 320-page book highlights a range of writers from locales including Grand Canyon, Everglades, Olympic, Glacier and Joshua Tree national parks, as well as the Appalachian and Pacific Crest national scenic trails. Along with well-known authors such as Terry Tempest Williams, Tim McNulty, Lauret Savoy and Rae DelBianco, contributors include up-and-coming scribes and a number of racially diverse writers, some of whom identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community.
The Kyus — who will be in Bellingham Thursday, Aug. 10 for a book discussion at Village Books — decided to put together the anthology during the depth of the pandemic, when they were parenting in place and working from home. With two young children, they didn’t have the ability to road-trip their way to the parks they wanted to highlight.
Readers will find some selections in the collection that make them laugh.
Such is the case with Shawnté Salabert’s “On Trail, We Dream of Enchiladas.” Her narrative of the two months she spent on the Pacific Crest Trail touches on the joys of communing with nature and swimming in alpine lakes, but the gist of the four-page essay focuses on the insatiable hunger that arises when one spends days in perpetual motion.
“My hours, days — dear lord, weeks — filled with acid-trip visions, desert peyote mirages of slender cheese-filled, mole-draped bundles of heaven,” Salabert writes of her time in the southern Sierra. “It was a lovelorn sort of ache that quickly eclipsed the more corporeal kind that had already settled into my muscles.”
Salabert’s humorous yet heartfelt story about her 500-mile hike is a good example of a tale that could effectively be read aloud around the glow of a roaring campfire (provided a burn ban isn’t in effect, of course). This intimate mode of storytelling was something the Kyus were hoping would be a byproduct of the book, which came about after their 2018 original “Campfire Stories” captured a number of historical tales reflecting the first 100 years of the National Park Service.
Bellingham resident Rena Priest, a member of the Lummi Nation and Washington state’s former poet laureate, is included in the Olympic National Park section of the collection. Her short but effective poem “Before Clocks” goes back in time, reminding readers that people once relied on tides, moon cycles and seasonal clues to connect with the rhythm of the world. Priest’s essay, “Syncing Up at Sol Duc,” pays homage to her ancestors and a healing trek they made from Lummi to the Sol Duc hot springs sometime around 1896.
Another contributor with a local tie is former Bellinghamster Anja Semanco, whose story “One Square Inch” took her from a noisy apartment on North Forest Street to seeking One Square Inch of Silence — purported to be the quietest place in the Lower 48, supposedly found deep in the Olympic National Forest. Semanco was a recipient of one of the project’s travel stipends, which allowed her to take a 30-mile backpacking trip along the Washington coast.
While many submissions in the collection are campfire-worthy, others are a little too long to be read aloud. That doesn’t mean they’re inferior, they’re just not necessarily ideal for that particular setting.
For example, Deborah Jackson Taffa’s “Canyon Dreams” is a somewhat-sprawling tale about her trek to Sedona and the Grand Canyon, away from her hospitalized mother and the Yuma Reservation where she was born and raised.
“I want to hike these tangled paths until I give my fears the slip,” Taffa writes. “I want to exit the rock labyrinth with my peace of mind restored. I want to shake the anxiety of my mother’s impending death.” It’s heady stuff, and it gets even deeper when she and her husband encounter an injured hiker who may or may not make it out of the canyon alive.
Mary Emerick’s “Rescue Below the Rim” is another reminder of the dangers nature holds. And other stories throughout “Campfire Stories Volume II” inform the readers that although our national parks contain myriad natural wonders, they’re also places that are largely untamed and need to be approached with respect. Every submission is different, but that theme ran throughout them.
“These poems, myths, legends and personal essays capture the diverse history, culture and experiences of those who have collectively built, shared, explored and enjoyed these parks, as well as those whose people have always been there and never left,” the Kyus write in the book’s preface. “We sought stories from storytellers with different backgrounds, perspectives and life experiences to widen the lens of who our public lands are for.”
Dave and Ilyssa Kyu will be joined by Rena Priest for a discussion about “Campfire Stories Volume II” at 6 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 10 at Village Books, 1200 11th St. Reserve a spot in advance at villagebooks.com.
