Early that morning, nearly a foot of beautiful, fresh snow fell, burying the smoke alarm, along with all the other missives I had recently air-mailed into the wild desert. We won’t see a melt-out for months now, but when spring finally comes—which, at this elevation, happens mighty late—Hannah and Caroline will join me on a “treasure hunt” out in the sage. What we discover there will be artifacts from a time already long past, when barely remembered moments of frustration gave wings to earthbound objects like smoke detectors and alarm clocks. We field archaeologists of Ranting Hill do not know precisely what we will discover down there, but we are already looking forward to the adventure of finding out. For now, the snow just keeps falling, and we and the earth are the better for it.
The “Rants from the Hill” essay series that eventually led to this book appeared in High Country News, where the Rants ran online every month from July 2010 through April 2016. “Shit Happens” and “My First Rodeo” were not originally included in the series and have not been published elsewhere.
Several essays were reprinted in other venues, as follows:
“Few and Far Between” contains passages from an essay originally entitled “The Silence of Desert Greetings” (May 2012). My podcast of this essay was excerpted and integrated into the Van Sounds podcast, edited by Fil Corbitt, episode “Dice 5: Nothing on the Radio” (January 7, 2016): http://filcorbitt.com/van-sounds.
“Walking to California.” Whole Terrain: Reflective Environmental Practice 18 (2011): 5–7.
“Them! and Us” appeared in “Excerpts from ‘Rants from the Hill.’” The Nevada Review 5.1 (Spring 2013): 24–28.
“Scout’s Honor.” Whole Terrain: Reflective Environmental Practice 22 (2016): 23–27.
“What Would Edward Abbey Do?” High Country News 43.7 (May 2, 2011): 23. Reprinted in Utne Reader online (June 21, 2011) and Denver Huffington Post online (October 2011).
“Reckoning the Ghost of Cactus Ed: Reflections on the Unforeseen Hazards of Trundling.” Whole Terrain: Reflective Environmental Practice 20 (2013): 53–57. (Contains passages from “What Would Edward Abbey Do?”)
“Executive Order: Rewilding.” Island Press Field Notes (February 2014). http://ipfieldnotes.org/executive-orders-for-2014-michael-branch. (Contains passages from “Pleistocene Rewilding.”)
“In Defense of Missiles” (here retitled “Missives from the Hill”) appeared in “Excerpts from ‘Rants from the Hill.’” The Nevada Review 4.3 (Fall 2012): 83–96.
WRITERS ARE VERY MUCH IN NEED of friends, and I have been fortunate to have so many in my life and in my corner. Here I offer my sincere thanks, along with equally sincere apologies to anyone I may have neglected to include.
Among fellow writers of environmental creative nonfiction, my thanks go to Rick Bass, Paul Bogard, Taylor Brorby, John Calderazzo, SueEllen Campbell, Craig Childs, Laird Christensen, Casey Clabough, Jennifer Cognard-Black, Chris Cokinos, Alison Deming, John Elder, Tom Fate, Andy Furman, Dimitri Keriotis, Ian Marshall, Kate Miles, Kathy Moore, John Murray, Nick Neely, Sean O’Grady, Tim Palmer, Bob Pyle, David Quammen, Eve Quesnel, Brad Rassler, Janisse Ray, Suzanne Roberts, Chris Robertson, Leslie Ryan, Terre Ryan, Gary Snyder, John Tallmadge, David Taylor, Leath Tonino, Nick Triolo, and Rick Van Noy. Very special thanks to John Price, John Lane, and David Gessner, whose support has been decisive.
Thanks also for the encouragement I’ve received from other friends in the environmental literature and humor studies communities, including Tom Bailey, Patrick Barron, Jim Bishop, Chip Blake, Kate Chandler, Ben Click, Tammy Cloutier, Nancy Cook, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Jeanie French, Charles Goodrich, Tom Hallock, Tom Hillard, Heather Houser, Richard Hunt, Jamie Iredell, Dave Johnson, Rochelle Johnson, Talley Kayser, Peter Kopp, Jason Leppig, Nancy Levinson, Mark Long, Tom Lynch, Kyhl Lyndgaard, Annie Merrill, Clint Mohs, David Morris, Tara Penry, Dan Philippon, Anna Lena Phillips, Justin Race, Steve Railton, Kate Rigby, Rowland Russell, Jennifer Sahn, Heidi Scott, Robert Sickels, Dave Stentiford, David Taylor, Jim Warren, Alan Weltzein, Tracy Wuster, and Boyd Zenner.
Closer to home, I’d like to offer thanks to fellow Great Basin writers Bill Fox, Shaun Griffin, Dave Lee, Mark Maynard, Ann Ronald, Rebecca Solnit, John Trent, Steve Trimble, Claire Watkins, Terry Tempest Williams, and Lindsay Wilson, with a nod to the desert writers who led my way: Mary Austin, Ed Abbey, Ellen Meloy, and Chuck Bowden. I’d also like to acknowledge the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Fund and the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame for recognizing and helping to support my work. Thanks to my colleagues in the MFA program at the University of Nevada, Reno: David Durham, Steve Gehrke, Sarah Hulse, Ann Keniston, Gailmarie Pahmeier, and, especially, Chris Coake. And thanks to my graduate and undergraduate students in the courses on American humor writing, place-based creative nonfiction, and western American literary nonfiction that I have taught at UNR in recent years.
Among Reno friends I’ve received valuable support from Alicia Barber, Pete Barbieri, Roz Bucy, Mike Colpo, Fil Corbitt, Donnie Curtis, Dondo Darue, David Fenimore, Daniel Fergus, Mark Gandolfo, Betty Glass, Torben Hansen, Kent Irwin, Tee Iseminger, Jo Landis, Tony Marek, Ashley Marshall, Eric Rasmussen, James Simmons, Angela Spires, and Jacque Sundstrand. Timely, professional editorial assistance from Laura Ofstad was crucial in bringing this book into port. And thanks to my closest friends, Colin and Monica Robertson and Cheryll and Steve Glotfelty. Special thanks to Cheryll, whose encouragement has been essential to my growth as a writer.
My sincere thanks go to the generous and hardworking folks at High Country News, where the “Rants from the Hill” essay series that ultimately led to this book ran online each month from July 2010 through April 2016. My friend and fellow environmental writer Nick Neely suggested me to High Country News, which put the series in motion. The support and assistance of editors Stephanie Paige Ogburn, Jodi Peterson, Paul Larmer, Tay Wiles, Michelle Nijhuis, Diane Sylvain, Cally Carswell, Emily Guerin, and Kate Schimel made it possible for a diverse and enthusiastic readership to spend a few minutes each month with my unusual way of seeing the world. This book would not have been possible without the support of the amazing community of editors, writers, scientists, readers, and activists that has formed around the vitally important work accomplished by High Country News.
I’d also like to express my appreciation for the many teachers and readers who have shared my essays. Pieces included in this book have been taught in creative writing or environmental literature courses in at least twenty-five states and have received more than one hundred thousand page views online. Of course, a kitten video posted to YouTube receives more hits than this in a half hour, but it’s gratifying to know that so many readers have enjoyed sharing glimpses of our dry slice of life in the high desert. Thanks also to Jessica Ziegler, of Vestor Logic, who constructed my website; please visit at http://michaelbranchwriter.com.
I want to offer very special thanks to George F. Thompson of GFT Publishing. It is impossible to imagine the current vitality of the environmental humanities without the quality books George has brought into the world over the past three decades. George’s insightful feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript was crucial in helping to shape it for publication.
I want to express my sincere gratitude to the terrific team at Shambhala/Roost Books, where my recent books have found such a good home. Like the book you now hold, Raising Wild: Dispatches from a Home in the Wilderness (2016) and Rants from the Hill: On Packrats, Bobcats, Wildfires, Curmudgeons, a Drunken Mary Kay Lady, and Other Encounters with the Wild in the High Desert (2017) are the work of this team of talented, hardworking folks. Thanks to Breanna Locke (Assistant Editor) and Julia Gaviria for seeing the manuscript down the final stretch, and to Daniel Urban-Brown (Art Director) for making the finished book a thing of beauty that also brings a smile. And thanks to KJ Grow (Sales and Marketing Manager), Claire Kelley (Marketing Manager), and the tireless Jess Townsend (Publicist), whose excellent work has helped my
books to find their readers. Most important, I offer my most sincere thanks to Jennifer Urban-Brown (Editor). My ongoing collaboration with Jenn continues to be among the most productive and enjoyable of my career, and I can only hope that folks who mistakenly believe that a writer’s relationship with their editor must be adversarial might be as fortunate as I have been in having such a supportive, patient, insightful collaborator in their work.
I am blessed with a family that is exceptionally tolerant of my eccentricities and ambitions, my fierce sense of place, and my idiosyncratic sense of humor. On the other side of the Sierra, thanks to our Central Valley people: O. B. and Deb Hoagland, Sister Kate and Uncle Adam Myers, Troy and Scott Allen, and our brood of cousins—Jenna, Alex, Zev, Ellie, and Quinn. Thanks always to my parents, Stu and Sharon Branch, who have directly or indirectly enabled everything I have accomplished in life.
I often tell our daughters, Hannah and Caroline, that “it takes a family to make a book.” The dedication of a book is the sincerest gesture of gratitude available to a writer. It is for this reason that Raising Wild was dedicated to my children and Rants from the Hill was dedicated to my parents. And so, I have dedicated How to Cuss in Western to my wife, Eryn, who is as loving, patient, smart, creative, funny, generous, and encouraging a partner as any desert rat might dream of having. Without her these stories would never have been told, and would never have happened to be told.
MICHAEL P. BRANCH is Professor of Literature and Environment at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he teaches creative nonfiction, American literature, the literature of humor, environmental studies, and film studies. He has published eight books and more than two hundred essays, articles, and reviews, and his creative nonfiction includes pieces that have received Honorable Mention for the Pushcart Prize and been recognized as Notable Essays in The Best American Essays (three times), The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading (a humor anthology). He is the recipient of the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award, the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame Silver Pen Award, and the Western Literature Association’s Manfred Award for Creative Writing and Willa Pilla Award for Humor Writing. His work has appeared in many book-length essay collections and in magazines including Orion, Ecotone, Utne Reader, Slate, National Parks, Terrain.org, Places, Whole Terrain, Red Rock Review, and Sustainable Play. His books Raising Wild: Dispatches from a Home in the Wilderness (2016) and Rants from the Hill: On Packrats, Bobcats, Wildfires, Curmudgeons, a Drunken Mary Kay Lady, and Other Encounters with the Wild in the High Desert (2017) were published by Shambhala’s Roost Books imprint and are distributed by Penguin Random House.
Mike lives with his wife, Eryn, and daughters, Hannah Virginia and Caroline Emerson, in a passive solar home of their own design at 6,000 feet on a remote hilltop in the high desert of northwestern Nevada, in the ecotone where the Great Basin Desert and Sierra Nevada Mountains meet. There he writes, plays blues harp, drinks IPA and sour mash, curses at baseball on the radio, cuts stove wood, and walks at least 1,000 miles each year in the surrounding hills, canyons, ridges, arroyos, and playas.
For more information on Mike Branch and his work, please visit his website at http://michaelbranchwriter.com.
MICHAEL BRANCH built his home on a remote hilltop in the Great Basin Desert of northwestern Nevada, a wild and extreme landscape where he lives with his wife and two curious little girls. Moving between pastoral passages on the beauty found in the desert and humorous tales of the humility of being a father, Raising Wild offers an intimate portrait of a landscape where mountain lions and ground squirrels can threaten in equal measure. With Branch’s distinct lyricism and wit, this exceedingly barren landscape becomes a place resonant with the rattle of snakes, the clatter of pronghorn antelope, and the rustle of juniper trees, a place that is teeming with energy, surprise, and an endless web of connections. Part memoir, part homage to an environment all-to-often dismissed as inhospitable, Raising Wild presents an intergenerational approach to nature, family, and the forgotten language of wildness.
WELCOME TO THE LAND OF WILDFIRE, hypothermia, desiccation, and rattlers. The stark and inhospitable high-elevation landscape of Nevada’s Great Basin Desert may not be an obvious (or easy) place to settle down, but for self-professed desert rat Michael Branch, it’s home. Of course, living in such an unforgiving landscape gives one many things to rant about. Fortunately for us, Branch—humorist, environmentalist, and author of Raising Wild—is a prodigious ranter. From bees hiving in the walls of his house to owls trying to eat his daughters’ cat—not to mention his eccentric neighbors—adventure, humor, and irreverence abound on Branch’s small slice of the world, which he lovingly calls Ranting Hill.
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