Who We Are

On a windy, frigid evening in late November 2016, not long after Donald Trump’s election, Jennifer McGaha and her three adult children ignored signs warning visitors not to enter a park after hours and scaled the gate. By cellphone light they made their way through the fog along a short trail onto the rock face of Caesars Head, a dramatic outcropping along the Blue Ridge Escarpment with a view of North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. But on this evening, with forest fires blazing, the smoke and haze cast everything below in a dull, grayish hue—the trees, the birds, the mountains.

“The air smelled of campfires,” writes McGaha, in the opening chapter of her wise and bracing new memoir, Bushwhacking: How to Get Lost in the Woods and Write Your Way Out.

“…The world was on fire, both literally and metaphorically, and though I could not know exactly how the next four years would play out, watching the blazes, I imagined devastation in the woods—the terrified animals, the century-old trees exploding, the habitats destroyed, the stench of death—and I was filled with foreboding.”     

Bushwhacking is a memoir about writing, yet it’s as much about living a full life, which, if you ask me, is a department in which we writers can use considerable help. The memoir grew out of the cross pollination of McGaha’s love of writing and her passion for the woods. She believes writers need to get out of themselves. For her, exploring the outdoors has been a powerful way to go about it.

 “…The term bushwhacking implies a physical thrashing about—slapping at branches, slicing through thickets, leaping over downed trees—but it also connotes a certain fortitude and resilience….”

The subtitle How to Get Lost in the Woods and Write Your Way Out underscores the need for the writer to leave the well-trod trail and strike out on their own, risking getting turned around, even lost, in order to arrive at a new place in their work.

At the heart of this book, which at times feels spiritual in its scope, is a call for more joy and optimism in our lives. She says being joyful is not a state of being, “… rather a practice, a way of moving through this world, and none of us will ever discover all that is possible if we cling stubbornly to our fears and doubts, if we stick only to the safe paths, the familiar, well-marked ones with no wild boars or stinging nettle or treacherous river crossing or deep ravines.” 

So on that evening when her family climbed onto Caesars Head, leaned against the guardrail and looked out on the foreboding landscape, something else began to happen:

“…the sun slid behind the mountain below, leaving only fire and shadow—reds and oranges and grays and deep blackness—a stunning display of flickering light. One mountain below was backlit with flames, a cinematic feat of nature. What moments before had struck me as tragic had been transformed, and the scene was breathtaking, otherworldly, spectacular. What should’ve been darkness was light, and what should’ve been light was darkness, and in that moment, I no longer knew who or what or where I was, from whence I had come or where I was going.” 

Bushwhacking is a funny, irreverent, and poignant testament to the need for taking risks in our lives and in our writing. Throughout the book, McGaha presents us with images, moments and scenes from her own life, of ways she’s tried to challenge herself and discover what she’s capable of.

McGaha became expert at living out of her comfort zone, when, a decade ago, she and her husband found themselves in financial straits and had to sell their suburban home and move to a dilapidated, snake-infested 100-year-old cabin, deep in a hollow. In her first memoir, Flat Broke with Two Goats, McGaha gives an account of her family’s many trials and tribulations in their move from suburban living to life in the woods. It also describes how over time she became acclimated to life in the woods, so much so, with their goats and chickens and ever-present dogs, it had become home. And now McGaha’s daily forays into the woods have become essential to her well being, shaping her into a braver, more adventurous and ultimately more joyful person: 

“When I was younger, I never ventured into the forest alone …. but now I do a good bit of solo hiking. Every time I step (or ride) onto a trail I remind myself that I can choose to be fearful or I can choose not to be. The results of an encounter with the unknown will likely be the same regardless, so I try to choose bravery, to live the life I want to live, not recklessly but boldly. Truth be told, I’m much more afraid of not going into the woods than I am of being mauled or eaten there. I am afraid of becoming complacent, of living a life that does not inspire courage, a life that does not feed my soul. And so it has been with my writing life.”

Each essay in Bushwacking revolves around an image or scene of McGaha’s many adventures in the woods and then links that to some aspect of writing. In “The Thrill of Discovery,” she relates a family trip to Glacier National Park where they found themselves so hemmed in by thick clouds, they could only inch along on the trail, until they nearly walked right into two immense big horn sheep which materialized in front of them. “Writing memoir is like this: a backwoods stroll that, with one sudden shift in weather, becomes an adventure.” 

In “Coming in Hot” McGaha reluctantly learns how to zipline, something she was terrified of attempting but in which she persevered anyway:

“Getting out of your comfort zone is not something you must do only once in a blue moon. Challenging yourself, both in writing and in life, means constantly pushing boundaries of what you believe you can do.” 

In “Back in the Saddle,” an essay about learning to mountain bike, McGaha connects mastering mountain biking with focus in her writing:

“Mountain biking would teach me many lessons, but the lesson of where to fix my gaze was the first and hardest. Do not look down. Do not look back or too far ahead. Look three feet in front of you at all times.”

This same kind of discipline and focus has also served her writing, especially when a subject feels too big or overwhelming. She’s learned to tighten her focus, start with something small, such as an image or a moment, something seemingly insignificant, something manageable.

In the most harrowing scene in Bushwhacking, McGaha is hiking through the forest with her daughter, two friends and their half a dozen dogs when her daughter suddenly stops:

“‘Do you hear that?’

“I hadn’t. But then I did—a swarm of cicadas or bees or … All at once, the dogs were snarling and yapping at something just off the trail. Then, above the thick underbrush, a long thick, angry rattlesnake appeared, its tail shaking like a tambourine, its body weaving through the air. ‘Dancing’ we would say later. ‘Writhing like Kaa from The Jungle Book.’ Frantic, we screamed for the dogs, who, alarmed by our alarm, all raced back to us. We gathered everyone on leashes and eventually arrived back to our car, four women and seven dogs, all safe and sound.” 

That night afterwards, McGaha woke remembering the image of the snake writhing inches from the dogs. She worried about what would’ve happened if her daughter hadn’t heard the snake when she did? What if the dogs hadn’t listened?  McGaha connects this with similar fear she experiences when she’s writing:

“…Both in writing and in life, I tend to get overwhelmed by possibilities. What if my writing isn’t interesting to anyone but me?  What if I sound ridiculous? What if I’m too old to be doing this? What if I never publish anything again? What if, what if, what if…” 

McGaha likens her fear of the snake to the deep fear that often stands in a writer’s way of getting words down on the page. She believes most writers will experience many such trying moments over the course of their writing lives, and that what will help them not give up is the tenacity and fortitude and resilience they have practiced out on the trail.

The writing world is full of books on craft, but mastering craft is only half the writer’s battle. In Bushwhacking, McGaha not only addresses the craft of writing, but she goes on to help us explore deeper questions, questions that go to the emotional and spiritual heart of who we are.