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Summer Fishtrap in Oregon: Gary Snyder, Wilderness Adventures and Western Writing

By Naomi Gibbs, Guest Writer, 8-04-10

Brian Doyle, Gary Snyder and Jack Shoemaker at this year's Summer Fishtrap.

Summer Fishtrap
Where: The Wallowa Lake Camp just outside of Joseph, Oregon.
When: Annually, in July.
What: Put on every year by Wallowa County’s Fishtrap, an organization working to promote clear thinking and writing in and about the West, Summer Fishtrap is a week of writing workshops, readings, open mics, music, discussions, and film. Every year Summer Fishtrap has a different theme, which influences workshop topics, presenters, and readers. This year’s theme was “Matter and Spirit.”
Cost: $405 for the workshop week, $145 for the Gathering weekend if participant also is attending a workshop, $205 for the Gathering if the participant is not attending a workshop. Fishtrap also offers lodging and meal options throughout the week, at varying costs.

Naomi Gibbs, an intern at Fishtrap, offers her reflections on the events:

An Overview of Summer Fishtrap

For a group of 200 writers and readers, mid-July means Summer Fishtrap. They gather at the cusp of the Eagle Cap Wilderness Area in Joseph, Oregon, just past the far side of Wallowa Lake. Summer Fishtrap is one of Fishtrap’s biggest events of the year. In the spirit of its mission of promoting clear thinking and writing in and about the West, Summer Fishtrap is home to writers and readers inspired by the vast Western United States.  Summer Fishtrap is split into two parts: the workshop week and the gathering. The workshop week runs from Sunday night until Friday afternoon. Participants meet in their workshop groups for three hours in the morning and then have the option of watching a film, attending presentations, going for a hike, swimming in the lake, writing, socializing, or exploring local towns in the afternoon. After dinner there are readings and discussions.

This year there was an offering of eight different week-long workshops: a fiction workshop with Ehud Havazelet, song-writing with Cosy Sheridan, poetry with Holly Hughes, a writing-in-the-wilderness workshop with Charles Goodrich, memoir with Amy Minato, historical fiction with Karen Fisher, a teen-workshop with Beth Russell, and a children’s workshop with Kirsten Rian. Along with these workshops, this Summer Fishtrap week saw the end of John Daniel’s yearlong memoir workshop and the beginning of Jane Vandenburgh’s yearlong novel workshop.  During the week we also were blessed by the presence of aural historian Jack Loeffler, who gave three afternoon presentations.

The Gathering weekend is a rich three days of discussion and readings.  Joining our workshop faculty, Fishtrap was thrilled to welcome Dian Million, Brian Doyle, Robert Pyle, Jack Shoemaker, and Gary Snyder.  Special presentations during the weekend included readings from two of the Eastern Oregon Writers-in-Residence––one of Fishtrap’s other programs–– Laura Gamache and Geronimo Tagatac, readings from John Daniel’s yearlong memoir workshop participants, and an honoring of longtime Fishtrap supporter Janie Tippet, who recently published her first book Four Lines a Day.

Along with those larger group events, the Gathering also had a variety of activities for smaller groups of participants, such as an organized hike with local poet and naturalist Mary Emerick, a morning writing session with author Pam Steele and Tim Schell, professor of English and Writing at the Columbia Gorge Community College, screenings of the film The Practice of the Wild: A Conversation with Gary Snyder and Jim Harrison, a morning meditation with Reverend Meido Tuttle from the Wallowa Buddhist Temple, and an informal music jam on the lawn.

The Vibe at Wallowa Lake Camp

I have been working as an intern at Fishtrap this summer and in the month preceding the conference, I realized that while I was excited for the event, I had no idea what to expect from the week. While I was certainly familiar with Gary Snyder’s work, I was not familiar with any of the other faculty members.  I did not know any of the participants.  I had not even been to the Wallowa Lake Camp, Summer Fishtrap’s home.  So, as I drove up the dirt road and passed through the camp’s big wooden gate, I felt a little apprehensive.  This week was meant, in a sense, to be a sort of capstone for my internship––how unfortunate it would be if I ended up not liking it.  After a few hours of set-up, registration began and my mood lightened.

As people gathered on the lawn outside Bailey Lodge, Fishtrap’s temporary headquarters, I saw old-time Fishtrappers, comfortable and welcoming, and newbies, like myself, awed by the warmth with which they were greeted by staff, board members, and fellow participants. In her evaluation at the end of the week, one participant wrote: “When I arrived at registration I was greeted like a long-lost relative. Wonderful! Amazing!” Amazing, indeed. By the end of the week I felt fully enveloped in the Fishtrap fold, after lively conversations at Russell’s (a Wallowa Lake restaurant with a large selection of microbrews and desserts that stays open late during the week), free time reading in the sun, constant support from my co-workers, the fleet of volunteers helping us, and the many participants always afoot.

Barbara Dills, the Interim Executive Director of Fishtrap, said to me the other day: “There aren’t workshop teachers here, there are workshop leaders. Everyone teaches and everyone’s a writer.” This, certainly, is true. Surrounded by Douglas fir, granite, and––if you’re lucky––maybe a trout or two, there’s an egalitarian co-mingling of ideas and inspiration at Fishtrap that extends beyond just the participants and faculty, and includes the land, the plants, and the animals. All around there are touches of the community that Fishtrap fosters.  Round tables.  Pairs of chairs scattered around the lawn, bouncing between them sparks of conversation.  Writers settled into the riparian area––deep waters for this time of year.  Flocks of workshoppers left after breakfast and disappeared into the woods, the riverbanks, yurts, and cabins to write and to learn from one another, then emerged at noon for a communal lunch of freshly-baked pita bread, falafel, and homemade pomegranate cookies. A week at Fishtrap is a week spent in a life apart, a life of group thought, of flowing ink and bubbling thoughts, of, as we heard this past week, mountains and rivers without end.

Matter and Spirit

This year’s theme, Matter and Spirit, was inspired, in part, by a line in Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust: A History of Walking, an account of Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder’s circumambulation of Mount Tamalpais. At one point in the journey, Snyder turned to Kerouac and said, “The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is.” How fortunate we all were, to have Snyder himself join us during the Gathering, accompanying the other faculty members as they led us through Fishtrap’s first venture into the spiritual world. Discussions moved from the world’s religions, to animism, to the physical act of writing, to the meaning of “native,” to the process of the wild.  At every turn there were not just inspiring speakers, but thought-provoking questions from the audience, that slid right into meal-time fodder as small groups huddled together and recapped the day’s lessons.

I found myself glued to the stage until the end, as the week wrapped up with a conversation between Gary Snyder, Brian Doyle, and Jack Shoemaker.

Naomi Gibbs is a senior Environmental Humanities major at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. She worked as an intern for Fishtrap in the summer of 2010 and plans to be involved in Fishtrap in the future.

Are you interested in reporting on a Western literary festival?  Please send an email to NewWest Books & Writers Editor Jenny Shank, jenny@newest.net.

Also in this series:

Aspen Summer Words Fest: Southern Lit, Secret Hopes and a Surprise Stand-In by Jennifer Lee Sullivan

The Tin House Summer Writers Workshop in Portland, Oregon by Bonnie ZoBell

Plus: The Map!

Check out NewWest’s comprehensive map and rundown of regional events, Book Festivals of the West.

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