You Should Read DAMNATION SPRING by Ash Davidson
Reading Notes
As one character in Damnation Spring tells another, “You get a miracle in life, you take it” (315).
To paraphrase: Your sister gives you a good book, you share it—which is another way of saying that you should read Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson.
It’s 1977 in northwest California. Rich Gunderson has spent his life among the redwoods, and since the age of fifteen, he’s worked for Sanderson Timber Company. He’s proud of his trade, a pride Davidson gives voice to with her detailed and knowledgeable descriptions of logging. Although I could imagine a place, say somewhere that rhymes with RoodGeads, where complaints might be lodged against Davidson’s use of technical jargon, the passages about high leads, spar trees, chokers, guylines, and pumpkins demonstrate the expertise of an overlooked and undervalued working class. The terms are a sign of respect, not any sort of authorial flex.
At fifty-three, Rich is already past the average lifespan of a logger. His incessant aches and stiff knees remind him daily that he can’t be a high climber forever. When presented with the opportunity to purchase a parcel of land, Rich goes for it. It’s not the land he’s interested in: it’s the 24-7 tree, “a monster, grown even wider now than the twenty-four feet, seven inches that originally earned her the name, three hundred seventy feet high, the tallest of the scruff of old-growth redwoods left along the top of the 24-7 ridge” (7). As the new landowner, he stands to make “twenty years’ salary for a few months’ work” if he can cut down the 24-7 and get it to a lumber mill (22).
Me (left) & my sister (right) in Redwood National Park, circa sometime in the ‘90s
One problem: Rich can’t access the tree until Sanderson clears Damnation Grove and runs roads near the 24-7 ridge—and environmentalists are working to undermine the logging company’s efforts.
Oh, and one more problem: Rich neglects to tell his wife, Colleen, that he’s gambled all of their savings and taken out a huge loan for the 24-7.
Colleen has problems of her own. She desperately wants to have another baby, a sibling for their five-year-old son, but she keeps having miscarriages. As a midwife, she also notices a concerning trend of birth defects in women around town. When her ex-boyfriend, Daniel, returns to town as an environmental scientist, he warns her the water her family draws from Damnation Creek may be contaminated by the herbicides sprayed by both the logging company and the forest service.
Daniel is an enrolled member of the Yurok tribe. He’s returned to the area with funding to study the water quality. He tells Colleen, “Even with the hatcheries, the coho run’s down to almost nothing. . . . It’s our whole life, our whole identity, as far back as anyone can remember, you know? . . . We can’t be Yuroks, without salmon” (39).
Most people around town discredit Daniel as just another hippie, stirring up trouble in one place before moving on to the next trendy protest. As Colleen’s sister bitterly remarks, “Can’t mow your lawn without somebody showing up to protest. . . . What do they wipe their butts with? That’s what I’d like to know” (32).
But the tragedies continue to pile upon the small community. After a swath of trees are cut down, there is nothing to hold the land in place, and a mudslide all but buries a neighbor’s house. When Colleen checks on her, she finds “[a] narrow, waist-deep trench tunneled around the cabin’s side” (322). The negative environmental effects of logging and spraying become impossible to ignore.
Redwood National Park, circa sometime in the ‘90s
Despite the life-or-death stakes and the high emotions running through the community, Davidson’s prose remains unsentimental. She tells the story with a firmly realistic narrative, building characters as flawed as the burled trees [Footnote: A burl is a deformation within a tree.] around them. And this, perhaps, is the biggest problem of all: The community witnessed precursors to this devastation and didn’t take action. Lark, Rich’s friend, lost his wife and two sons in a flood years ago. When Colleen drives through the area, she crosses “Gold Bear Bridge” and passes “the two tarnished bears where the old bridge had stood, before the flood. A logjam had bashed against the footings, pounding until they gave way. She’d forgotten these bears, still guarding their invisible bridge” (116).
The bears’ invisible bridge is the warning sign the logging industry chose to ignore. Davidson’s book is a reminder for us to keep an eye out for the forgotten bears of our own age.
My sister was unimpressed: “You call these big?!”
Need-to-Know
Pub Date: 2021
Setting: near Arcata, CA
Timeline: summer 1977 - summer 1978
Length: 442 pages; audiobook runs just over 15.5 hours
Narrator: alternating close 3rd POV from perspectives of Rich, Colleen, and their son
Book Club
As the harm of the herbicides becomes clear, Colleen faces a choice: Side with Sanderson, which controls her family’s financial future, or side with Daniel, who represents protection for her family’s health. What do you think of her choices? What would you have done in her situation?
The opening chapter introduces Lark, who was a friend of Rich’s father. Lark feels responsible for the death of Rich’s father, so he pays special attention to Rich. Lark can be read as an archetypal mentor. Archetypes are common character types that repeat in literature. Psychologists refer to 12 common archetypes: the innocent (wants happiness), the orphan (desires belonging), the hero (seeks courage), the caregiver (protects others), the explorer (seeks freedom), the rebel (wants change), the lover (wants connection), the creator (seeks a legacy), the jester (wants joy), the sage (seeks truth), the magician (seeks solutions), and the ruler (wants control). What other archetypes do you see in the novel? For fun, take an archetype quiz online. Do you agree with the archetype it identifies you as? Why or why not?
Close Reading
Davidson uses the motif of a toothache to symbolize dangers of the herbicide and logging practices. Throughout the novel, Rich suffers from a rotten tooth. While riding the “crummy” to work, he “presse[s] his tongue to his tooth to dull the ache” (73). Despite being in constant pain, his fear of dentists keeps him from seeking treatment. He’d rather live with familiar pain than open himself up to change.
Daniel, as the representative of the environmental movement, tries to warn the community that their traditional practices are causing harm. When he runs into Colleen at the gas station, he warns her about the box of Cracker Jacks she buys, saying, “Take it easy on those things. . . . They’ll rot the teeth right out of your head” (241). He recognizes that something that offers an immediate benefit—the sweetness from caramel corn or the money from a milled tree—can lead to pain in the future. Eating the Cracker Jacks might hurt Colleen from the inside, just as the community is hurting itself by decimating the redwoods that protect it.
It’s significant, then, that Rich finally decides to get his tooth pulled. He drives to a nearby town and tells the dentist to pull it rather than save it: “I’d just as soon be rid of it. It’s giving me hell” (331). This moment represents important growth in his character. Once the tooth is removed, he’s able to assess his situation more clearly and stand up against Merle Sanderson, the owner of the logging company.
Creative Writing
Nonfiction: A stakeholder map is a visual tool to identify and evaluate groups of people affected by a decision. This four-quadrant template is popular with businesses, but I also use a version of this idea with students when we’re writing conflict resolution essays. Think of a complex situation in your life. Describe it in a paragraph or two. Then, on a separate piece of paper, list all the individuals who are affected by the situation. Sort those people by similarities into groups. Draw arrows and lines of connection to demonstrate how those groups interact and overlap. Then, rank them in terms of power. Who has the most? Who has the least? After completing this mapping exercise, reread your initial writing. What new insights or perspectives do you have about this situation? How could you round out your description?
Fiction: Chub, Colleen and Rich’s son, is given many chapters throughout the book. When Davidson chooses to recount a contentious community meeting from his perspective, she writes, “His mom’s cold hand tugged him through the chanting signs. It was crowded inside too, rain rolling off slickers, cold air gusting in every time someone pushed through the doors, dads flipping their coat collars, moms lowering newspapers tented over heads cautiously, like it might still be raining inside” (298).
As a child, Chub notices and interprets his surroundings in a different way. Take a protagonist from a current work-in-progress and jump them back in time to their childhood. Follow them around for an afternoon. What do they do for fun? What do they pretend to be on the playground? What foods do they absolutely refuse to eat? What games do they beg their parents to play? And how might this history bleed into their older self in interesting ways?
Sentence Study
Colleen sews roses onto a baptism gown for her niece:
“Four older sisters, a whole childhood of hand-me-downs: Alsea should start out with her own baptism gown.”
Generally, we’re told to use a colon to introduce a list so long as an independent clause precedes the colon. For example:
I bought ingredients for a cake: milk, eggs, flour, sugar, and oil.
The words after the colon don’t make a complete sentence; they’re just a list of nouns.
Davidson’s sentence shows us the inverse. She leads the sentence with a list of things (nouns) in Alsea’s life: “Four older sisters, a whole childhood of hand-me-downs.” Instead of introducing her list with an independent clause, as Grammar would have her do, she instead puts the complete thought after the colon: “Alsea should start out with her own baptism gown” (79). I love this little flip because we tend to remember best what happens at the end of the sentence. When Davidson provides Colleen’s pronouncement after her reasoning, we understand how much Colleen cares for her niece and, whether she admits it or not, judges her sister’s approach to parenting.
