Hello, Chautauquans! We're starting off our blog with profiles of some of the authors that we have featured over the years.
To
many, nature folds into whatever is leftover past the world of brick houses
and computer screens. To Mark Liebenow, nature is much more than a convenient
background: it is something sacred.
Growing
up in Wisconsin, Liebenow was an avid outdoorsman. As a child in a farming
community, “the world was [his] backyard.” He credits his time in the Boy
Scouts of America with teaching him survival skills and instilling within a
great love for nature. He also loved to read. While he favored books like the Hardy Boys series, he also read “anything
that had words—magazines, cereal boxes, [and] the warning labels on pillows.”
At the age of 10, he began to summarize his Boy Scout troop’s meetings for the
newspaper. He quickly discovered that the meetings sounded similar, and so he
attempted to find new ways to make the material sound interesting. In high
school, he discovered journalism and poetry. In his sophomore year at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Liebenow changed his major from pre-med to journalism
and never looked back.
“Writing,” he
explains, “is how I have always understood the world.”
Liebenow first discovered Chautauqua
during college. His grandmother nominated him for a scholarship to act as the
Wisconsin representative over the summer. That year, he attended as many seminars,
classes, and workshops in literature and writing as he could at the Chautauqua grounds.
After one memorable event, he even spoke with acclaimed broadcast journalist
Ted Koppel, who said that a journalist “needed to
be a specialist in one area of knowledge and be able to write.” As a journalism
major with an interest in nature and religion, Liebenow took this advice to
heart. Liebenow pondered Koppel’s words while exploring the lake and woods of
Chautauqua and found that he felt called to go to seminary.
For Liebenow, nature, writing, and
spirituality are linked.
“Nature is where I go when I feel
disconnected… I feel the presence of the
Other, the Power that flows through the Universe. Hiking… renews the
creative spark inside and shakes me out of the boxes of complacency I’ve
settled into.”
In 2001, Liebenow’s family suffered
a terrible blow. His wife died, suddenly and prematurely, and he could not find
any books that rang true in terms of his feelings about his loss. To cope, he threw
himself into writing. Prior to his wife’s death, Liebenow had written three
books on theology. Now he tried something different. His fourth book, Mountains of Light: Seasons of Reflection in
Yosemite, is an exploration of the nature activist John Muir’s interpretations
of the park. It features “geology, botany, and biology” of Yosemite while
trailing a steady thread of Liebenow’s grief over his loss.
While researching the Yosemite book,
Liebenow spent a lot of time hiking alone. That way, he kept himself free from
distractions and was able to “listen to nature.” The process, he says, “added a
measure of danger,” but opened his mind to the sanctity of the natural world. A
chapter from the Yosemite manuscript went on to win the Chautauqua Prize for
Nonfiction, be named one of Best American
Essays 2012’s notable essays, and receive a Pushcart Prize nomination.
Liebenow also worked on a second
manuscript alongside Mountains of Light:
a grief manuscript about his late wife. An essay from the work, “Tinkering with
Grief in the Woods,” won the Literal Latte Essay Award in 2012.
Nonfiction is not Liebenow’s only
genre. He is also an accomplished poet and beginning playwright. His poetry has
been adapted into song by composers like John Orfe and Stephen Heinemann. He
even worked as a lyricist for jazz musician Robert Levy.
“Where all this will lead, I don’t
know,” he admits, in keeping with his adventurous spirit, “but it’s exciting.”
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