Ana Maria Spagna

Poems from a life spent up close and personal with nature chronicle humanity's effect on the earth, and just as importantly, the earth's effect on us. A clear-eyed, and open-hearted reckoning with contemporary life in the Anthropocene.

For many years, Ana Maria Spagna has stayed put, mostly, in a small mountain valley at the head of a glacier-carved lake. You're so lucky to live there, people say. She is lucky. But she is also restless. In Uplake she takes road trips, flies to distant cities, fantasizes about other people's lives, and then returns home again to muse on rootedness, yearning, commitment, ambition, wonder, and love. These engaging, reflective essays celebrate the richness of it all: winter floods and summer fires, the roar of a chainsaw and a fiddle in the wilderness, long hikes and open-water swims, an injured bear, a lost wedding ring, and a tree in the middle of a river. Uplake reminds us to love what we have while encouraging us to still imagine what we want.

For most of the past century, Humbug Valley, a forest-hemmed meadow sacred to the Mountain Maidu tribe, was in the grip of a utility company. Washington's White Salmon River was saddled with a fish-obstructing, inefficient dam, and the Timbisha Shoshone Homeland was unacknowledged within the boundaries of Death Valley National Park. Until people decided to reclaim them.In Reclaimers, Ana Maria Spagna drives an aging Buick up and down the long strip of West Coast mountain ranges—the Panamints, the Sierras, the Cascades—and alongside rivers to meet the people, many of them wise women, who persevered for decades with little hope of success to make changes happen. In uncovering their heroic stories, Spagna seeks a way for herself, and for all of us, to take back and to make right in a time of unsettling ecological change.

"This coming-of-age story will appeal to extreme sports enthusiasts, environmental activists, and fans of strong female characters." --BOOKLIST Fourteen-year-old Charlotte moves from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado to Washington's Cascade Mountains, where she hopes to continue training for the national snowboarding championships. After her father signs an anti-development petition, she loses access to the local resort and takes to the backcountry, where she meets nature on its own terms. When adventure turns to tragedy, Charlotte learns that even our deepest scars can be lucky ones. ANA MARIA SPAGNA lives and writes in Stehekin, Washington, a very small town in the North Cascades accessible only by foot, ferry, or float plane. She teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. Spagna writes for magazines about nature, work, and life in a small community, and is the author of several award-winning nonfiction books, including 100 Skills You'll Need for the End of the World (As We Know It), a humor-infused guide for how to live more lightly on the planet.

For most of the past century, Humbug Valley, a forest-hemmed meadow sacred to the Mountain Maidu tribe, was in the grip of a utility company. Washington's White Salmon River was saddled with a fish-obstructing, inefficient dam, and the Timbisha Shoshone Homeland was unacknowledged within the boundaries of Death Valley National Park. Until people decided to reclaim them.In Reclaimers, Ana Maria Spagna drives an aging Buick up and down the long strip of West Coast mountain ranges—the Panamints, the Sierras, the Cascades—and alongside rivers to meet the people, many of them wise women, who persevered for decades with little hope of success to make changes happen. In uncovering their heroic stories, Spagna seeks a way for herself, and for all of us, to take back and to make right in a time of unsettling ecological change.

From celestial navigation to sharpening blades, Ana Maria Spagna outlines 100 skills you’ll find indispensable for life after an apocalyptic global catastrophe. She covers obvious needs like first aid and farming, while also providing suggestions on how to build a safe and culturally rich community through storytelling and music making. Full of quirky illustrations by Brian Cronin, this book will provoke surprise, debate, and laughter as it leads you to greater self-reliance and joy — whatever the future brings.

In Potluck, Ana Maria Spagna explores the enduring human connection to place, journeying from Tijuana to a California beach to Utah’s canyon country—and, always, back to the sparsely populated valley in the North Cascades that she calls home.Potluck homes in on the everyday gatherings that, over time, define a community: a makeshift wedding, an art gallery opening, a farewell potluck, a work party, a work party, a campfire, a political caucus, a funeral. “What connects us?” Spagna asks, and she reveals, again and again, the gift of community—easy and uneasy, deep and enduring and essential.

Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus chronicles the story of an American family against the backdrop of one of the civil rights movement's lesser-known stories. In January 1957, Joseph Spagna and five other young men waited to board a city bus called the Sunnyland in Tallahassee, Florida. Their plan was simple but dangerous: ride the bus together—three blacks and three whites—get arrested, and take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Fifty years later Ana Maria Spagna sets off on a journey to understand what happened and why. Spagna travels from her remote mountain home in the Pacific Northwest to contemporary Tallahassee, searching for the truth of the incident and her father's involvement. Her journey is complicated by the fact that her father never spoke of the Sunnyland experience and died unexpectedly when she was eleven. Seeking out the other bus riders, now in their seventies, Spagna tries to make sense of their conflicting stories. Her odyssey becomes further troubled by the sudden diagnosis of her mother's terminal cancer. Winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction prize, Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus deftly weaves cultural and personal history, memoir, and reportage in this fascinating look at a family and a nation's past.