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Praise for Recapture
“Erica Olsen gives us the dream life of the Southwest in this striking collection, a landscape told in language as spare and pungent and exacting as the desert itself. A swift and lovely debut from a writer of real gifts.”
—Kevin Canty, author of Where the Money Went
“These sly, heartbreaking stories capture the modern West, where the past is ever-present and the future is already here. The writing is clear and straightforward; but like the West itself, the stories are anything but simple. The characters are twenty-first-century wanderers, settlers, and adventurers who find, like those who came before them, that the West is a trickster, and the breathtaking view of the wide open spaces can be a fatal distraction from the rattler—or the bottomless canyon—in your path. Funny, grim stories from a writer with a sharp eye and a distinctive voice.”
—Alison Baker, author of How I Came West, and Why I Stayed
“Beneath their polished surfaces, Erica Olsen’s stories are subversive, sometimes darkly funny, and always disquieting. When you set off on a hike in her universe, be prepared for surprises. You may find yourself exploring Utah—or Norway—or a surreal faux wilderness where rainbows are regularly scheduled and gnats are outlawed. Also, prepare to be exhilarated. This accomplished writer really knows her way through the tricky zone between truth and falsehood where art is made.”
—Susan Lowell Humphreys, author of Ganado Red
“Olsen is the real thing. As wild as David Foster Wallace or George Saunders and as tender as James Salter or Alice Munro, Olsen’s stories are hilarious, painful, and achingly lovely. Whether conveying the lonesomeness of spending an evening in an Idaho hot spring loving the wrong person or envisioning a weird new world where a second Grand Canyon can be printed “grain by grain” from a 3D printer, Olsen is a joy to read.”
—Amanda Eyre Ward, author of Close Your Eyes
“Like all good narratives, Erica Olsen’s “Grand Canyon II” suggests great consequence. The past is another country. The task of memory is impossible. No one exists and nothing ever happened. But somewhere in your brain, a beautiful lie is being spun….”
—Sarah Manguso, author of The Guardians
“Recapture is like a lost map of the backcountry, detailing the forgotten places where secrets shove up through the dust, pieces of lives demanding to be made whole. The territory is endlessly illuminating and constantly surprising, revealing a master storyteller at work.”
—Kim Todd, author of Tinkering with Eden: A Natural History of Exotic Species in America
Copyright
First Torrey House Press Edition, October 2012
Copyright © 2012 by Erica Olsen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form or by any means without the written consent of the publisher.
Published by Torrey House Press, LLC
P.O. Box 750196
Torrey, Utah 84775 U.S.A. www.torreyhouse.com
ISBN: 9781937226138
Cover by Jeff Fuller, Crescent Moon Communications
This book is a work of fiction. References to actual people, places, and events are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.
Some of the stories in this book have appeared in the following publications: “Grand Canyon II” in Gulf Coast; and, in different form, “Everything Is Red” in Santa Monica Review; “Driveaway” in Terrain; “Reverse Archaeology” in ZYZZYVA; “The Keepers” in Tahoe Blues (Bona Fide Books); “Going to Randsburg” in Camas; “Bristlecone” in Blue Mesa Review; “Everywhen” in High Desert Journal; “A Dish of Stinging Nettles” in The Desert Voice (Moab Poets & Writers). “Anniversary Poem,” by George Oppen, from New Collected Poems, copyright © 1972 by George Oppen. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. Utah: A Guide to the State, compiled by Workers of the Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration for the State of Utah. Copyright © 1941 by Utah State Institute of Fine Arts.
Recapture & Other Stories
Erica Olsen
Torrey House Press, LLC
Salt Lake City, Utah
We are troubled by incredulity
We are troubled by scratched things
—George Oppen
Everything is red.
—Utah: A Guide to the State
Compiled by Workers of the Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration for the State of Utah
Grand Canyon II
For a long time I wanted to go back to the Grand Canyon. Then came the dual catastrophe: an earthquake that left Grand Canyon Village in ruins, and a mining accident, the details of which have never been released to the public. So, it’s too late. No one knows how long the decontamination will take. A visitor center and replica canyon off Interstate 40 near Williams, Arizona, had long been proposed as a way to relieve stress on park resources; after the disaster, those plans were revived and Grand Canyon II was approved and constructed. The new park replicates the five-mile stretch that historically drew the most visitors, from Grand Canyon Village to Yaki Point, encompassing the main overlooks and the Bright Angel and South Kaibab trailheads. It is a geological clone made possible by the recent advances in rapid prototyping with which we have all become familiar. Using technology similar to that developed for bioprinting organs for transplant, Grand Canyon II was printed in 3D by depositing layers of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rock, from the inner gorge to the upper canyon, from Vishnu schist to the Kaibab formation. Grain by grain, the canyon was remade. In an office in Los Angeles, I worked on the editorial team, checking contours, textures, Munsell color specifications. I proofread the Coconino sandstone. The design files replicated native plants, the effects of erosion, marine fossils, even graffiti and the scars from mule shoes and trekking poles. Birds and animals find their own way in: flickers, hummingbirds, a thriving population of Abert’s squirrels, the omnipresent mule deer. After the first few hundred feet, depth is an illusion. The river is waterless. These compromises were found acceptable by most visitors.
My parents took me to the Grand Canyon, the original, in 1970, when I was five years old. It was the first and only time my Norwegian and Korean grandparents met. Years later, looking at that ritual of American astonishment (for my generation, Kodak is the color of the past itself), I can’t help but see the diminishment of our lives. The now curled and lonesome snapshot reveals something deceptive, essentially untrue, about the scene, the big promise at our backs. They didn’t travel. In me there must have been, already, the promise of unsuitable boyfriends. But for a long time I wanted to go back to the Grand Canyon, though it’s not clear to me if it was a dream, an obligation, or some less easily defined but no
