with Gary Ferguson and Mary M Clare
September 3-8, 2024
Registration: $2,295
Includes writing instruction, meals, and camping
Registration opens December 1, 2023 at 9am PST
WRITING THE RIVER – Love Stories from the Wild
Join best-selling nature writer Gary Ferguson and social scientist Mary M Clare for a grand adventure on one of the world’s most beautiful rivers. Along the way you’ll learn not just new techniques to empower your writing, but also ways to grow a deeper relationship with wild nature – in the process, bringing fresh vitality to the stories you tell.
Writing well means honing essential storytelling skills – gaining facility with things like transition, setting, tone, and narrative arc. But we also believe that the energy needed to really animate your writing – to bring energy and spirit to your stories – comes from learning to look and listen more deeply. And each day on the Snake River, we’ll be doing exactly that – helping you build the kind of kinship to the world around you that will resonate powerfully with your readers. From the first dip of our oars to our final sunrise, this is a journey to shape not just your writing, but your life.
This program also includes individual manuscript review, as well as one-on-one sessions with the instructors.
Best-selling nature writer Gary Ferguson spent the early years of his career “chronicling the tracks humans leave in nature.” For the past two decades, however, the author Publishers Weekly calls “ever-evocative” has been working instead “to portray the tracks nature leaves in us.” Ferguson is the author of 27 books, including the highly acclaimed The Carry Home, winner of the Sigurd Olson Award, and described by The Los Angeles Times as a book with “beauty on every page.” His latest work, The Eight Master Lessons of Nature, shines a powerful light on the dazzling processes that nourish the creative powers of nature – and further, what they can teach us about navigating our own lives. Ferguson has taught at dozens of writing workshops in the United States and Europe and spent a decade on the faculty for the Rainier Writing Workshop Master of Fine Arts program at Pacific Lutheran University. He is a co-founder of Full Ecology, with social scientist Dr. Mary M. Clare.
From Montana, via Texas, California, Georgia, Nebraska, and Oregon, Mary M Clare, Ph.D., brings her lifelong passion for the natural world together with a 30-year career as a social and cultural psychologist. A fellow in the American Psychological Association with over 100 scholarly articles, she opens doorways for considering how the natural world – both around us and inside of us – can be tapped as a guiding force for creating more contented and fruitful lives. Dr. Clare is also a published poet and an Oregon Pen Women finalist. She’s written three nonfiction books, including 100 Voices: Americans Talk about Change (2011) and most recently, with science and nature writer Gary Ferguson, the award-winning Full Ecology: Repairing Our Relationship with the Natural World. Her spirited insights and techniques are helping nature writers forge new perspectives, deepening the relationship between their creative instincts and the world around them.
Download the Outpost on the Snake River in Hells Canyon Participant Packet here.
Outpost on the Snake River in Hells Canyon is generously suppported by
The Werner/Ellithorp Advised Fund of Oregon Community Foundation
Lodging
Important: You are responsible for arranging your own lodging September 3 and Sunday, September 8. There are many options available from Motels to camping. Learn more at the Wallowa County Chamber of Commerce. Winding Waters River Expeditions also has a good list of resources, too: Winding Waters – Trip Planning
Tentative Schedule
Tuesday Sept. 3
6:00pm – Evening Orientation and Dinner at Winding Waters Boat House in Joseph, Oregon. 204 E Wallowa Ave, Joseph, OR 97846
Wednesday, Sept. 4
7:00am – Meet at Winding Waters Boat House and travel to Launch Site – Breakfast Served
7:30AM – Depart for the 2 to 2.5 hour drive to the Launch Site on the Snake River (Hells Canyon Creek)
Between 10:30-11:30am – Receive a safety briefing & orientation to the boats and embark on the trip. Lunch will be served riverside following the launch.
Afternoon: Upon arrival in Camp, Writing Instruction and River Recreation
Thursday, Sept 5
Camp Day – Writing Instruction and River Recreation
Friday, Sept 6
River Travel Day – Evening Writing Instruction and River Recreation
Saturday, Sept 7
Camp Day – Writing Instruction and River Recreation
Sunday, Sept 8
Around 1:00pm Jet Boat up river to Launch Site – Travel to Joseph, Oregon
Between 5:00pm and 7:00pm – Arrive at Boat House
How to Prepare
You’re in for a great adventure. The key to getting the most from your trip is to be prepared. The Winding Waters’ Trip Planning web page can help answer most of your questions and help you pack for the experience. You’ll get insight from the experts on everything from weather and water to information on the geology of the area. Please visit this page and give it a good hard look.
Winding Waters – Trip Planning
Packing List & Tips
Please visit Winding Waters Packing List Page to help you know what to pack, and what not to.
Alcohol on the Trip
Alcohol is not included with your trip cost. You are welcome to bring your own libations. Winding Waters will provide ice for clinky drinks. They ask all beer to be in cans for safety reasons. Glass wine bottles are accepted. For your convenience, Winding Waters does sell a nice selection of canned beer and box wine that you can order at this link:
Winding Waters Beer and Wine Order Form
If you order here, simply select paying at the Pre-Trip Meeting. If you are bringing your own alcohol, please bring it to the river the morning of your trip launch.
Medical
One or more of the Winding Waters guides on your trip are certified first responders. In the case of a life-threatening emergency you will be flown or jet boated out of the canyon. We recommend investing in a LifeFlight plan before their trip and travel insurance in the case that you are not able to attend due to circumstances beyond your control.
Pre-Purchase Fishing Licenses: If you’re interested in fishing on your trip, we suggest you pre-purchase your fishing license online. Please have a printer at hand to print off your license. https://myodfw.com/articles/how-buy-oregon-fishing-license.
Winding Waters will provide fishing gear for the trip.
Tipping/Gratuities: Many of Winding Waters’ guests ask about and appreciate information on the custom of tipping. Winding Waters’ guide crew will work hard to make your Outpost experience the best it can be. While it is not expected whatsoever, if you wish to tip, we recommend treating it like a restaurant (anywhere from 10-15% of your trip cost for the crew). You can either give your lead guide cash at the end of the trip or have us here at Fishtrap put it on your credit card. The gratuities will then be distributed among the guide crew, food manager, and shuttle driver(s). And again, please know this is not expected.
Suggested Reading List
- Snake River in Hells Canyon by Carrey, Conley, and Barton – A great resource for homesteader history in Hells Canyon. A series of entertaining short stories perfect for reading before bed.
- Home Below Hells Canyon by Grace Jordan – A memoir of a homesteading family at Kirkwood Ranch in the 1930’s.
- Islands and Rapids: A Geologic History of Hells Canyon by Tracy Vallier – Interesting read by one of the leading research geologists in Hells Canyon.
- I Will Fight No More Forever by Merrill Beal – The story of the Chief Joseph Band of the Nez Perce Tribe in the Hells Canyon region.
Interesting Hells Canyon Information
- Hells Canyon is the deepest river gorge in North America at 7,993 feet and approximately 10 miles wide
- It was added to the National Wild and Scenic River System on December 1, 1975
- Total length of Hells Canyon: 78.7 miles from Hells Canyon Dam to Heller Bar
- The Bonneville Flood (approximately 14,500 years ago) is believed to be the second largest single flooding event in geologic history and estimated to move water at 33 million cubic feet per second (cfs) through present-day Hells Canyon. Today, the Snake River in Hells Canyon typically flows between 10,000 and 50,000 cfs. The floods widened Hells Canyon more than deepened it. Many of the benches in Hells Canyon today are remnants of these floods.
- The first people in Hells Canyon are believed to be of the Nez Perce Tribe.
- In 1925 Amos Burg made the first documented float through Hells Canyon in a wooden canoe.