An Uncrowded Place, by Bob Butz
Writing outdoor essays isn’t exactly a lonely industry; place the words devoted to the outdoors end to end, and you could find yourself in possession of a bridge long enough to reach another planet.
An Uncrowded Place by Bob Butz
In a few cases, those words shine, including most found in An Uncrowded Place – a collection of sporting essays by freelance writer Bob Butz.
While a few of his essays feel uneven, Butz’s better efforts shine brightly (his essay on home remodeling falls flat while the next – a piece about snagging salmon – is bright and thoughtful).
Throughout the book, Butz’s essays avoid posturing and inauthentic cliche. Instead, they focus largely on the day-to-day sporting activities of someone trying to live an outdoor life, usually from a philosophical perspective.
In that one sense, they’re reminiscent of Gierach’s work (at least Gierach’s around-home stuff), though Butz lacks Gierach’s fly fishing focus and ironic sensibility. Instead, Butz’s essays approach the outdoor life from a more general perspective, mixing fishing, hunting, camping and other topics in equal quantity.
His essays are witty and good fun, and I found the book intriguing enough to read twice. In fact, through both readings, my primary criticism remained the same: length.
The book is mostly composed of essays originally written for an online magazine, and while the quality of the work is apparent, I found myself stumbling over the brevity. Several of the author’s best essays spanned only 2.25 pages; I’d get warmed up on a topic, settle in for the (largely enjoyable) ride, and then run headlong into the end of the chapter.
Butz is at his best while looking critically at the sporting life and sportsmen, and his pieces on becoming a father in his 30s are authentic and thoughtful. In fact, Butz seems incapable of writing a dishonest sentence, and it’s that honesty that sustains his book.
He shines brightest when he’s being reflective; his playful pieces don’t quite reach the same heights. For example, when you’re writing about something as universal as mosquitoes, you’d better offer fresh insight, and Butz’s essay on mosquitoes doesn’t quite reach that level.
Still, his essay about night fishing for salmon (Dream Fish, Night Fish) paints a vivid picture:
I most like fishing for salmon at the river’s mouth, where you stand in water up to your armpits. There, under the wide eyes of the moon, in the near dark, I tie my knots by feel, by memory.
With any fish but salmon, I prefer delicate tackle, tiny hand-tied flies, and long rods as sensitive as nerve endings. But on these nights, I come wanting a good fight and, admittedly, meat that – out here in the dark – seems more fairly won.
His essay about new snow (Tracks) similarly impresses:
I’m a lover of stories so, naturally, I’m a lover of tracks.
It’s one reason I enjoy winter so much. The woods after a freshly fallen snow, every time, feel to me clean and quiet and made new again, what with so many tracks, so many new trails – make that tales – to follow.
I have a red fox living in the woods behind the house. Though I’ve never seen him, I know he’s made it another year. Every winter, after every new dusting of snow, I find his tracks in all the same places. He likes the rock pile behind the barn – no doubt for the mice he finds there.
I could wish for a book filled with longer essays, but An Uncrowded Place is a thoughtful, first-class read for any fly fishermen willing to look beyond the confines of the long rod for inspiration.
Butz writes knowingly of not just the outdoors but also the frustration of living in the outdoors and still finding himself without enough time to fully enjoy it.
That, at least, is something most of understand, and if it’s one thing Butz’s essays show us, it’s that he understands too.
An Uncrowded Place: The delights and dilemmas of life Up North and a young man’s search for home
by Bob Butz
150 pgs; Huron River Press
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