Broken living

By Rick Price
Reader Contributor

I chatted with the writer Mike Medberry the other day. I took notes about what he said so I could write up an interview. When I looked for them, phwtt they were gone. I don’t have the words. Of course I don’t.

Mike Medberry and his latest book, Living in the Broken West. Courtesy images.

I’ve known Mike for almost 40 years. He has always been easy to chat with, except for after his stroke, when there were no words. He recounts this episode well in a previous book, The Dark Side of the Moon. His stroke happened in southern Idaho’s Craters of the Moon National Monument — a place that Mike has worked to protect by enlarging its area. His friends found him crumpled on the side of a trail unable to talk and barely able to move. One of the essays in the new book covers this, too. 

His long recovery exemplifies the hope to which he clings. The words are back now, and we should all be glad. Mike’s voice is strong again. His most recent book, Living in the Broken West, is a collection of essays about brokenness and the hope that can be found among the pieces.

I asked if some parts of the West are more broken than others.

“They are broken in different ways,” he said. 

Mike went on to explain that hope and healing is different in different places, as well. In some places it is active due to the work of citizens who love these places and conservationists like himself. In other, more obscure places, the number of visitors has fallen off and the wilderness has returned on its own. 

The essays in Living in the Broken West cover wanderings from the Antarctic, New Mexico, Utah and the Arctic, along with walks along the length of both the Boise and Los Angeles rivers. Other essays are about Mike’s work fighting for wild places, as well as a variety of topics, including an injured football player and a day in the slammer. 

Mike thinks his writing about the Boise River is the heart of the book, comparing the waterway to a human lifetime. The river is a playful kid at its source, jumping and dancing out of Spangle Lake, deep in the Sawtooth Wilderness. As it flows it matures into an adult as it flows through our state capital, then a worn-out shell of itself farther downstream, where it finally joins the Snake River along the Oregon border. Then, “Fare thee well.”

Mike is traveling from Boise to Sandpoint for a free reading and discussion of his book, Living in the Broken West, on Thursday, Aug. 11 at 6:30 p.m. at the East Bonner County Library.

Copies will be available to buy at the event, and the book is also for sale at Vanderford’s in Sandpoint or online.