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Off Izaak Walton Road
The Grace That Comes Through Loss
Loss and sorrow can overwhelm even the strongest person, forcing them to reckon with their emotions whether they want to or not. In this extraordinary debut, Laura Julier recounts her reckoning, which took place in an old cabin tucked away on a hidden and forgotten gravel road along the Iowa River. In company with silence and snow, with eagles, owls, and a host of other birds, Julier finds solace and begins to emerge from the dark corners of grief. Over time, she comes to understand she cannot bury grief or turn aside from loss but must walk in its presence, awake and humble, until, at last, she finds her own wholeness within it.
Laura Julier in Off Izaak Walton Road marks out the perimeter of the losses in her life, not by confiding them to the page but by careful indirection. She brings the reader with her as she retreats to a house on a rural road and season by season discovers the particulars of the world that goes on without all of us. Her power of attention is formidable, and her prose is at every point lucid.’—Sven Birkerts, author of The Miro Worm and the Mysteries of Writing
“Off Izaak Walton Road asks us why some places hold a grip on our imaginations, what it is about these places that allows us to be more fully ourselves, and how these places change the stories we tell about who we are and the world in which we live. Written with clarity, candor, and a tenderness of attention that is profoundly moving, this book shows the often-transformative power of loss, solace, and joy.”—Lacy M. Johnson, author of The Reckoning: Essays
Laura Julier is the former editor of Fourth Genre. She is the coeditor of Nonfiction, the Teaching of Writing, and the Influence of Richard Lloyd-Jones.She currently works as a hospital chaplain and lives in Iowa City.
Preface: Holy place
Overture: Early March, off Izaak Walton Road
Part I: Snow, Fire, Silence
Once I owned a house
This is not the place
It began like this
Izaak Walton Road
Loss
Days’ waning light
Leaving
Part II: Wind, Wood, Memory
On the walls 1
The cabin
The gift
On the mantel
Sleeping with animals
On the walls 2
The space outside
Derecho
Part III: Sky, Road, Blood
January
Woodstoves
Massacre at the cabin, or Where’s the carcass?
Bald eagles
The owl
Wherein I rescue the latest mouse
In which no good deed goes unpunished
A pleasant interlude
The wisdom of cliché
Things have come to this
In which pride goeth before a fall
Listening to the river
Bald eagles, again
Seeing birds
A reaction delayed
Bird notes 1: I begin to pay attention
We walk the road
Bird notes 2: By the book
Bird notes 3: The body knows before knowing remembers
City girl
Neighbors
The barred owl, again
The marsh
Bird notes 4: If you ignore it, they will come
Rising thermals
In the ditches
The wildlife inside
In which I am taunted
I step outside in late June
In which I finally outsmart the cat
The last rescue
Leaving, again
Season end
Part IV: Earth, Marsh, Skin
Going home
The marsh, differently
Accident or refuge
Izaak Walton’s league
Rescue
Roadkill
Garbage
Target
Johnson County Quarry
Izaak and I, fishing
Ownership
James McCollister’s farm
First records
First nations
First flood: From Devonian sea to the river outside my door
Ownership, differently
Part V: River, Night, Prayer
In the middle of the river
River’s sludge
The river’s course
Damming the river
The flood of the century
As long as you choose to live here
Wetlands
On the river
Part VI: The locked cabin, the swollen river, the riven road, the open heart
I am locked out
The next house and the next
Circling
The river reclaims the land
After the flood
The open heart
Acknowledgments
