“Walking the Hogbacks”

In “Walking the Hogbacks,” Teresa Jordan emphasizes that we must all learn how to look at the land and its history, a lesson she learned from her great-grandmother Nana. “It was a manner of looking, she said, of learning to see” (5). Jordan applies this insight to her own life as she traces the story of her family’s land back 250 million years. She discovers that even geologists are not able to account for all of the history of the land; they call these missing records “unconformities” (9). Relating this to her own life, she realizes that she knows little about the people that inhabited the land before her or even her own family.

The history of the Chugwater Valley is a cycle of displacement and loss, beginning with the sea creatures whose fossilized remains litter the land, the “crinoids, snails, and clams” and the petrified wood that she and her great grandmother collected (7). The Native Americans, too, were displaced, leaving behind arrowheads, spear points, and tepee rings to mark their short sojourn. Even the homesteaders who could not survive the harsh environment left their marks in the old buildings that dot the landscape. Since Jordan’s family had to move off of the land after three generations, and since many of her relatives have died, she feels lost herself, like an unconformity. Now, she is returning to the land, trying to come to terms with her past. She explains, “I had to confront not only the loss of the people I loved and the land that had defined my family for nearly a century but also a way of life” (15). This book is her record of learning how to see. (282 words)