Hannah and the Mountain: Notes toward a Wilderness Fatherhood

Longing for a home in big, wild country that would keep them passionate and young, Jonathan Johnson and his wife, Amy, set out to build a log cabin on his family’s land in a remote and beautiful corner of Idaho. But what began as a doable dream for the two of them suddenly looks quite different when, on their first morning in the cabin–without electricity, a telephone, running water, or real windows–the couple learn that Amy is pregnant. In this lyrical and intimate chronicle of making a home the hard way, Johnson describes the competing joys and anxieties of preparing for fatherhood in a setting as challenging as it is promising: a paradise of mythic snowfalls and warming wood stoves and elk tracks at the front door, but also a place where vision, and even struggle and compromise, are not always enough. Hannah and the Mountain tells a rare and delicate story of two people exploring the unmapped territories of loss and grief and finding solace and grace in the mountains. It offers the reader an unforgettable portrait of a couple growing up, learning nature’s hard and beautiful lessons, and discovering a love of place and each other strong and wild enough to renew them and be carried into the future. Jonathan Johnson is an assistant professor at the Inland Northwest Center for Writers, the graduate writing program at Eastern Washington University. His work has appeared in various literary magazines and in The Best American Poetry. He is the author of Mastodon, 80 per cent Complete, a book of poems.