We talk with New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash. He is the author of Serena and Above the Waterfall, in addition to four prizewinning novels, including The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight.
Water runs deep in his writing and he explains how he didn’t quite realize it until others started to point it out to him. He talks to us about his grandmother’s farm on the Blue Ridge Parkway and the beautiful stream. He shares how his grandmother would never let him go to the spring house. The young Ron loved to catch salamanders and crayfish as a child, but she would not let him disturb the salamanders in the spring house. She felt like they were the guardian spirits of the water.
A river is a vein in God’s arm
Ron Rash
When asked about his favorite water quote, he says it is, “A river is a vein in God’s arm.” Powerful, right?
Transcript
Speaker 1:
The Outfall Podcast, exploring the hidden edge of our natural water world and our infrastructure.
Robert Osborne:
This is Robert Osborne. I’m the engineer, and it’s hard to make that sound exciting. Engineer.
David Ladner:
I’m David Ladner and I’m a professor. That sounds even less exciting probably, but I’m an engineering professor as well.
Robert Osborne:
Today, we talk about water with New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash.
Ron Rash:
I am haunted by waters. That’s actually the last line in-
Robert Osborne:
Hailed as one of the great American authors at work today, he is the author Serena, The Risen, Above the Waterfall, The Cove One Foot in Eden, and Saints at the River. After the interview, David and I talk a little bit about what is the outfall-
David Ladner:
And what is ahead.
Robert Osborne:
Join us.
Robert Osborne:
We’re meeting right now in a secret boardroom at the Hyatt. Ron’s going to be giving the keynote for the Confluence Conference. I know a lot of y’all know about the Confluence Conference.
Robert Osborne:
Ron, this is exciting that you’re going to be giving this keynote. Can you give us maybe a sneak peek of what you’re going to be talking about?
Ron Rash:
I’m going to be talking about the influence of water. I thought if I had a title for this address, it would probably be, I am haunted by waters. That’s actually the last line in Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It, which is one of my favorite books. And water’s had a huge impact, it’s everywhere in my writing and I think it’s there because I’ve always been drawn to water, even as a child. I’m actually, today, going to read a poem called First Memory, and the first memory I have is actually being at my uncle’s pond and seeing the dragonflies and the tadpoles. And I think I go there again and again. As a child, I spent a huge amount of time on streams. My grandmother’s farm was right on the Blue Ridge Parkway. So there were some beautiful streams that ran through there.
Ron Rash:
And I’ve continued to be drawn by it. And I think as an artist, as a writer, what I love about water is how it conceals so much. There’s always a mystery. What’s beneath? And that, to me, is what a lot of writing’s about, what is beneath the surface of things. And so, I’m very drawn to that. Also, I grew up in a region, Western North Carolina, where there still was a lot of folklore about water. My grandmother would never let me go to the spring house. I loved to catch salamanders and crayfish as a child, but she would not let me disturb the salamanders in the spring house. And it was because she felt like they were the guardian spirits of the water.
Robert Osborne:
Wow.
Ron Rash:
And my uncle kept a trout in the … there was actually a trowel in the spring house where water ran and he kept a trout in there and he would feed it cornbread, and it lived there for a pretty long time. And what I found out years later, was it in Germany, very often in villages they will keep a trout in the water supply. And that way, they know the water is pure. And so what my grandmother was doing was, in a sense, the fact that that those salamanders could live there was also a sign that the water was pure and of high quality.
Ron Rash:
And so, I think having that sense of mystery with water, that sense of what’s beneath it. Perhaps being raised Southern Baptist, I got dunked all the way in, maybe that had something to do with it. And I’ve always been fascinated with the Welsh Celtic idea. My ancestry is Welsh, Rash is a Welsh name. That the water’s the conduit between the living and the dead. So that idea, particularly in my novel Saints at the River, is an important idea for me.
Robert Osborne:
And that takes place at Chattooga River, right?
Ron Rash:
Yeah, I renamed it the Tomasi. And I wanted to remind readers it is fiction, but a lot of what has happened on that river, questions of how much of the river can be disturbed, those kinds of questions about environmental issues versus issues of people in complex situations where the water system might need to be disturbed in some way. So the complexity of those questions, I’ve always been intrigued by.
Robert Osborne:
Now I know we were talking a little bit beforehand about how maybe you didn’t even realize how much water was important in a lot of your novels. When did you become maybe aware that this, Hey, this is kind of a theme?
Ron Rash:
Well, it was actually because the critics picked up on that before I did. I mean, to me, it wasn’t so much I was just saying, well, I’m going to write about water or water issues or something. It was just, I think, that fascination with it from childhood. And the critics started pointing out and they were right. I kept looking and a critic in France, I actually had written an article about water imagery in my work. And so, yeah, it’s there and I think it’s there because, as I say, I think I’ve always been drawn to it and drawn to questions about it. And as I’ve said before, just that idea of mystery, of wanting to see the underside of the river and of meaning of life. All those things kind of blend together.
Robert Osborne:
Can you tell us maybe a little bit about some of your upcoming projects you have?
Ron Rash:
Well, I’m working on some short stories. I love to write short stories. Working on a novella, which in some way it does deal with some environmental issues, certainly. It’s a sequel to my novel Serena, which dealt more with the timber industry. But obviously, when you have that kind of intense logging it affects the water quality and actually that is addressed in Serena. So yeah, I’m just continuing to write and continuing to visit the streams of the area I love. And up here, I teach at Western Carolina University and my house up there is only three miles from the Tuckaseegee River, which is a beautiful river.
Robert Osborne:
Oh, fantastic.
Ron Rash:
And so, I’ve got water wherever I am. And I guess that says something that, I guess I’ve always lived near places that had a lot of water. I mean, there was always water nearby. Sometimes it might be creeks, now it’s lakes. But yeah, so I guess I can’t get away from it. I don’t think I’m going to be in a Oklahoma or Nebraska.
Robert Osborne:
Your favorite book right now.
Ron Rash:
Oh, wow.
Robert Osborne:
And it can be a two. I always love asking folks.
Ron Rash:
Well, I think one that’s relevant today is Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It. I don’t know the novel and it’s not a biographical book. He might not even call it, it’s somewhere between a memoir and a novel. But just the sense of history and the wonder of water and rivers and the beauty of them. So Norman McClain’s A River Runs Through It is probably one of my very favorites.
Ron Rash:
Also, I’m a great admirer of the French writer John Juno, who writes a lot about rivers and the natural world and the beauty of the world and the wonder of the world. He’s a writer that I really connect with. My books have done well in France and very often the critics talk about a kind of connection between our writing. I mean, I’ve learned, obviously he’s a much greater writer, but he died I think in 1950s maybe. But I learned a lot from him.
Robert Osborne:
Oh, that’s fantastic. And then, I guess one of the last question is, do you have a favorite quote?
Ron Rash:
Oh, you mean of anything?
Robert Osborne:
Yeah. It doesn’t have to be a water, or it can be a water quote. What’s one of your quotes maybe that you’ll dig up for one of your kids, or?
Ron Rash:
Well, how about my favorite quote that I’ve ever written?
Robert Osborne:
Okay.
Ron Rash:
Will that work?
Robert Osborne:
Yeah, fantastic.
Ron Rash:
I think the one line I’m probably proudest of is, I have a character in, it says in one of my books, “a river’s a vein in God’s arm.”
Robert Osborne:
Wow. How did you come up with that?
Ron Rash:
I don’t know, but I felt like I’d said something there that I felt maybe was true.
Robert Osborne:
I love that.
David Ladner:
What is the outfall? Why did we name our podcast this interesting, or maybe not so interesting to some people, name?
Robert Osborne:
I think the outfall is such an interesting word. If you go look at the definition of outfall, outfall is defined where a river or a drain empties into a river or lake, right? It’s this concentration of flow. And that’s sort of what I envisioned. I envisioned this podcast could be a place that concentrates water into bite size stories. It’s a place that’s accessible to everyone. A place more fun than really super serious, and more short than long, and more lively than dull.
David Ladner:
I know. That’s grand isn’t, it? Sounds fabulous. But I like this concept of the outfall. It’s a place where you can go measure things. It’s a place where everything comes together. The whole watershed above it comes out at that location. It’s the interface between society and the environment. For me, it’s a place where we can get into some meat, some technical details, but we’ll balance each other out a little bit. Right? I like to have fun too, but I want to get a little bit into the technical side, the nitty gritty.
Robert Osborne:
So should we tell them what’s ahead?
David Ladner:
Absolutely.
Robert Osborne:
So I will say Dave and I have been meeting for the last two months. We’re coming up with a long list of stories, but you know what? We want y’all to be involved too.
David Ladner:
Yes.
Robert Osborne:
If you have any stories, what can they do?
David Ladner:
Well, let us know. We have outfall.com that is online. You can go there and find a way to let us know about your story. We’re interested in finding out what’s out there. You can tell us about it and maybe we can produce something together.
Robert Osborne:
So these stories that we’re going to be sharing with you I think are interesting, because they haven’t been told, right?
David Ladner:
That’s right. And the other interesting thing about it is that we’re not reporters. We’re doing this and this is not our day job. That means the podcast might be a little off or a little strange to some people, but hopefully, we can interpret these things through a lens that you wouldn’t find through normal journalism. You, Rob, a practicing engineer. Myself, a practicing academician. We have a different perspective than a journalist would have on these kinds of stories. Maybe we can interpret things a little bit in a unique way.
Robert Osborne:
I’m looking forward, I’m excited.
David Ladner:
All right, here we go.
