David Guterson’s Turn Around Time: A Walking Poem for the Pacific Northwest (Mountaineers Books, 2019) is a bold and much-needed undertaking in contemporary outdoor poetry, and though it may not reach the highest echelons of technical deftness and poignancy, it makes up for it in ambition.

Turn Around Time is a unique read in a walking poem format.

Reading Turn Around Time

At its essence, Turn Around Time is a walking poem in the style of Wordsworth, Frost, and Thoreau, chronicling his exploration with a partner (we’re led to assume his wife of 40 years) of Mount Jupiter and its environs in the Olympic Range, Washington. The book explores themes of aging, social and environmental change, and his relationship with his wife, as the two struggle to understand what, short of causing themselves physical and emotional pain, drives them to continue hiking as they age. True to the form, Guterson takes the reader up Jupiter’s craggy slopes, where old snow “carries evidence of winter. / Ravaged, stained, dimpled, traipsed, / it shrinks in shade as if to say / it isn’t done with living,” and guides you through encounters with the “vaudevillian” squirrels and the “woodland trail-troll berserker devil-bear.” And on to their uncomfortable and fearful camp through the night, and to their meditative and quiet return to home the next day. Readers familiar with the Olympics will recognize the landmarks immediately, and those unfamiliar will meet them. All will feel the comfortable space of the wandering hiker mind.

There were a few issues I had with the book, however. The walking poem is a beautiful and deeply underused form, as is the narrative poem, as is the book-length poem. I was excited to see the three forms combined, and combined by Guterson, no less, but executing successfully any one of these three is a challenge in itself, and I think ultimately their combination proved to likely be the largest challenge that Guterson faced with the book.

While the poem, at its core, has a poignant and nuanced message, 130 pages of poetry is a lot to fill; Guterson thus uses the space to dive into small facets of his themes, and attempts to draw parallels to them in the natural world, but ultimately these connections are more tenuous on the page than they are in theory, and it could be argued that the poem reads like a string of only semi-connected natural observations. Independently, these observations work, and as a collection of separate poems the book might flow more naturally for the reader, but together the poem can sometimes read like Guterson is trying to force his real encounters into a thematic structure. While the walking poem is always a meditation, these separate observations can at times be distracting; just as we begin to jump into one instance, Guterson’s eyes flit away to the next, and we only ever get our feet wet and a tantalizing view of the depths we didn’t explore.

Guterson’s language choice can also be interesting at times. In the acknowledgements he hopes that the language will be “rhythmically propulsive,” and to a certain extent he achieves that rhythm – he uses internal rhyme, end rhyme, and meter, rarities in contemporary poetry – but often that propulsion becomes the end to the thing itself:

"Our tent’s struck, our line’s undone,
We’ve heard enough from you.
There’s even sun, or some, for once,
Though overnight, I give it, true,
Your nature guide got chewed.

Look already, up from text,
Scrutinize our sky with zest:
Move, move, move!
Our peregrination stakes an obvious claim
To reverence—rapt—and attention!"

Guterson captures the frenetic excitement of breaking camp in the morning, but the word choice and structure deployed to generate his rhythm can feel forced and diminish the feelings; we’re propelled by his words, but at times propelled past the meaning. When creating a meditative environment, as is the objective of the walking poem, it’s always nice if the language steps out of the way to yield to the imagery, to the reflection.

Final Thoughts

But the imagery is there, and the reflection is there. Overall, a project as ambitious and needed as Turn Around Time is deserving of praise, especially when brought to us by Pacific Northwest staple David Guterson. Whether the goals of the book are executed to their fullest extent remains up to each reader, and for those more accustomed to reading the likes of Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, or Terry Tempest Williams, you’ll be in store for a different take on the outdoor experience as read in a book of poems. But for those looking for a small, compact book to bring with you on a hike, to inspire meditations of your own out on the trail, or for those looking for an entrée into the world of naturalist walking poems, Turn Around Time is worth picking up.

You can find Turn Around Time here at Amazon.com for about $20.

Editor's Note: This review originally appeared in Issue 44 of TrailGroove Magazine. You can read the original article here.