cross, you will tend to not be as shrill or not be as overpowering as that, but thank you for saying that. are there refreshments over there and like to say, the bar is open. [applause] [inaudible] conversation [inaudible conversations] >> i'm in spokane, washington. at we continue our look into this city's literary scene, we hear a collection of storied about people and its real estateson the landscape of the

pacific northwest. >> this is the spokane river. coming in from the east, from lake coeur d'alene. it's down because the snow melt is ending and it's warming up in the last ice age these huge floods came from this direction and laid down these flood terraces, and laid down these gravels that are great reds for salmon and trout. and there's about 8,000 years of archaeology from this area right here with really fine implements from different kinds of work stone that comes from far away, and lots of fishbones and mammal bones, and just the general good scene that lasted here until fur traders came in the early 1800s and went on. the name of the book is "april

shen places --" "ancient places" i was trying to wright about changes. i'm trying to find stories that really circle around the cultural social, cosmic niksch kind of change i can thing of, big scale,s scale. the one that works for this area right here happens around 1900 to 1910, a kid comes who is a miner to this area. they were flooding the area from all the place, he is canadian. a lot of canadians came here he has some talent in mag and becomes a surveyor up in stevens county, the county forth of here. and there's all these mines going in and he surveys a mine on the spokane indian reservation goes through the home of this really respected leader named william free mountain the younger and his

wife, mady, three mountains, and he becomes buddied with them on some level. don't know much. and he gets a pair of beautiful moccasins that mady made and he gets what the described as an ol' cupid shaped bow that william three mountains, the younger, inherited from his father, three mountains the elder, and he -- this guy's name is manny. he collects other artifacts and she is just sort of getting stuff and just sort of doing his survey. what he does not know, and makes the story for me,s that's william the mountain the younger's father, william three mother the elder, is a legendary figure who was the head man of a band that lived here at the confluence of hangman creek and spokane river, and the fact that these plants are still here that william the mountain's picked -- his family picked here for food, some of about that is both

severe change, cataclysmic exchange, and a constant that is the kind of story that i'm trying to tell in this ancient places book. so that's the small changes. mady's moccasins. so the world i live in that i'm trying to write about is the world between the rockie mountains mountains mountains and the cascades. they form a try ang until british columbia and wide night great basin. that's my beat, the interior, the inner mountain west that has named that don't describe i very well, and there's lots of large geeolic evented in place where we are, 15 to 20 million years ago these huge floe's bay assault came up from the south, thousands of feet thick, and created these cliffs and palisades that i'm sure some member of your crew is out filming right now, and they stopped and then 15,000 years ago, these flood came in and worked the edges of them.

there's older granitic -- there's basalt, volcanic rock to she south and the flood waters opened them up and made these great feature. that's a human visual event. if you drive around in this part that's what you see. and you can't really talk about the stories and the time i'm talking about without having the flood wash through every story. if you can crank it back and crank it way back, there's an inland ocean here if the reason all this happened, we're at the edge of an inland sea, at the edge of the continent, in the hundreds of millions of years ago. we can't understand five generations ago. tribal people most of them can understand five and some ten generations ago, name their families little but to go 10,000 years ago nobody can understand that. to go ten million years ago and a billion years ago i, it's

impassable. there's a meteorite story in here that gets a attention because it just blanks people out. they can't comprehend that large a scale of time. that's what i'm trying to do, is just erase any kind of time perspective. the first story in the book, the leadoff story, is david thompson, who is in the 1780s, as young man, out in the north country, on his way here but for north in the winter, hey cease what he thing as i meet you'rite, some do -- meteorite and is a phenomenon unanimous, and the cannot figure it out. he gives the fabulous description of what we think is probably swamp gas bubbles, bubbling out of this marsh where he is, but the physics at that

time don't give him the words to understand the scale. so he keeps trying to fool with what it is, how does it work. then he does the same thing with northern lights, which are on the aurora borealis is spectacular there and works for another scale, the cosmological scale. and the wonders how this is shaped, how is the earth made and then goes and asks tribal people, how did you come here? how was your country made? how is your landscaped form? what happens when you die. david thompson is great for asking those large-scale questions and the tribes have these great answers. so, for aurora borealis, which was here last week in great shape. sorry you missed it. he tries to deal with the physics but doesn't do pa job of explaining it. his wife is kree and they say these are the denses of tower dear dar party el at thes and their dancing to the free spirits of the universe and then

he doesn't write anymore before it. thinks that's good enough. so, scale is what you make of it in your head. explaining the world is how you make it in your head. and that's a big part of the stories as i'm trying to tell. my focus on some person who thinks they have itself figured out and don't have it figured out because there's always a scale largeern than they can understand and always will be. again in these ancient places, you can't -- they don't dom neat endings, and to ask how the tribes respond? they are devastated. they're traumatized. they still are. and they're trying to come out of it and a lot of them are astonishingly resilient people and i have been monitored by some lucky inform to have mentored around with and i who i have been friend with and they're constantly telling me, look, you don't understand. you don't have any say in this. you're dying a terrible job but if bogey going to do it, bet deer a better job, and you've

been in it so long you can't quit now. so mixed messaged but that makes sense i can't quit. i have to understand it and try to live with and it understand it. so, they've been a huge help in answering your questions, which is unanswerable. many of these story is had fooled with over time, i'd talk to -- might have interviewed somebody and would go backs' interview their kid. never been satisfied with them. never done good enough work on them, guess, is one way to say it. i didn't feel like i'd done well enough. so i let them sit for five and ten and 15 yours maybe and then went become on them and they fit together in a way that i could see, that i couldn't see before, bus i understand scale better now than i did when i was 20 years younger. but again it's just where you are at that particular time. the most interesting thing was at the time i was wrying the book, the pieces went together by themselves and in an order

that made it make sense to me. but when i realize now is there are new elements in this social dynamic and they're onspanish and russian. the slavic people are the biggest minority in spoke spokane so the last essay, i'm ice skating in a pond, and zero degree weather ask there is a russian out there ice fishing and i can't talk to him. it happened i can't -- i couldn't talk to him bus he didn't speak english but i like what got out of it. writ leaves me to -- where it leads know go next. when you talk to people, how to incorporate latinos latinos ande slavic minority into this world that is going to be in the next two centuries, that's going to beer here, how do we deal with it, bring them in, because they have strong cultures on their own. that's what happened in the fur trade.

the store strong cultures here you. maintain an identity with the strong culture and it helps everybody in the long run. when you're a writer, you sit down and write the book and for me, anyway -- i don't have that much control over what comes out... ...

>> these are non' fiction and funny and fun. the people in them have senses of humor. >> you are watching booktv. television for serious readers. any program you see here online at booktv.org. good evening and welcome to opportunities's program hosted by the commonwealth club of silicon valley my name is mary ellen, it is my pleasure t