“That was really shocking,” Houston said. The book contained a bit about her childhood, but her agent prodded her to write about it in the same “plain-spoken way” she had about the ranch. Houston wrote “Deep Creek” on the property, and when she handed in her first draft to her agent, it was “very ranch-centric” – hay, wood, birds, sheep and donkeys dominated the pages. “It gave me a place to be quiet and still,” she said. “I didn’t know about fences or varnish or sweeping chimneys,” she said. The setting captured her as much as the people living there.Ī local widow, a fan of Houston’s, offered to sell her the ranch, sight unseen, for 5 percent down and a signed copy of her first book. She drove into the Rocky Mountains and into Creede, where she saw the towering, spirelike cliffs that surround the town. She had a check for about $21,000 that she figured would be best spent on land. at the University of Utah because her book “Cowboys Are My Weakness” drew criticism from faculty and staff, she took to the road in her Toyota Corolla. She said her ranch, near the small southwest Colorado town of Creede, came to her in an unusual way.Īfter brazenly falling short of earning her Ph.D. Houston’s newest book, “Deep Creek” is a memoir. She discussed the book, her childhood, teaching at multiple universities, climate change and her writing process with the Northwest Passages audience Tuesday night at the Bing Crosby Theater.Īuthor Pam Houston wears cowboy boots next to her Spokesman-Review tote bag at a Northwest Passages VIP event on Tuesday, Maat Ovations Bar in the Bing Crosby Theater. It’s a blend of her childhood memories, like the weekends with the colonel, and life on her 120-acre Colorado ranch. Houston’s newest book, “Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country,” is her first memoir. “Those weekends were the most important weekends for me,” Houston said. “All of these were in 6 miles,” she told an audience Tuesday night at the Northwest Passages Book Club.Īnd they had a rule: If the kids looked from under the sheets, they got “demoted” in their ranking-system game.īut after the drive, the group would park in the woods and learn to connect with nature by doing things like reading compasses and staying up for night watches. Miller would say things like, “Just passed the Mississippi,” and “There goes the Missura.” Miller would drive them for what “seemed like a long time” and out of the Pennsylvania suburbs, she now recalls. Young Houston and a few other kids would pile into the back of Miller’s station wagon and cover themselves with sheets to hide themselves from the outside. Pam Houston discovered the “church of wilderness” during childhood trips with a man named Colonel Bob Miller.

Deep creek memoir