Strong Hills

In this collection of essays, stories, and tall tales, Mac Griffith relays the news from the Colorado high country, news of local lives lived out over many years, sometimes with hilarity and sometimes with grievous loss. In the title story, he climbs a high peak with his sister as she continues to hike in the fresh shadow of her son's suicide. In other news, a retired woman named Etta runs the trails and fires rocks at slob campers to help them learn better behavior. In these mountain stories, there are devils in machines, a grouse family trying to stay together, and a cat with a sensible life. Stories full of wonder at life lived in thin air. Griffith tunes his ear to the land's own song.

Griffith also finds humor in some odd places, including hummingbirds that have lost interest in flowers, the theory of deep cleaning, and scientific advances in getting undressed. On his first mountain camping trip, he pulls a gun to defend himself against his own eyelash. An experienced fly fisherman, he teaches the reader how to use roadside flares in this most esthetically refined of sports. He discusses how to buy happiness and how to get hot babes, two entirely unrelated subjects.

Mountain "locals" are often escapees from someplace else. Griffith, in this collection of sometimes tallish tales, looks back to his childhood in the Deep South. He considers the origins in dirty ears for a legendary career in alligator wrestling. Griffith spent his childhood wading swamps (beautiful places) and visiting "insane asylums" (less beautiful), both opening windows sometimes hard to look through. He tells the story of a homely school janitor with a sweet spirit, with a plan for winning a beautiful English teacher, and with friends in high literary places. Mabel and June, proper old Southern ladies, friends forever, improperly squirt each other with pepper spray, crash the car, and throw up in Betty Smith's tasteless flower garden.