Compass Lines - by John Messick (Paperback)

About the Book

From Antarctica to the Arctic, a tattoo parlor in Cambodia to an abandoned Alaska mine and beyond, this book teaches us how learning the rhythms of places requires both movement and stillness.

Book Synopsis

In essays that traverse latitudes and continents, John Messick's Compass Lines explores the paths we take toward belonging. Here, broken vehicles mark the porous boundaries between built and natural worlds. Deserted backpacks trace immigration routes along the US-Mexico border. A job fighting wildfire near a ghost town reveals the dangers of a life spent wandering. Slowly, as Messick learns the rhythms of seasons-through wing prints on snow, cupboard shelves stocked for winter, and quiet moments before the birth of his son-he discovers that a connection with the places we inhabit requires both movement and stillness.

From Antarctica to the Arctic, a Cambodia tattoo parlor to the Florida swamps, and from childhood to fatherhood, this deeply felt debut invites readers on a search for the most elusive landscape of all-home.

Review Quotes

"John Messick comes from the ruggedly blessed landscape of wildly talented Alaskan writers. True aim, straight vision, and beautiful. Enthusiastic thumbs-up. Get it now." -LUIS ALBERTO URREA, author of The Devil's Highway and The House of Broken Angels

"The author explores that shimmering frontier between the exotic and the mundane ... he tells his story wonderfully well. Messick's voice drew me in-it is wry, warm, and wise. To go or to stay? Messick reveals that the question is the thing, not mutable answers. I really enjoyed this book."

-SARA WHEELER, author of Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica and The Magnetic North

"Messick writes about the wilds of the world-from his first cabin in Fairbanks to traveling in the Everglades, South Korea, Syria, then back to Alaska-but all with an eye for the search for self-understanding, if not the quest for why we live in the first place. ... An authentic, compassionate, and most of all honest voice about the real last frontier." -LEIGH NEWMAN, author of Nobody Gets Out Alive

"In this mix of memoir, travel, and nature writing, Messick eschews the bravado of the adventurer tale, and instead invites us into the introspective root of his own restlessness, ultimately finding the home and connection he seeks in Alaska. Messick's stories are beautifully told-whether relating his travels in Damascus and Antarctica, canoeing the swamps of Florida, or working on fire crews throughout the Southwest and Alaska, Messick is a skilled storyteller. But it's his self-reflection and humility that gives this book such depth and wisdom. A pleasure to read!"

-DARYL FARMER, author of Where We Land

"... indelible evocations of travel and its delicious paradoxes carry the reader nomadically across the globe before home, in a luminously drawn Alaska, is realized. Messick is the kind of person who vacations in Mongolia-it's true!-but nothing smacks of escapism in this moving collection; here, venturing out affords the narrator an opportunity to examine, with a rueful self-scrutiny, his inner life, rituals worth preserving, and the nature of love and companionship, to name just a few. This memorable journey brims with an earned wisdom that often borders on befuddlement, which, after all, may be its own form of wisdom."

-CHRIS DOMBROWSKI, author of The River You Touch: Making a Life on Moving Water

"Compass Lines is a morally engaged journey into the wild places of the world and the wild places of the heart. I enjoyed exploring, alongside John Messick, all the vividly-described places in this book: the borderlands, the Northwoods, the Florida glades, the fire lines of the far west, neutrino-rich Antarctica. And I was grateful for how seriously he takes his responsibilities as a parent, a writer, and a citizen of the earth."

-DAN KOIS, author of Vintage Contemporaries and How To Be A Family

"Easily one of my favorite collections in years." -DON REARDEN, author of The Raven's Gift