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Cat Bordhi's novel, Treasure Forest,
celebrates island resources
Article contributed by Kim Norton
posted 10/20/03
Cat Bordhi, until recently a Friday Harbor Middle School teacher, is the author of a new novel, Treasure Forest, the first of The Forest Inside Trilogy. Those of us who live here will recognize many threads of island life weaving their way through the pages of Treasure Forest. "The book drew from all parts of my life," Cat says, "but so many details came from experiences here on the island. In fact, to recount those details is to celebrate two of our most extraordinary resources: nature, and generous islanders who are glad to share their expertise on almost anything you want to know."
Kim: There is an adage that says, "Write what you know." Did you follow this in writing Treasure Forest?
Cat: Yes and no. One of my favorite parts of writing was the research. I absolutely loved learning about my subject matter. Other parts of the book came from my imagination, yet those parts seem as real to me as what I actually experienced.
Kim: Please share some of the research you did within our island community. Were there individuals who helped you?
Cat: There were so many! It seemed that anything I needed, I could find right here. When I wanted some good raccoon home invasion stories, Megan Jones was able to tell me some mind-boggling tales, and I chose the best one to use in the book (you'll have to read to find out). Ev Tuller wove the green cloth for Esther's basket, after listening to my description of its myriad greens and blues. I set it in a basket on my writing desk, and instantly a scene with the cloth and basket blossomed almost effortlessly, attesting to its magic! Steffan Iverson, who was my student at the time, and has the mind of an inventive engineer, built me a working model of the secret door so that I could understand it better, and his sister Genevieve generously shared helpful insights about sibling quibbling.
Janet Wright and Sandy Richard both helped me track down the native plants that my character Daggett could use to make his potion, and in the end my publisher and I decided that although the correct plants were available, not to name them lest a youngster try it at home! Bill Cumming responded to my plea for information on how an official search is carried out for a missing child by grilling me as if I were the mother, in effect turning me into a character in my own book, a great gift to me as a writer. I took copious notes and used them carefully as I wrote those scenes.
When I wanted to lodge a certain deceased creature in a rusty basement furnace, Bruce Conway happened to have specialized in repairing them some years ago, and deftly sketched me an accurate drawing of the very structure where my creature should burn to a crisp. On a seventh grade field trip several years ago to Camp Firwood, Corwin Waldron startled me by folding up a nettle leaf and popping it into his mouth, chewing, and announcing that it tasted like spinach, all without getting stung. Corwin's "recipe" helped one of my characters persuade his parents to change their opinion of something important.
A summer of helping Alayne Sundberg milk her goats and watching her make cheese inspired me to include goats and cheese making. Lacy Lamont, a student who heard an early partial reading of the manuscript, responded to the riddle which forms the nucleus of the book, "How can you retrieve a treasure from the bottom of a pond without disturbing the water?" by drawing me a cut-away version of the pond with a tunnel leading to the treasure. I pinned that drawing on my writing wall and months later, when my character Ben was seeking the solution, he drew a picture like Lacy's, which incidentally, almost, but not quite, solved the problem.
When I needed to learn more about bee keeping, I ran into Colleen Howe at the market and gathered the information I wanted. Lenore Bayuk and I spent a few hours over tea discussing the psychological ramifications of certain family situations among my characters, making sure they were realistic. And Elaine Pretz offered to copyedit the final manuscript, and along with correcting many fine points of usage and punctuation, saved me from calling a male goat a ram (it's a buck!).
Some people contributed without ever realizing it. About eleven years ago Terry Domico came to my fifth grade class to talk about his photography, observations, and study of bears. I vividly remembered his description of returning again and again to the same spot in the forest to remain still and silent, until the bears resumed their lives around him, allowing him to observe them at close range without disturbance. This ability to be a silent witness in the forest, allowing the surrounding life to resume its movements, became one of the favorite practices of my characters, carrying many levels of meaning. And in the early 70s I spent a winter on Waldron Island, and I believe that my reclusive character Daggett carries much of the grace, presence, and honoring of nature that I observed among the inhabitants.
Kim: Quinn Gillespie, who graduated from Friday Harbor High School a few years ago, did the pen and ink illustrations. How did you choose her as your artist?
Cat: Because of her talent! A Canadian book designer had shown my publisher and me samples of several professional artists who did similar work, and while I was looking at them, I realized that I already knew someone who, I thought, did better work, and that was Quinn. Since publication, we've had many people comment on how absolutely perfect the illustrations are for the book, and I agree. She is a very gifted artist who was a joy to collaborate with, and she read both the earlier version of the manuscript and the final one, to get the artwork just right. So often book covers or illustrations do not really suit the contents, and I am so grateful that both the cover and Quinn's artwork are true to the book.
Kim: You've mentioned some of your individual students who helped. How did your years of being among young people as a teacher help?
Cat: Every single one of the students I've had the honor of being with contributed to the novel, by daily correcting my sense of what is true and precious. In my acknowledgements at the back of the book, I wrote, "I thank the hundreds of students I've had, each one utterly original, whose untamed nature and spontaneity have delighted me more than anything I can think of, and whose honesty rigorously trained me as a writer; I hope you'll accept my final revision and not make me redo my homework." You see, I used to make my students redo their work if I didn't think it was what they were capable of, and I was rather relentless about that. I'd like them to all know that I had to redo my novel, nearly 300 pages of "homework," so many times that I think we're even now. But the truth is, every single one of those revisions helped make the book truer and truer to what it was meant to be, and I am grateful for having accepted the two and a half years of "redoing my homework."
I also learned from kids that a teacher has to follow a rhythm and pacing during a class session, alternating between pulling kids in, giving them time to digest and reflect, then enticing them back with curious elements which make them inquire into the truth and value of the subject matter, then setting them free again to mull things over. I eventually realized that I was pacing the novel much like a classroom, and that this meant I had unknowingly written a very cinematic novel.
Kim: One of your characters is a teacher, and there are several classroom scenes with Ben. Did you use any material from your own experience to develop these?
Cat: Yes, and I like to think that my former students will recognize a few details. In one scene, I have the teacher droning on and on about something I talked about a lot in seventh grade Humanities, because it intrigued me: the uniformity of the clay bricks found hundreds of miles apart along the ancient Indus River Valley, and the flooding and identical rebuilding that occurred regularly. Of course, I have Ben daydreaming, with the teacher's words only jarring his daydream now and again, which I am sure happened in my classroom quite a lot!
When I taught in the elementary school, we always did lots of experiments with surface tension, and Ben tries some of these in the book. In middle school I even used to work surface tension into grammar exercises, by letting rubbing alcohol (which has a low surface tension) interact with water over the corrected sentences on the overhead, which kept everyone's attention. So I was delighted to be able to work surface tension into the novel as well. I do hope my former students will feel right at home when they come to these parts.
There is one other thing some of my long-ago students will remember. In a fifth grade class I had nearly ten years ago, we read Ishi, Last of His Tribe, wrote poetry in Yahi, and even had a visiting classroom iguana for a while who we named Kaltsuna, which means "lizard" in Yahi. Ishi was our hero that year, and Ishi is Daggett's hero too.
Kim: When I think of you working with your students, I picture a classroom of students peacefully knitting, while they discuss literature or history. Could you elaborate on the part knitting plays in your book?
Cat: The funny thing is that when I set out to write Treasure Forest, I promised myself not to put knitting in it. I had already written a knitting book, and so I thought I ought to behave myself and leave it in those pages. I have no memory of the moment when I realized I was breaking my promise, but first there was a spinning wheel which reawakened a character's sense of the sacred, and then of course she began to make yarn and along came knitting . . . and before I knew it I had an old man teaching a boy to knit a tree house right into a tree with rope. Of course, at that moment I realized that I had gone far beyond the tame pages of my knitting book, and that knitting had become vital to the novel in a way I never could have predicted. So as I worked on my many revisions, I let myself add more fiber-related details, and truly, the magic of taking almost formless fiber and giving it tensile strength and definite form by twisting it tightly has become one of the underlying metaphors of the novel, and will be carried through the trilogy.
Kim: Can you compare the writing process for Treasure Forest with that of writing Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles?
Cat: That's an interesting question, and one I pondered occasionally while writing the novel. I had compiled enough material for half of a second knitting book when I began the novel, and then, of course, the story took me over, and the second sock book is still lying dormant. Over time I realized that in many ways writing a knitting book was harder than a novel. Revisions for a knitting book must be actually knit and puzzled out and recorded and then reknit to double-check for accuracy of directions. A novel only has to be rewritten and read aloud to hear the music of the language and the authenticity of the dialogue - and believe me, this is a whole lot less time-consuming. In both cases, there are more revisions than you had ever planned on, so when you multiply the inevitable number of revisions by the time required to either read aloud or reknit - well, you can see that a novel is "faster." That said, it took me less than a year to write the knitting book and two and a half years to write the novel.
One way in which the two books were alike was the joy of the creative "chase." In both books one thing led to another, which opened up a whole new horizon of choices, on and on, more delightful and more abundant each time. And with both books I learned SO MUCH. I had to literally invent much of the knitting that is in Socks Soar, which for me meant that I would occasionally leap out of bed in the middle of the night when something clicked in my head, and it was the same for Treasure Forest. I kept a digital recorder by my bed for those light bulb "ah-hah!" moments in the dark, and there was nothing I liked better than having new information to track down or synthesize into something brand new. So the joy of the writing and evolutionary processes were very much alike, and I feel very grateful to have been able to follow them twice in pursuit of a finished book.
Kim: In what ways did the island's wildlife and landscape find their way into your book?
Cat: I'd start my writing process with a morning walk, taking along the digital recorder to capture the images I saw and ideas that came to me. I might record descriptions of moss and ferns draping themselves over logs, spider webs beaded with glistening orbs of dew, or the almost bird-like way deer twirl their heads to check for safety as they graze. Then, after breakfast, I'd transcribe what I'd recorded and either use it that day or save it in a folder where I could browse for details as needed. I also recorded the early morning conversations of ravens in the woods about a mile from my home, and it was there that I got the idea of having Daggett slowly learn to think and speak in Ravenese.
Kim: The image and metaphor of a pond is central to the novel. Was there a particular pond on the island that inspired you?
Cat: I spent many mornings sitting on the dock at Egg Lake, just watching the water. Sometimes it was still and glassy, and sometimes it was choppy; sometimes giant turquoise dragonflies were darting along jagged paths in the air above the reeds, snatching insects out of the air, and sometimes a frog would plop into the water. I often went to sit on the dock to let the lake lure me towards the next mysterious twist or turn of the book. I also spent time lazily kayaking on Sportsman's Lake, lingering where the cattails open into little lagoons, peering into the underwater forests of green ropy water lily stems, and watching the insects and birds flying about. After one morning on the lake, I went home and poured it into writing the swamp scene, which is my favorite scene in the book, and one of the most powerful in terms of meaning.
Kim: Do you expect to write the next two books in the trilogy here on the island as well?
Cat: I hope so. Treasure Forest is actually the middle book of the trilogy, and the next one will be the prequel, which takes all the adult characters back to their childhoods so that I can reveal the secrets of the lifelong friendship between Archie, Daphne, and Henry, as well as invite the reader to watch Daggett struggling to grow up in an urban setting, and finally wrestle himself away to become the forest hermit of Treasure Forest. The writers of the letters may be revealed, and finally, Ben and Sara will be born and the reader will find out what their Grandma Daphne taught them before she died.
The sequel, which will be the last book published, takes place mostly in a city, and I will need to live in a city for some time, probably one less beautiful and less dominated by nature than Vancouver B.C., where I have spent time already, so that I will know what I am writing about. I feel it is essential that my readers, most of whom will live in cities, see that it is possible to enter the Forest Inside even if you do not have nature nearby, so the city setting will have to be very urban and challenging. So the final book may not be able to be written here.
Kim: The cover is so beautiful, and reminds me of dawn over an island pond.
Cat: I realized that very thing, to my astonishment, only after the book had been published. I did not design the cover; it was conceptualized by a wonderful Gulf Islands graphic artist, and developed by our book designer in Vancouver, B.C. All I knew was that I loved the cover. Then one early morning this summer on my way to the redeye ferry, I stopped by Egg Lake to show the lake "our book." I stood on the dock and held the book up for the lake to see. The image on the cover was almost identical to the scene of sky, forest, and water behind the book, right down to the exact shade of rose in the lightening sky, the greenish light at the horizon of the water, and the luminous stillness. It looked like a photo on top of the same photo, blown up. My mouth hung open in surprise, and all I could finally whisper was, "I guess we got it right." And so truly, the island has given birth to this book, taking it out of my hands again and again, and for that I am infinitely grateful.
Kim: Thank you, Cat. I appreciate your sharing how the threads of your life and the wonder of this place are intricately knit into the novel. It is clear that the essence, as well as the details, of the Treasure Forest can also be found on our islands, inside each one of us. I'm looking forward to the prequel and sequel.
Cat: Thank you, Kim, for your wonderful questions, and for the wise counsel you offered me during our weekly knitting sessions while I was writing the book. I also thank our whole island community, and am so grateful for the beautiful surroundings which nourish us all.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Bordhi added an h to her last name. Reprints of her knitting book will use the new spelling.
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