Bird Cloud: A Memoir of Place

In this memoir author Annie Proulx speaks of what it means to build a home. She begins with an almost unlikely tale in which she and her sister are delayed by a very weird merchant, so much so that they come upon a car accident they might have been a part of if it hadn’t been for the weird man who is instrumental in delaying them. When she tells her mother of the incident, her mother reveals that the man’s name was Proulx, too.Proulx has lived in many locales but seems to have taken quite a liking to the West, most assuredly New Mexico and Wyoming, where she decides to purchase land and build a place where she will live out her days:“A bald eagle perched in a dead tree, watching us. The landscape was bold. Not only was the property on the North Platte River but the river ran through it, taking an east-west turn for a few miles in its course. The land was a section, 640 acres, a square mile of riparian shrubs and cottonwood, some wetland areas during June high water, sage flats and a lot of weedy overgrazed pasture” (46).Proulx purchases the land as the site for her house, Bird Cloud. She then gives the reader a treasure trove of history concerning her patch of land. The archaeological. The environmental.“Trying to understand Wyoming’s landscape where I could see the remains of Indian trails, stone flakes from their toolmaking, the tools themselves, images scratched into the dark desert varnish of rock faces, cairns and fire pits forced recognition: where there are humans there is always ecological change” (165).The political wranglings.“White men never understood the Indian way of consensus and insisted on dealing with a tribal leader or “chief,” another concept alien to Indians who learned to greatly distrust the lying, devious white men whose treaties were worthless. On the other side, most whites regarded Indian oratory as a kind of obstructionist filibustering, boring harangues, though some admired them and saw them as akin to classical Roman oratory” (171).The two most interesting aspects of the book, to me, are following the narrative of Proulx's house’s construction, and two, the observation of bird life. It’s as if she, while telling of the building of her “nest,” recounts another story, as if she herself is just another bird attempting to make a home in the area. They seem to observe her as much as she observes them.“The first day I saw Bird Cloud, in July 2003, I was astonished by the great number and variety of birds in this river habitat. A bald eagle sat in a tree near the river’s edge. Pelicans sailed downstream. I saw swallows, falcons, bluebirds, flocks of ducks burst up the the North Platte and flew over my head in whistling flight. Ravens croaked from the cliff. I thought my great avocation for the rest of my life would be watching these birds and learning their ways” (191).Proulx does much to depict the arduous nature of living in the mountainous setting. At times strong and constant winds. Foot after foot of snow. Impassable roads. Bitterly cold temperatures day after day.“Gerald kept smashing a path through the drifts on the county road and managed to get in and out most days, taking a risk lover’s joy in the nauseating slides toward the ditch, the scrape of ice and packed snow on his truck’s undercarriage” (119).Even after the house is finished, even as Proulx remains until the last day of December before fleeing to her other home in New Mexico, she finally sees she will never be able to realize her dream of living in this environment year round.“So ended the first and only full year I was to spend at Bird Cloud. I returned in March and for several more years came in early spring and stayed until the road-choking snow drove me out, but I had to face the fact that no matter how much I loved the place it was not, and never could be, the final home of which I had dreamed” (231).Sad. And yet something to admire: her almost unstoppable desire and courage to see the building of her home through to its completion, something most of us can only dream of—making Proulx a rare bird indeed.

I really wanted to like this book, because it is supposedly about building a house in the high desert of Wyoming, and because her other books are great narratives about place. This one is not. The different chapters have no common thread, neither chronological, nor dramatical. The characterizations of the people she encounters during the build barely go beyond the name and basic description. Overall, really disappointing.

Details, details - that's what building projects are about, being our own general contractor - the project is ours!! Crews bring amazing skills & visions, we bring our visions & decisions, both need problem-solving imagination. Such projects are studies in patience - if ya got some, or can get some pronto. No matter how carefully we plan to have the right stuff on site at the right time, which mostly we get right, sometimes - not - patience works better than kerfluffle.Then the exploration of a homesite of large acreage with a stream running through it, lots of wildlife, rocks, cliffs, all the fun of finding OUT what's there!! Enjoyed the adventure!! Uhh, from my easy, hair standing on end, sharing the happiness of discoveries.

I should have connected the date published (2011) with the fact that only 72 people purchased this book on Kindle.The reviews were mixed.I found it endlessly boring. It went on about her ancestors. Who coud keep track? Who cared ? It was the same with her house .I kept waiting for some movement, some interaction. Thebook was so bogged down with dull facts.Too bad she didn't stick to the formula of her others stories.

The subtitle of this book is the clue to its unusual format. It started out with Proulx's earliest memories and a bit of a history of the family and seems to be organised in bundles. Occasionally the same information is returned to from a different direction, so to speak.The footnotes pop up in unusual places on the Kindle (ie. not at the foot of the page) and, like many Librarything contributors I was a bit confused and annoyed. But the story was fascinating, the history, the house building, the wildlife and the trees.I really wanted photos and spent a lot of time looking things up.Almost thoroughly enjoyable!

As always, Annie Proulx has a wonderful way with words, and it turns out she has a way with birds as well. But the whole work is a bit cloudy. Architecture intrigues me, but there wasn't much there. The birds provide some continuity, but no real depth. I was hoping for a modern, beautifully written, positive variation on Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. Didn't happen. I never felt much focus for long as the work wandered, never quite making a point. She continues to do wonderful things with words and with Wyoming, but in this case I was never sure why.

Proulx employs the same striking and powerful language as in her novels; however, she manages to write an entire tome about a personal adventure without once letting us into her personal life. After reading this, I don't know if she's married or single, gay or straight, or has any family members. This distance between her and the reader takes most of the enjoyment out of this book.

One of my favorite writers. If it's by Annie Proulx, it's a sure fire great read. But this isn't fiction. It's the story of building a house in Wyoming. The project was agonizing. Maybe all construction projects are, but this one gets to be tiresome. An enormous amount of money must have been spent for all that special luxury material sent out into the middle of nowhere. Perhaps in the current economy the whinning seems distasteful or selfish.

I am a big fan of Annie Proulx. It therefor pains me to give less than five stars to anything by her. Her works of fiction are beyond reproach, but this, the nearest yet to an autobiography, I found to be rather dull and, I can't believe I am saying this about any Annie Proulx book, boring. Sure it tells us much about life in nineteenth century USA and Canada, about Annie Proulx's life now and in her early years, about why she chose to build her home under that bird shaped cloud in her beloved Wyoming and why she left this special place. All this should have made for an interesting read , but for me it was too pedestrian with rather a lot of unnecessary detail about the construction, fitting and decor.I think I would have put it down before the end were it not for my great, genuine admiration of Annie Proulx.

Not an easy read for me. Lots of terms I did not understand for architectural features, materials and processes. Illustrating photographs would have helped enormously. As it was, I ploughed on regardless of failures to understand details and got the gist of the huge task Ms Proulx and the James Gang took on and conquered. I liked the historical aspect both of Proulx's family and of Wyoming. I love her fiction; she is one of my favourite writers but I feel slightly worthy having tackled this, rather like when I have been to the dentist's or flown somewhere!

I thoroughly enjoy the novels and short stories of Annie Proulx, so rich in narrative description, particularly of red neck America. However, this autobiography is a bit too encyclopaedic for my taste, and I soon became bogged down in her ancestry and the development problems of building Bird Cloud that I put the book aside for another day

I usually really enjoy reading Annie Proulx, but to be honest I found this account of her setting up a new home in Wyoming a bit disappointing. There is a lot about constructing the house which at time gets a bit boring, though her descriptions of the surrounding wildlife and history of the place are interesting.

I never thought I would be bored by Annie Proulx, I have read & reread all her books with great pleasure but reading Bird Cloud was like leafing through a Builders Merchant catalogue. Sorry.