About David Oates

Most of what I do is to explore how our human world of thinking, writing, and feeling, connects with that larger world of natural wildness.

Education:

I got a Ph.D. in literature from Emory University (Atlanta) in 1978, on a Danforth doctoral fellowship. Before that, I had entangled myself in an evangelical Christian college on the west coast (Westmont College) as a place to wrestle with the inherent conflict between the rowdiness of human nature and the narrowness of the religious culture I had been raised in. That little school could never figure out how to split the difference between education and indoctrination. And it certainly had no answers for me on how to be a gay, human, spiritual, intellectual being.

Mountains:

All the while I was becoming a scholar, I hiked and climbed--mostly in California's Sierra Nevada mountains. I worked for four years as a climbing instructor and back-country guide for a shoestring "wilderness education" outfit. I had lots of fun, got to be one of the guys for a change, and learned about being in the mountains. We climbed our groups of semi-delinquent boys and girls up many of the best peaks of the Great Western Divide: Milestone, Thunder, Brewer, Jordan.

Since then I've taken myself (often alone) through many mountains and up onto lots of peaks. I'm over 50 but still having a lot of fun hiking and kayaking. That picture of the guy in the head-rag is me in the Olympic Range (Washington State) with Mt. Olympus in the background about three years ago.

Where I live and Who I live with:

I've lived in Portland since 1992. This is a great town, with snow-covered volcanoes visible from a nifty, compact downtown. We're exploring how the human and natural mix, here. I'm working on integrating a creative-arts vision to the restoration project on Ross Island in the middle of our river--it's been a sand and gravel mine for the last 60 years, but in the next 60 years it's going to turn back into Eden. I helped Orlo (an award-winning art and ecology organization here in Portland) organize a Call to Artists with gallery show and symposium for August-October 2004.

My heart's companion and partner is the visual artist Horatio Hung-Yan Law. We live in a nice close-in urban neighborhood. (Google his name or send me an email to catch some of his recent work locally or nationally).

The Teaching Life:

Since leaving Emory, I've made my living as a college teacher (Johnson C. Smith University, Pepperdine University, Northrop University). Here in the northwest I occasionally teach Environmental Studies at Marylhurst University. I'm tenured at Clark College, a community college in Vancouver, Washington, across the Columbia from Portland.

Some recent projects include speaking with graduate students in the education program at Lewis and Clark, including a visiting group of Costa Rican professors and teachers; teaching the "Deep Ecology/Next Ecology" course at Marylhurst University; and developing a comprehensive environmental education program for Clark College. I've been offering the "Literature of Nature" course there each winter term.

Once or twice a year I offer a private workshop in writing  from nature called "Wild Writers Seminar." I enjoy the personal contact with writers at many stages of development, and I find my fellow writers a source of inspiration and encouragement. Contact me for information about the next opportunity (and visit the Wild Writers Seminars page elsewhere on this website).

The Writing Life:

My ongoing writing projects are moving deeper into the urban/natural borderlands.

I have been walking and kayaking the Portland Urban Growth Boundary to create a new, partly collaborative book (see "Other Books" link to the left).

In both poetry and prose I am continuing to explore questions of resistance to entrenched political power.

And I am continuing work on a wildly genre-bending story of race-mixing and scientific genocide on the Columbia River called StealHead. Its characters include Chief Concomly, the Scottish doctor who stole the chief's head, and the chief's métis or mixed-race grandson Ranald who entered Japan before Commodore Perry did; as well as a cast of 20th and 21st century tag-alongs. For now, call it a Chinook-kabuki nonfiction prose opera.

(See Other Books, Essays, and Poetry for a rundown of my writing.)