A Love Letter to Libraries

Dear Libraries Everywhere-

I keep a list of the highs and lows of the year in the back of my journal, and this month one of your systems, the Sno-Isle library system in Washington state, selected my book The Mountains Are Calling as a Staff Pick Best of 2022 for Non-Fiction. It was a high, a very big high with little stars beside it. Forget the writer’s dream of making the New York Times bestseller list, or the Independent bookstore choice of the year, the Sno-Isle staff pick warmed my heart and made me joy-hum for days, not only because libraries are the truest public expression of egalitarianism, but I’ve been saved by you my whole life.

You rescued me as a lonely new girl in too many schools to count, pushing glasses up my nose, running my finger along the spines, losing myself in the stacks.

You were a place to spend time in dusty and unfamiliar towns while living overseas, homesick and bored, leading to the electric discovery of I.B. Singer, Willa Cather, and Lawrence van der Post who transported me somewhere else.

You threw me a lifeline from a marginal education into the rich territory of learning. Aboriginal Songlines, the names of constellations, the horrors of World War I, and how to write a resume began filling the many gaps, making me hungry for more.

You, dear Libraries, along with public piers, and parks, are among the collective treasures of our communities. You offer refuge to all. No need for a reservation, a ticket, or fancy clothes. Just show up and stand side by side with squid jiggers from tiny towns, homeless poets, kids with nowhere else to go, and those who want nothing more than to sprawl in a chair on a rainy afternoon and learn about fractals.

It’s in the genes. My Grandmother Marion O. Holt was a librarian. She started the first library in Idaho county and served for decades. She was strict. She demanded silence, and raised her heavy black eyebrows up then down in one straight line to enforce it without a word. She taught me to read and gave me my first book which I still have today: Put Me In the Zoo! by Robert Lopshire and now I’ve read to my own grandchildren. She taught me to NEVER place an open book upside down. ‘You’ll break the spine,’ said grimly as if it was the murder of a small animal.

I remember discovering the library in the small village of Naknek, Alaska our first summer there when the kids were young. I showed up with my dirty, dislocated tribe of kids, wrecked with dashed Alaska expectations, desperately seeking a way to kill time, entertain the kids, get out of the mud and away from the mosquitos. A woman like a westerly wind greeted us with a wide smile. Her name was Joy. She guided the children to the toy room, and steered me to the Alaska regional section to learn more about this dim place I would grow to fiercely love over the years. We left with Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez, a Sinbad the Sailor video, and magazines with trashy news about movie stars and their calamities that I would never buy at home. I thumbed through them in our trailer with its leaky pipes as bears nosed around outside.

“Do NOT go for walks on the tundra while menstruating,” Joy told me. “The bears will smell the blood and be attracted.”

Dear Libraries Everywhere, perhaps I was saved from tooth and claw by one of your own that distant summer. When I think about it, most paths of consolation drew me to you, and your sweet harbor of warmth where I was safe.

Thank you. I only wish global politics could run like a library and the world would be a better place. You’ve changed lives. You’ve changed mine.

With Gratitude—

Nancy