Sedimental: a geomemoir

Abstract

This Creative Nonfiction MFA Thesis is a book-length work comprised of two essays which are modeled after the process of sandstone formation. The work covers the first two of four sedimentary phases, Erosion and Transportation, using sedimentation to understand the limits and impossibilities of preserving memory. The writer, also a climber and painter, uses the sandstone formations around Horsetooth Reservoir, where they love climbing, as an entry point for grief, eventually exploring what it means to construct a more ecologically-centered life experience. The work is hybrid-genre, including paintings, and photographs from the writer's father, speaking to the aesthetics of geomemoir, visual collage, and, more broadly, the intangibility of grief. The essays, Erosion and Transportation, are the writer's attempt to understand what preserving love and life means, how they got to be where they are, and, principally, who has influenced their journey.