Echo Mountain

Ellie explains the stock market crash of 1929, which caused the Great Depression and forced her family out of their town to live on Echo Mountain. Ellie’s father was a tailor who sewed detailed and well-fitted clothing; Ellie’s mother was a music teacher. Neither was in high demand any longer. Capricorn, the family dog at the time and Quiet’s grandmother, came with the family to Echo Mountain. The family sold the house, purchased cows, and moved to the mountainside. They pitched a tent and began building the cabin they would live in. Capricorn became a source of comfort and safety on the mountain as the family slept in a tent.

Ellie often compares the lives and emotions of the dogs in her life to the people in her life. She mentions that she and Capricorn came into the world similarly—in a town before the crash. Ellie also explains that Capricorn had to learn to hunt on the mountain, and her father had to do the same. One day, Capricorn brings Ellie “a tiny lamb, carved out of wood, tied with a bit of twine to her collar” (9). Ellie looks around and sees nobody but her family; she assumes that the gift must have come from one of the four families living nearby. Ellie tucks the lamb away and looks forward to discovering the story behind the gift, resolving to tell no one about it.

Ellie describes her family’s first spring living on the mountain with the alliterative phrase “dampy and dirty” (11). She compares her family’s hunger to those of the animals who live through long, cold winters. Everyone worked hard to slowly build the cabin, and Esther and Ellie’s mother cried at night over the injustice that so many people had suffered. Esther’s mother grieved for the students she no longer sees each day. Ellie recalls that others in her family seemed to blame the mountain itself for their strife, but she knows that “it was, after all, what saved [them]” (12).

Ellie believes that the transition to the mountain was hardest for her mother and sister, but it was difficult for everyone. Eating bean and water soup or possum was common for the first weeks. To add to this difficulty, Ellie and her father took to the mountain right away, causing an unspoken divide between the two of them and Esther and her mother. Ellie remembers feeling guilty for not being more distraught about everything, but she “loved the mountain. And [she] loved what it kindled in [her]. And that was that” (13).

In May, Ellie pulls her special jacket (made by her father before the shop closed) down from a tree and finds a carving of a snowdrop flower inside it. She suspects it is from the same source as the lamb and looks into the woods. She sees a face, “framed by leaves, as if it were part plant itself” (14), watching her. When she calls to it, it disappears into the brush. Ellie recalls the face being young and lonely, and she watches the woods for days to see if it reappears. By June, the first room of the cabin is done, and by winter, the cabin is finished. The children and parents have rooms, and there is also a kitchen and living room. Ellie feels blessed but knows that feeling will not last, as her father soon suffers a serious accident. Details about the accident unfold in future chapters.

Ellie’s memories drift back to the spring after her father’s accident once more. She is now an established “woods-girl” who is able to trap and catch many different types of animals (16). Ellie also describes herself as an “echo-girl” (16), feeling as if she experiences everything that nature experiences. She grieves the darkness when she pulls up carrots and feels trapped when snaring a rabbit. Ellie sometimes feels split by “this two-ness” (17), but hunger always wins out. Ellie’s mother, who used to sing and play the mandolin, has stopped singing and teaching her children to sing since the accident. Ellie recalls how Capricorn died shortly after giving birth to her puppies, a year into living on the mountain. Ellie grieves the loss and cares for Capricorn’s young. She takes a liking to one puppy, Willow (who later becomes Quiet’s mother), but her father insists on giving it to Esther in an effort to make her happier. Ellie watches as Esther tames the dog, treating it like a doll and renaming it Maisie, “just as Esther and [her] mother tied their hair back, and polished their shoes, and did everything they could to keep Samuel, too, from growing up wild” (19).

Ellie finds more carvings as the days pass, one of which is a carving of Maisie that is almost exact. Ellie holds it delicately, “as if it were made of sugar” (20). She sees movement in the trees and dashes after it but finds nothing. Over the next few days, Ellie receives and sees nothing. She worries that running after this person has scared them off. It is not until a month later that Ellie finally finds a carving of a full moon by the brook. She kisses it and yells out a thank you. Ellie starts keeping her carvings in a back shelf in the woodshed, and knowing they are there brings her comfort. She starts to feel as if the gifts tell a story about her as a person—the way she notices the little things, the way she enjoys experiencing the unknown. Ellie understands, too, that the person making the carvings is making them for her and no one else. She loves “finding them tucked in the corners of [her] world” (23). Shortly after Ellie’s father’s accident, Ellie finds a particularly important carving. This carving is of her, and she finds it on the stump that almost killed her father.

After Quiet is born, Ellie feels a warmth that had long since vanished after the accident. Ellie also cares more for Maisie because her sister lost interest as Maisie grew up. Samuel is jealous, but his mother assures him he will get his own puppy in the next litter. When Ellie decides to go out to the shed to check on Maisie and the pups, Samuel accompanies her. Ellie warns him that Maisie is protective of her puppies, and Samuel is shocked when she bares her teeth at him. Slowly, Ellie and Samuel approach Maisie and gently hold their hands out. Samuel asks how Ellie knew what to do to save Quiet, and Ellie explains that she recalled the feeling of snow on her neck. She reasoned that perhaps the dog needed to be startled in a similar way. Samuel insultingly remarks that Ellie is never right and that this was probably an anomaly; Ellie ignores his comment. Instead, she feels the flame in her chest rising again—this time, it is telling her something about her father.

Ellie reveals the nature of her father’s accident, explaining that he was hit in the head by a tree that he cut down and implying that she was there with him. Ellie recalls how, after the accident, a doctor rode in a day later and diagnosed the coma. Since then, the family slowly learned how to feed her father, turn him regularly, and clean his bedsores with vinegar. The family tries to bring the world into his room, bringing flowers in spring and keeping the gramophone playing. Esther reads him stories, and Samuel tells him about the family’s day, every day. Ellie explains that all of these acts are an attempt to “tempt [her] father back into the life he’d had before” (32). On the day she spoke to Samuel about the snow on her neck, Ellie decides to try the technique she used on Quiet to wake her father from his coma. She dumps a bucket of cold water on him, and her mother and Esther rush in, wondering what she was thinking. Ellie sees her father’s hand twitch slightly.

Ellie’s mother, who is exhausted and deeply saddened, questions Ellie’s actions. Ellie is filled with hope, but her mother insists that Father’s hand twitching was just a reaction, nothing more. The two of them argue back and forth until Ellie is asked to apologize to her father. She softly apologizes for the water being cold, telling her father about Quiet’s revival and the way the family is falling apart without him. She also tells him about the person in the woods, who may know the truth about the accident. She is determined to find a way to wake her father up. After lunch, Ellie makes her way out into the woods to a spot she goes to think: the remains of an old cabin. Ellie sits there, pondering all the natural medicines she knows, and decides that inducing pain may be a worthwhile strategy to try. She knows that her mother will punish her, but Ellie decides it will be well worth the risk; she must be brave and follow her inner flame.

Ellie describes the setting of the mountain, with its many caverns, paths, and woods. There is a river that becomes violent during storms and steep cliffs that her father warned her and Samuel to stay away from. Ellie has a feeling there is “something else besides bears and broken bones” up there (43), but she is not sure exactly what. Ellie enjoys the duality of the familiar and unknown that life on the mountain brings. When she and Samuel are instructed to fetch venison (deer meat) from the nearby Peterson family’s latest kill, Samuel charges ahead as Ellie carries a pail of milk to pay for the meat. She thinks about the family’s two cows, Venus and Jupiter, who roam freely in the woods during the day and sleep in their stable at night. Ellie stops to collect some tree sap and balsam, which she plans to use on her father’s scar. When she picks up the pail of milk again, a very large wild dog is standing in front of her. It stares at her curiously, with a tick hanging from its eye, and when she turns away, it disappears. Ellie remarks that if she were to name it, she would call it Ghost.

Samuel is already at the Petersons’ when Ellie catches up with the milk. Samuel “seems to crave the attention of men lately” (48), due to his father’s mental absence, and Samuel enthusiastically listens as Mr. Peterson teaches him how to clean the hooves of a horse named Scotch. After the horse’s hoof is cleaned, Samuel notices a thorn in it. Mr. Peterson pulls it out as Ellie holds Scotch’s head. Ellie then offers some of the balsam she just collected for the wound, and the horse stares at her gratefully. Mr. Peterson prepares the meat, and his wife, Mollie, gives Ellie and Samuel some deer tallow (fat) for soap, candles, and similar things. Ellie thanks them, and Samuel promises to come back soon to visit Scotch. The meat is tied in a fabric pouch, and Ellie and her brother set off down the mountain carrying it between them, “leaving a trail of blood despite [their] best efforts” (52).

Ellie decides that she needs to “gather stink” (53) as part of the medicinal concoction she is planning for her father. She steals an egg from the kitchen, planning to attract a skunk and collect its spray. Instead, she finds her way out to the woodshed to visit Maisie, and after cuddling with her and her puppies, decides to feed the egg to Maisie instead. Quiet crawls right up to Ellie, pushing himself into her neck “as if he’d found what he was looking for” (55). Ellie leaves the shed and heads for the balsam tree to collect more balsam before night falls. The chapter ends on a cliff-hanger as Ellie foreshadows that the trail of blood from earlier that day will cause the wild dog to follow them back to the cabin.

Ellie is confronted once more by the wild dog. It seems to have a question, as if it might need something from Ellie but is not quite sure about her. Suddenly, Ellie’s mother calls her, and when Ellie turns back to the dog, it is gone again. It is as if the dog does not want anyone but Ellie to see it. Instead of telling her mother the truth, Ellie says she was just out for a walk. Ellie has the balsam behind her back and tucks it behind the shed before going to help her mother with a soap fire (to create soap using the tallow). Ellie appreciates that her sister does housework so that Ellie has the time and freedom to take up the tasks her father once did: “Yard chores. Gardening. Fishing. And anything involving fire” (58).

As Ellie and her mother sit around the fire, Ellie mentions seeing the dog, and her mother tells her it may belong to the hag who lives up the mountain. Ellie has heard about this hag only once before, when she climbed past the family encampments and found the hag’s fire. Her father explained that the hag lived there and that neither she nor her dog seemed at all friendly. He sternly told Ellie to leave the hag alone. Ellie wonders if the hag might be the woodcarver, but the face in the woods looked too young to be called hag-like. Ellie asks about the possibility of seeking the hag’s help in curing her father, but her mother shoots down the idea as being ridiculous. She warns Ellie to stay away from the dog. The narrative foreshadows that the dog will lead Ellie somewhere new, changing her in the process.

As the family says good night to their father, Ellie puts her hand on his forehead, concentrating on the thought of making him well. She feels her hand get hot, “as if the flame in [her] chest had spread” (62). In bed, Ellie recalls the January day of her father’s accident. He was teaching her how to chop trees properly and safely, and Samuel dashed out just as one was about to fall. Ellie ran out and grabbed Samuel, but her father was caught underneath the tree and lay unconscious in the snow. Ellie ran to get her mother, taking Samuel back to where Esther was supposed to be watching him. The family all went to Ellie’s father, working together to break branches and slowly pull him out from under the fallen tree. Ellie’s mother tied an old blanket around him and they dragged him into the cabin to clean his wound. Everyone was frantic, Samuel was crying, and Ellie’s mother told her to run to the Petersons and ask them to call a doctor.

Days after the accident, Ellie’s mother and sister are finally ready to ask her about what happened. Samuel mentions Ellie knocking him down, and Ellie does not want to burden Samuel with the knowledge that his foolish choice led to the accident. Ellie’s sister asks if Ellie was in the way and her father tried to save her. Ellie decides to take the blame rather than placing it on Samuel and Esther, and in doing so creates a distance between herself and her mother and sister. As Ellie lies in the darkness thinking about the accident, she decides to get up early and go outside. She visits Maisie in the woodshed, taking the jar for her father’s medicine and scraping her tears into it. Ellie adds balsam and dew from the grass and decides she will take some river water and gather honey tomorrow. Ellie then sits by the tallow fire. Her mother comes out to ask what she is doing, and Ellie remarks that the fire was lonely. This makes her mother smile, which Ellie describes as “so…unexpected, to see her standing on the step in the darkness, veiled in starlight, the white of her smile a quick surprise, then gone, as she turned to go back inside” (69). Ellie falls asleep cuddled up with Maisie and her puppies, thinking about the medicine.

Ellie wakes up the next morning and notes the duality of “wobbling on the tightrope between yesterday and tomorrow” (71). Ellie does her morning chores, including feeding and singing to Maisie and holding Quiet for a while. After she is done, she packs a fishing rod and some gear and heads to the river. Samuel follows her, although he ends up leading the way instead, bounding recklessly from rock to rock. They pass a meadow, a pond, and an oak tree buzzing with bees. Ellie decides to collect the honey on the way back, lest her hands be covered in stings as she tries to fish. She spots a gift on a stone nearby, this time a carving of a honeybee. Samuel continues racing ahead, and when Ellie catches up with him, he is frozen and staring at “the ghost dog” (74). Samuel suggests taking the dog home, but Ellie is sure it belongs to the hag. She says nothing of the hag to Samuel, realizing suddenly that if the dog is continuously wandering away from his home, there must be a reason. Ellie shoos the dog away, to Samuel’s chagrin.

Ellie and Samuel share an afternoon of bonding and learning as Ellie teaches Samuel how to fish. Ellie regrets that her father is not the one doing it but takes on the challenge, helping Samuel catch two trout. Samuel is extremely proud of his catches, calling them “the best fish anyone ever caught” (78). Ellie takes charge of baiting the slugs and beating the fish after being caught. She compliments Samuel’s fish, hoping that his pride in his catch will inspire him to eat more. Samuel is still very small, and Ellie wants him to eat and grow strong and tough. She takes out her medicine jar to put some river water in it, “just enough for some wildness” (79) and tells Samuel it is a tea.

Ellie and Samuel reach the hive, and Ellie instructs Samuel to sit down, far away. She takes a flint spearhead and knife from her bag, recalling how she found the flint one day while planting with her father. He taught her how to make fire by striking it, noting that there are “few things more valuable in this world” (80). Fire is a recurring symbol in the novel, often coming up as a metaphor for Ellie’s passion, hope, and drive. While teaching Ellie how to make fire, Ellie’s father taught her something else as well: the importance of teaching oneself through practice. Ellie draws an old bird’s nest from her pack and shows Samuel how to start a fire. She creates a torch with it, and Samuel watches in awe. Ellie assures him that their father will teach him soon, the hope in her ever ignited. Ellie puts mud on the torch, causing it to smoke but not light, and puts it up to the hive. The bees become drowsy, and Ellie sticks her hand into the tree to find the honeycomb. As the bees begin to cover her hand, Ellie feels their terror and their need for the honey to stay alive. She decides at the last moment to leave it there. Several bees die after stinging her glove, and one manages to get her on the cheek. Samuel and Ellie head back to the cabin together, Samuel confused as to why Ellie did not take any honey.

When Ellie and Samuel return, Esther and their mother are angry, not having known where they went. Esther slyly announces that the puppies will be traded away to Mr. Anderson, a neighbor, including Ellie’s dog, Quiet. Ellie is shocked but soon realizes that her mother is doing this to punish her—not for today, but for what Ellie’s mother believes is Ellie’s fault in her father’s accident. Feeling hurt and deeply betrayed, Ellie crawls in next to Maisie and the pups in the woodshed and cries.