English 540

Remembering memoir

2010-12-07T09:21:00.001-08:00

Of all the things that memoir can be: travelogue, coming-of-age story, humorous romp through time, etc., the genre's main focus as I now see it is to shape a life's story into events and perspectives that can help others learn. I suppose I've always known this, always being for as long as I've though actively about memoir, anyway.

After my stroke I spent lots of time hunting down books that told stories like mine. I wanted to know that despite the dung heap my life had become, things would get better. While none of the stories were like mine-- 'My Stroke of Luck" came out after I was over my misery-- I still found some comfort in what I read. At that time I never read for sensationalism, shock value or to make myself feel better because of someone's sorrows. The elements of memoirs that I read that spoke to me were just the ways in which the authors had assembled events to help me see their points of growth. Unfortunately, I think that many authors today use the adage that sex (or drugs, etc) sells, so these things are used in books to carry the whole story. It works, but frankly, I can't wait until we as a culture are bored with this tired old trick. In today's pop culture world, we can't help turning on the TV and seeing some sordid real-life TV show about how crappy someone's life is; there's Hoarders and Intervention and Wife Swap and all sorts of other shows like this; I can't wait till they are old news.

So what I've enjoyed the most about the class has to do with the ways in which I was asked to consider memoir as a literary form. It can certainly be that; however, I wonder if it's very nature imposes some limits on where it can go. If cultural trends are cyclical, as think we've all seen evidence of in some ways, then hopefully memoir can move into a place of substance, rather than just substance abuse/physical abuse, etc.

For example, I think back to our discussion on Langston Hughes, and the piece we read for that week. "Salvation" had some real depth to it, and although I'm not saying our other pieces didn't, it was so refreshing to read a piece that didn't involve the same story rehashed to another person's life/era. I know that all subject areas probably have memoir-writers in them, so maybe the onus is on me to find memoirs that fulfill me in a more "real" way.

So as I consider my own tale or stroke recovery, all of these considerations make me rethink the way I'd started that book; the inclusion of my own sordid stories and all the things I have come to dislike about the genre. How can I avoid them and write something that I'd like to see out there?

Again I turn to Hughes, who wrote, as the voice of an English teacher, in "Theme for English B,"

"go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page be out of you--
Then it will be true."

Wiesel's collective memory

2010-11-21T18:40:00.001-08:00

I've been reading all of Patricia Hampl's "I Could Tell you Stories" for my final, and what I read today coincides with what Wiesel (and most of our authors, really) is trying to do with his stories in Night. She is talking about writers of the Eastern Europe persuasion, but I think it could be said that non-American writers fall into this category, as she later goes on to explain.Hampl is discussing the idea of memory and continuity in writers who have had to remember not only for themselves but for a whole era, a whole nation. That is definitely Wiesel.

"Remembrance in these writers is less strictly personal than it is in most American autobiography, through the uncanny and formative moments remain, as in any memoir, the basis of the work. But for these writers the past is the nation's finally, not the family's as it so typically is in American memoir. The brush strokes are of history, rather than autobiography" (83).

Hampl is calling attention here to the scope and intent of a memoir; she is saying that for American writers, whose lives and stories are shaped largely by and of their personal experiences and go on to reflect such things, scope and intent is not so all encompassing as it is for other non-American memoirists. Americans have always had a can-do, self-reliance sort of mentality, and even though other societies and individuals have this mentality too (Wiesel certainly does pull him self along), other people don't necessarily focus on the self quite to the point that American writers might. It is the difference between memoir and autobiography, she says.

For Wiesel, who must remember and write for whole countries, families and nation/states, the luxury of focusing on the self has disappeared with the past. Although Hampl is writing about the author Czeslaw Milosz and not Elie Wiesel, what she writes of the former could be said of the latter.

"[He] hinges the personal to the history of the nation. The fusion of these two narrations--one intimate, the other public--creates a powerful call and reply which achieves poetic form. It is a relationship--that bruised word of our own relentlessly psychological culture, reclaimed by the impersonal method [he] suggests" (86).

Wiesel's attempt at creating both personal and public narratives and histories in Night serves a purpose as a historical work, but it goes deeper than that in also capturing the stories of several "smaller" lives. The things he's chosen to include support his scope and intent to make this a literary work; each scene, each individual, each location works with this quality of memoir to highlight and foster discussion about "the greater truth" or the greater truths that must come of such a book.

At home with Thoreau

2010-11-12T15:52:00.001-08:00

I'd like to think of Thoreau's writing as memoir because he does cover a specific time frame and series of events, but I'm not exactly sure his story fits into what I think of as modern memoir. To me, modern memoir is more of an examination of a certain time frame that is rife with problems that one has to overcome; problems that the individual has no control over. I usually think that there is some type of personal revelation that comes out of this, and although this exists here, I don't feel like the challenges Thoreau is facing are all that critical to self-development. No, that's not quite it-- the problems he faces are critical to his self-development, but what I'm trying to get at is that they are not do-or-die challenges he's facing.

For instance, in Karr's memoir, she's facing rape, alcoholism, family problems and disinterested parents. Same with Angelou McCourt faced poverty and alcoholism, etc. The problems Thoreau is facing deal with his need to disengage from society and find a simpler life, but this is not as necessary to his livelihood as overcome those other problems is for the other authors.
Now, I realize that Thoreau would argue that simplicity IS necessary to one's livelihood and self-preservation, but really.. in the face of the other memoirs we've read, his problems are pretty tame.

Another reason I question Thoreau's work as "memoir" is that I'm not exactly sure what he's learning about himself in the wild. It seems to me like he's already had some pretty well-formed opinions and ideas; his time at the pond is just testing them out and further reinforcing what he already knows about himself. To me, a literary memoir must have some sort of life-changing conflict that results in a growth process for the reader too. In our time it's almost impossible for anyone to do what he did, so it's unlikely that anyone will "learn" in the way Thoreau did.

However, for all of my inability to see his work as memoir, on of the elements of story that Thoreau utilizes is that of recalling memories. What is memoir, literally, it not that? his diligence to recording his observations in his journal no doubt helped with this, and the of detail he includes helps the reader see/feel the author's landscapes.

A staggering work

2010-11-07T19:42:00.000-08:00

I see why Dave Egger's "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" has been referred to as "manic-depressive." Bouncing from highs to lows, spun off in a story-telling style that is as intelligent, manipulative and melancholy as it is humorous, Egger's memoir drained me. His "unusual approach" to recounting a specific time period of his life works well because his life was as quirky and unusual as the story (ies) he tells in the book. Eggers' life as a publishing entrepreneur is particularly well-suited to the techniques he uses because these same techniques are used in McSweeney's, his magazine; they are also the same sorts of techniques Gen X grew up on-- sarcasm, self-deprecating humor, indifference, melancholia and depression.

This is not to say any other generation has lacked these traits, it's just to say that many times Gen-X is associated with popularizing these things and making them "cool." What Eggers has done is combined these personality devices and characterizations and figured out a way to put them on paper that remains true to the essence of his young adulthood.

In much the same way Gen X and the dot.com/publishing bubble of the 90s revolutionized those sectors, Eggers injected a particularly clever degree of snark and entertainment into the publishing industry and the memoir genre. Although I am not a fan of Eggers and felt that the ending of the story could have come much sooner, I do believe his ability to craft something from the resources around him and capture a whole time period (and life, in Topher's case) and societal mood speaks volumes to his ability to create and do so as an original. In setting up "Heartbreaking Work" as he did, he's subtly infusing the story with several elements of his life that made him him, elements that contribute(d) to his story.

Personally, I don't like to sustain humor in my writing. I like a turn of phrase, a witty bit of dialogue, a bit of snark, but I'm not the kind of person who writes to entertain in the same way Eggers has in this piece. I feel like self-deprecating/dark humor, while entertaining, is indicative of a deeper problem within the humorists life and a reliance upon passive/aggressiveness to get attention. I'm talking real-life people, not just authors-- so this kind of humor/voice is something I am wary and distrustful of when I encounter it in any form.

For Eggers, however, I think his book reached people, precisely because so many people rely on these attitudes to get by in our society. For example, say a co-worker is having a bad day. Instead of saying he wants to talk about it, he might begin cracking jokes about how much of an idiot he is, or how much he wants to take the boss out and beat him up. On their face, these things may be funny in their presentation, but underneath the words, there's a desire to connect (in the first case) and a malicious need for attention (in the latter). Colleagues laugh and perhaps join in on the ribbing, not knowing what else to do, and everyone leaves the table bewildered about the social interaction that just went on. So, regarding Eggers... I read "Heartbreaking Work" in rapture about 1/3 of the way through, then gave up on because it began to alienate me, not help me see anything new and endearing about the human condition.

Getting a feel for Conroy's life

2010-11-05T09:59:00.002-07:00

Frank Conroy's memoir is a departure from the other memoirs we've read in several ways. First, Conroy shows us his poverty but doesn't overtly mention it. Parental dysfunction is observed in young Frank but is less "recognized" by the character, who doesn't seem to know any better or realize that anyone else's parent behave as parent should. Even Tobey's parents, who are more caring, aren't exactly "put together," and Jean's brother's families seem to be a mess too. While these differences make the book more enjoyable for me-- I realized while checking it out how badly I wanted not to read another memoir, but having read it fully enjoyed it--they are not the main feature of the story that makes it stand out to me.

Writing as a musician, Conroy has happened upon, or created, a style of writing that is rhythmic and lyrical, what I'd call the cadence of his inner thoughts and emotions coming out harmoniously on the page. This is no small accomplishment, because what he has done is essentially take a musical, poetic form and stretch it out over 283 pages. In the other memoirs we've examined, the writers have done a good job of evoking a region or time period with their attention to language and sound of each character. While Conroy continues to do this, he also pulls the reader into an internal landscape that hum with a certain sort of sound and energy. What this suggests overall is a form of characterization that we don't necessarily get with the other authors. Conroy's salvation lies in music; he becomes a drifting note in several passages; we learn about this man not so much from the words and scenes and ideas he spells out for us, but in the way he uses dissonance, harmony staccato moments and weaves everything together to make us feel, in the way that music makes us feel. His life has become his art; he has taken an aspect of his art and applied it to his life's story in this writing.

When I think about how these musical techniques work in music, I think about how even when I think I understand a song I'm sometimes left with a vague question of whether or not I really got into its rhythms the way the musicians intended. Conroy manages this effect well in Stop/Time, even overtly relying on the associations readers have with music at certain times.

"I stood as if listening to music, and in something like the way we are told suns are born, that specks of matter nearly empty space begin to fall, rushing across vast distances...I sank down until my knees touched the ground, and sat on my heels, almost reverently, within to disturb nothing in the suddenly harmonious world," he writes on p 139, detailing the moment he watched a girl through shelves at the library. "It was at once frustrating, and for some reason extremely exciting to see only this small part of her... my brain raced... at moments like this, as all men know, one becomes oblivious to to everything else in the outside world..."( 140).

Conroy does an great job of building the scene slowly, moving books, hunkering down, peeking; he lets the pressure build in the reader as it has built in himself, and then, with just a hint, he ends the scene and escapes into the private release of his own action, mentioning, tongue-in-cheekily, "the business--and I choose my words carefully-- at hand" (140).

The sensuality of the moment is made even more intriguing and delightful by Conroy's stop! of time before the scene reaches its climax.

She's crafty: Hampl's imagination and importance in memoir

2010-10-21T22:03:00.000-07:00

As an only child growing up in the middle of nowhere, I needed imagination to get through the stifling boredom of the farm life. I would make up playmates, landscapes and situations to keep myself company and leave the world I knew. Hampl says that our imagination is a vast, powerful thing; memory is not just a "warehouse of finished stories, not a gallery of framed pictures (24). Memory and imagination come together then, and because these elements of persona come together and allow for all sorts of possibilities, we can get lost in the expanse of our own creations.

"By writing about that first piano lesson I've come to know things I could not know otherwise," writes Hampl in her discussion of memory and imagination. When she says that we must all guard our own truths about what has happened to us (class notes), I believe that she's saying if we cannot figure out a way to tell our stories and comprehend the past so that it makes sense for us, no one will be able to. We tell ourselves stories to live (to borrow a line from Joan Didion), and if we have to tell ourselves some little white lies to get through things, that's what we do. Perhaps we begin to believe the truths we've been telling ourselves for so long that eventually we know no other way to tell the story. Then what? Has it become the truth, or is it still a fabrication? Is our cognizance of the untruth a factor in whether or not it's a lie?
"I realized I had told a number of lies," says Hampl on page 25 or our excerpt; when we realize that we're telling a fabricated story that must mean that we know the real story exists out there somewhere, so shouldn't we go after that? If she realized after her initial drafts that she'd been making things up, doesn't she have the responsibility to tell the reader the truth?

I argue that yes, she does, and so does any writer. But like Karr, who pointed out that her memory had fault lines and fissures, Hampl admits to having problems with her memory and the recreation of her childhood stories. In doing so she's being honest with us about the truth of her book, which is a collected organization of memories.

The word memoir comes from memoria, or memory in Latin. Memory means the "mental faculty of retaining and reviving facts, events, impressions, etc., according to dictionary.com. So if memory is the act of "reviving" facts, then no, memoir doesn't have to imply a complete factual story. Definitions aside, I guess I feel like memoir needs to be "real life," since it's someone's life we're dealing with in the story. When I think about my contract with readers I guess I assume they're going to believe what I say is real to have been/be real, so I should just tell the truth. Again it goes back to my question of "why not just call it fiction if it's fiction?"

Both Karr and Hampl lead by example-- when they write a scene to say that time compressed and shifted or that they remembered something in a certain way, they're pointing out their memory problem, and for me, that example is better than any kind of "this is how you should do it" advice.

To safeguard my relationship with readers my intro will discuss the fact that I am writing about a time in my life when I was drugged up and recovering from brain surgery, and therefore my memory was compromised, to say the least. I note that the name changes of hospital staff were made to protect them in their careers; I will note that the time sequence I detail was the time sequence as I lived it, but perhaps it didn't occur that way to those not under the influence of morphine and other drugs. I think that's enough to let people know that yes, this is an accurate portrayal of what happened to me, but I'm not even sure if this is how it happened.

Ignorance as bliss in Hughes' "Salvation"

2010-10-13T14:07:00.000-07:00

"My aunt came and knelt at my knees and cried, while prayers and song swirled all around me in the little church. The whole congregation prayed for me alone, in a mighty wail of moans and voices."

Langston Hughes' depiction of this scene toward the end of "Salvation" imparts the biblical idea of hell that many of us have heard since we were younger than the author is in his story.
"Mighty" wails of "moans and voices" are sounds we can hear when we think of "hell" and the atmosphere as it's been written; Hughes' patience and waiting conjures up the idea of purgatory, which is where he's kind of stuck throughout this story. The idea of purgatory, a place where sinners wait until they are prayed out of their limbo, threads through this whole piece, beginning with the happiness of those who have been saved (the adults) praying for others (the children) and ending with his salvation as the church "into a sea of shouting, as they saw me rise. Waves of rejoicing swept the place. Women leaped in the air."

How can one not see the illuminated images of Jesus rising from some glossy portrait into the flaxen beams of heaven?

In our class notes we see that "detail, sensory information and action" are the hallmarks of scene and movement. Hughes uses some dialogue throughout the piece, but what really moves the story, for me, is the imagined lull of prayers and voices that I hear in my head when I think of a congregation in prayer. That noise and reverence, although "holy," hums and buzzes in my skull, pushing me forward and adding to the urgency and tingling sensations the young Hughes must have felt. Added to the power of this feeling is the one recollection of times I've felt conflicted by self or society, much as Hughes is here.

Overall, although this piece moves through the shadows of peaks and valleys created by both Hughes' reactions and the desires of his church, what I find most compelling is that Hughes' salvation comes not so much in way of protecting his soul, but enlightening his mind.

For those who know of Hughes as a writer beyond this piece, it's not stretch to say that he wrote about the freedom and salvation that comes when the mind is loosed of ignorance. In depicting the actions of the little girls who cried and then ran to be saved--fearful for their souls-- and the rest of the "poor sinners," with their "work-gnarled hands"-- it's easy to see that Hughes' final savior is his mind itself, and his own understanding of truth. It's a painful truth for him to learn, that he can no longer believe in Jesus, or the adults who seem so wise, but in the end, his conflicts with the questions he had about Jesus prior to the revival (his aunt tells him all about the "feeling" but his scepticism persists) are answered and he comes to his own beliefs.

As we've looked at memoir from the perspective of the child thus far, we've seen that adults are often wise, confusing and so removed from the realities of childhood that their knowledge seems vastly superior and almost unattainable to the child(ren). But here we have an author who has bucked the conventions of his society and his aunt regardless of what he once thought or wanted to believe. Hughes doesn't tell us how all of this comes together for us; in introducing the characters he does, however briefly, and building the suspense of the moment with the quick snapshots of scenery and action, we come to feel the same flatness and acceptance that he feels.

What this acceptance becomes is not one of Jesus, but an acceptance of "oh, well, I wanted this because everyone told me I wanted it, but now I realize it's not really for me." This is a difficult kind of acceptance for anyone to bear because realizing we don't fit in, at any age, marks us as different, and therefore, potentially unsaved by common knowledge and ideals.

Membership in Karr's Club

2010-10-03T11:47:00.000-07:00

Mary Karr's idea that "the alleged truth of a given voice makes it somehow more emotionally compelling" and "thus announces itself as real" is one that any writer of character-based nonfiction needs to understand. Voice and "precise, original language" are two of Karr's strongest allies in her work. She's got place as character, of course-- the way she describes the skies or the openness of her Texas childhood serves to further
set the reader in the state of wild abandon that her childhood seemed to have been.
But anyone can write about Texas in the 60s, or fractured families, or men getting together for construction jobs and beer drinking. What makes Karr's story her is the way her language defines her particular social circle, family, region and time frame. And even if the "truth" of an event is different from how it happened, the alleged truths of her characters voices are different truths than the stories those voices tell.

What I mean by that is that no matter whether or not Karr's grandpa really died by hanging or her sister really did act in a certain way or her mom really was Nervous and acted out to such extremes doesn't matter, in the way Karr has written it. The events don't necessarily need to be true, because we can understand the kind of person who might have done those things so well simply by "hearing" their voices on the page.

What this does for readers, then, is create a whole world and a whole way of life out of something that may or may not have happened. The use of voice and language as character gets inside the idea of a larger truth of humanity. We are all unique individuals, with our own ways of talking, acting, thinking and rationalizing things. For Karr, growing up the way she did, her ability to rationalize and understand the world around her had a lot to do with the stories her dad told. These stories gave her a place to be in the world, whether it was literally, as in in a corner of Fishers, or figuratively, as in how she came to know her father and family through stories.

What we, as readers, then take from seeing this is that we too can look at the stories around us and figure out how and where and why we fit into certain places in the world. We're all confused and lost and scared at times, and everyone has at least one memory they'd like to erase or forget or otherwise distance themselves from. There are also the great memories of events that have become even more epic as time passes and we begin to remember these events differently each time. In reading a literary memoir like The Liar's Club we all gain admission into our own story and way of telling it comfortably.

Speaking of Nabokov

2010-09-21T21:47:00.000-07:00

language, syntax and figures of speech, appropriateness, age of voice
At the beginning of this excerpt from Speak, Memory, Nabokov sets the reader into the bedroom and emotion of his boyhood days. He tells us we're in the bedroom, but even beyond that, he lets his images speak for themselves.

"...if it disclosed a watery pallor one better not open them at all and so be spared the sight of a sullen day sitting for its picture in a puddle" he writes of his windows' shutters (423).

From the idea of nasty day as a nasty child he moves into the mental landscape of exuberance and dappled sunlight; the exuberance he felt while outdoors chasing butterflies.

Throughout this excerpt Nabokov meanders back and forth between his childhood memories and the recent present or the present. Although reading about Nabokov-the-child is interesting because I get to see a lifestyle quite different from my own, it is his adult intrigues and activities that hold me. His voice as an adult is a trustworthy one because he has built up a whole lifetime of entomology, and his stories show that. I feel like I can read this for information, come away from the piece and share my new knowledge with others and know its legit. It is literary nonfiction at its best for this reason.

This ability to entertain and inform is crucial for anyone writing a non-fiction memoir. I think of writers like Augusten Burroughs, whom I've loved, or David Eggers, whose work I hate, and whatever factual, informative stuff I might have taken from their books has been lost on me, since I didn't really think they were ever really telling a whole truth in any of their stories. Through his mentally stimulating crafting of his lifetime, Nabokov gives us fact along with emotion.

"'Natural selection', in the Darwinian sense, could not explain the miraculous coincidence of imitative aspect and imitative behavior, nor could one appeal to the theory of 'the struggle for life' when a protective device was carried to the point of mimetic subtlety, exuberance and luxury far in excess of a predator's power of appreciation," he writes of the ways in which butterflies, moths and caterpillars disguised or changed themselves as needed. " I discovered in nature the non utilitarian delights that I sought in art," he writes (425).

His love for art, nature and the craft of his own work shine in this passage, and it is his refined voice that allows for this. Were he to have written of his butterflies and knowledge from the child's viewpoint, we'd never get these insights, nor the detailed knowledge he's shared.

What is lost, of course, is the wonder and first-time innocence of a child out catching bugs for the first time. We don't get much of that sense of not-knowing here, but my guess is that even as a child Nabokov was a rather stoic, although quick and clever, boy. "Losing" this works for me, though, because I have my own sense of wonder and innocent understanding of what it was to chase bugs. What he's given me connects art with the natural world, and that wasn't something I had as a child, nor an adult really, until starting grad school. And even though my memoir doesn't take place in outdoor landscapes or focus much on place and environment, I've learned how to play with emotion in my word choice, sentence structure and composition enough so that I feel like I can relate my own "innocence" at the time of my stroke to the things going on in my voice when I write from the persona I write from.

In Eggers' and Burroghs, we get lots of emotion, lots of clever wit, but who knows how much "truth" we get.

McCourt's uncluttered life

2010-09-18T12:39:00.000-07:00

The first time I read Angela's Ashes I was going through a severe case of Irelust (I wanted to go to Ireland real bad). My introduction to the brogue and the lifestyle and all of that seems to have come from something beyond this book, but I can't remember what now. A boyfriend, I think, whose family was Irish? Maybe. At any rate, despite the troubles or Troubles, I feel in love with the idea of Ireland, the harsh realness of place that McCourt conjured up for me. Today, I read the book as an adult and think that it wouldn't be at all fun to live that lifestyle-- not that I thought it would be fun when I was younger, but I was more charmed by the exoticism of the whole thing--but I feel so in line with what McCourt notes was an "uncluttered life" in the snipped in our class readings.

I've always been a traveler, restless and full of wanderlust. But I've also lived a real comfortable life, full of all the amenities McCourt never had. My troubles, and thus the stuff of a memoir (who wants to read a memoir about a happy, perfect life?) didn't start til I had brain surgery, but they've given me something to write about. When I could force myself away from the clutter of travel plans and an exciting social life and work to do so. left Chicago last year because I wanted to do just that, get away from the clutter (and excitement) of a life that pulled me from my writing, and when I look back at the stuff I've written (for my memoir) today, I can't believe how cluttered it is sometimes. I think that comes from not really being sure how to tell the story.

McCourt says that the child's voice is "innocent," it can also be messy. Think of a 4 year old and how he tells a story. There's lots of "and then.. and then's" because their train of thought sort of peters off and reroutes itself sometimes. McCourt has managed to stay away from that here, and I wonder if part of his ability to nail the voice and mood so crystal clearly also comes from his writing at 66, after retiring, and after a life-time of telling the stories. He'd had plenty of practice in adopting the persona of young Frank, so he could write with some clarity, and leaving his job gave him time to write without the clutter of work and other papers.

What this does--this perfectly clear telling of the story, from the viewpoint of a child-- for me, is tell the story in a way I can understand while creating two different characters. There's the Frank/teller, who sounds smart and contemplative, and then there's the Frank/kid, who I don't feel like I see quite as well as I see Malachy. I see him of course, but he somehow seems less than childlike to me. It's weird, and I've only just begun to think about what that does for me as a reader. Because present tense is used, I feel a sense of currency in the reading, which might also be what makes me see Frank as less-than child, since I can't separate him in my head as an adult now? I know.. that kind of contradicts the idea of two Franks, but it muddles me all up to think about it. So much for an uncluttered mind as I read!

Greatness and Freedom- Dinesen's Africa

2010-09-07T14:57:00.000-07:00

Although I've commented in my class post about Dinesen's language and the way her surroundings influence her style, I'm always stuck by the feelings of freedom that must have existed for her in Africa. I can imagine that as a woman at the turn of the century it was difficult for her to feel much freedom in her daily life. That she could "escape" to Africa and find it there is clear in her writing, not just in what she says about the place, but the very places and atmospheres she chooses to write about.

"Everything you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequalled nobility. The chief feature of the landscape, and your life in it, was the air... In the middle of the day the air was alive over the land, like a flame, burning; it scintillated, waved and shone like running water, mirrored and doubled all objects.. in this high air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart "(347).

Dinesen's passage about the way the air moved around her not only lifts me up to her level of appreciation for something so mundane as the air, but it undulates in pace and rhythm in much the same way a breeze blows a leaf down a dirt road. She may be talking about the atmosphere here, but as she shares these observations with the reader, she's also throwing out the contradictory nature of the place. Her air is a flaming candle at the same time it is running water, and the very juxtaposition of these things is as juxtaposed as her landscape and existence in it. Here she is, a landed woman, a member of society; White. But she's out on safari, she's engaging with her help and the natives. She's perhaps thought of as dainty and maybe even helpless at home, but here, in the "wilds" of Africa, she's got her own power, her own lifestyle.

Africa itself, as we see it through her eyes is as much a wild place as a calm one; as much a hot, dry land as a it is a sky full of vivid blues and violets.

I'm revising a piece about my childhood home for my thesis right now, and what I'm noticing is the contradictions and juxtapositions of the land and my perceptions of it. Many see a huge expanse of land as openness, possibility; growing up I felt hemmed in and confined by all that nothingness. One of Dinesen's brilliant moves is using these things to really put me there in her land, and this is something I'm trying to work with on my piece too. I want readers to feel the appreciation I have, now as an adult, for the openness, but I also want them to recognize just how limiting that can also feel. I don't get a sense of limits in Dinesen's writing, not the kind I struggled with, but the kind that came with being so different and removed from a "normal" society.

Enchanting myself away from the normal - Angelou post

2010-09-05T13:36:00.000-07:00

Before I applied to grad school I spent the summer reading MFA reading lists for schools across the country. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was on several lists, so I read it. The book has stuck with me for its vivid imagery and uniquely light way of speaking to dark subjects. Angelou's ability to write with the innocence and wonder of a small child carries this book, and even though I sometimes wonder if she's really a trustable narrator- because her style of storytelling IS so vivid-- I feel satisfied that I am getting an accurate portrayal of Marguerite's life. So in reading our lecture notes, I wasn't surprised to learn that Angelou's magic carpet is sherry, a deck of cards and secluded room. As writers we have to do whatever it takes to get us out of the ordinary into a place where language sings and the common description/definition of things falls away. Because of this, I think Caged Bird is a timeless story, one that speaks to a certain period of Americana, but at its heart can show anyone how to live and move beyond one's world. Even if that world was a war-torn Parisian cafe and the writer was Hemingway, or a crummy, dumpy house and the writer was Augusten Burroughs, writers have the unique ability to take a moment and move beyond it to speak a larger truth.

So, in moving away from the 2010 Caribou cafe in which I sit now, let's go to Nebraska, circa 1989. This might be hard for some of you to read.. sorry. It's just what came to me.

The burlap bag is heavy in dad's hand-- I can tell becuase the muscles in his tanned forearm are shifted out a little, and with each wriggle and bulge of the bag I see that muscle tighten and pulse as he steps forward. I'm not sure where the bag came from, but he probably had it out in the dusty shop. When he came to the house with it an hour ago, I grabbed it from him and watched it puff the scent of dirt and tractor grease, surprised at its presence in his hand.

"Marcella, where did Touca have her kittens? Can you find them?"
Dad refered to me as his "right hand man," and becuase I had yet to start school and mom was gone all day, I spent my days with him in the shop. He was my best friend, and at five years old, I was all sugared compliance and quick eagerness.
"Yeah yeah, she had them in the old pig barn, over behind the saddles. You know, where you keep the old hay bales? Only one of them has been up and walking but--"
"They're sick, Marcella. All the cats around here always get distemper. It's not good to have sick kitties, it is?"

Was dad actually telling me he was going to take my kitties to the vet? This was unheard of. The feral cats mothered batches of babies the way I collected toads and slugs in the summer-- often and a fierce protectiveness, and dad had no use for the multitudes of wild cats that teemed around the farm propoerty. I couldn't believe he was going to make sure this group got the attention they needed to clean up the boogers that constantly plauged their eyes, and I didn't want him to stuff them in a bag, but if that was what it took to get them there safely, then so be it.

"No, it's not." I said, agreeing that sick kitties were bad. I couldn't play with them, what with their snotty faces, and most of the time, they lived for a while then died any way. If dad was going to get them some help, maybe I'd actually get to tame one, feel its soft down fur and nuzzle it in the way my friends with indoor cats got to. "I can help you get them if you want."

Dad had nodded me toward the pig barn, and we'd gone in to find the kitties. The old shed hadn't been used for hogs in years, but in the dust-mote shades of shadow and light that filtered in through the cracked and broken boards you could always smell some combination of amonia, straw, mash, pig shit and mold. I loved the old buildings on our farm, but I never played in this one becuase it was so old and fally-downy. The containment corrals had mostly fallen down, but next to the building and the one fence still standing, and old well and water tank still bobbed mossy water in and over its lipped surface.

"Ok, Marcella, I see them. You can go back to the house now."
I wasn't sure why dad was sending me to the house alone-- I figured we'd load up the kitties then take them to the vet together.
"You don't need my help here? But I can--"
"No, no, go in and.. get me some.. twine or something. To, uh, tie the bag? Please?"

The tall grass that had grown up around the pig barn knicked my legs as I ran through it, trying to get to the house and back in time to help dad. I don't know why I can still remember the way that grass and the weeds felt as they slapped against my bare legs, but I know that I'll never forget the scent of that pig barn, or the way dad's arms looked as he walked around the water tank, carrying that bag, arm muscles bulging. By the time I had found and hauled the spool of twine back to dad, he was outside again, moving around the water tan, dipping the bag in it. I stood and watched as he dipped the wriggling bag in the water, holding it under longer and longer each time, then letting it drop. I knew then, as a child knows a bad thing when she sees it, that something was wrong with this picture, that my kittens were sick and that dad was drowning them. I knew then that yes, maybe those kittens were beyond saving with the vet's medicines. I knew that even pulling them up was probably not going to save them. But what I witnessed was wrong in a particular way that only the executioners of bad men can probably know. My dad had drowned my kittens to put them out of their misery, and to end his own discomfort with their presence, but those things alone were not exactly what was so wrong with the scene. What was wrong was that he had lied to me, that my dad had lied to me, or at the least, misled me as to what he was doing with the kittens and why he needed my help. I eventually grew up and got hogs to show for 4-H and housed them in that pig shed. They drank water that came from that tank; I "got over" what I saw that dad and how bad I felt for the mewling bag of sopping kittens who had their eyes cleansed in the most unholy of baptisms, and I left the farm. That memory doesn't come to me often, but when my last cat died, it did. When my dog ate poison and died, it came to me then, too. There is something beautiful and innocent about a life lived among the cycles and organic moments of life and death on a farm, but I wonder if it only when we keep them masked and containted that we are able to accept them.

The language of being: Prompt Post 8

2010-04-17T19:58:00.000-07:00

"As a preschooler, Lisa Yellow Horse knew only one language, Lakota. Now a grown woman on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, she embodies what many in her generation feel: a paralyzing fear to speak a language she is no longer fluent in and confusion about how to pass it down before it disappears.

The regret is hard to swallow."

A year-long series on the Lakota language and culture has been featured in the Rapid City (SD) Journal, and today's stories focused on the loss of language and the generational gaps that helped contribute to this loss as much as colonialism has (Yes, I do realize this disinterest was fostered by colonialism, as is pointed out in the series).

As I read this story, I was reminded my own small self, the only "brown" kid I knew, the only one who could speak another language. As I got older and my friends found plenty of things about my mom and her culture that were "wrong," I grew less and less curious in learning about that culture myself. Now, I feel ashamed only of the fact that I didn't take the time to appreciate my mom's culture more, as a child. Sure, today I take the time to visit relative in Colombia, and I'm genuinely interested in my heritage, but I don't feel like I'm "Colombian" anymore than I am "White." In action, manner and culture, I'm definitely White, north American. But this morning, as my mom rambled on and on and on about some story over breakfast (Colombian hot chocolate and a very America slice of cold, leftover pizza), I realized that in the way I tell stories, I am very much the Colombiana of my ancestry.

My aunts tell stories like my mom, loong, complicated rambling things that veer off in this direction for a while, then that one, then loop back around again and finally (or not) begin to make some sense. My grandma was the same way, and even my uncles tell stories full of stories, heaping one idea upon the next upon the next.

As I chewed and nodded, feigning in interest in her 7 a.m. nonsense, the work of Bruce Chatwin came to mind. A storyteller himself, Chatwin shared the work of the Australian Aborigines and their Songlines and Dreamtime stories, the stories by which all of Australia is mapped, plotted and held together by story. It seems like all cultures are held together by an intricate web of words, and for the Lakota people to lose that web is to lose their system of navigation.

Having spent a semester getting into the history of a place that I once knew intimately, I've found that my ideas of nature are as conflicted as I am. I'm a country girl who'd rather live in the city, but I have found that I want that city to have some of the pace and culture of my childhood landscapes. I still tell people that I left Chicago this semester because being in "nature" for a nature writing course made more sense than being in Chicago, so I guess I don't really think of Chicago as nature, although I know it does have it's own natural elements. This awareness is also conflicted, because I think of cities as places of learning, learned people,people who want more than a life toiling in the dirt. Cities are full of knowledge, and they have shaped the adult I am. They provided the education I received in college.

And yet there is a certain kind of knowledge to be found among the rural. The knowledge of cloud patterns and storms, the way plants grow, and animals; the simple understanding of the seasons and where food comes from.. all that is more a rural education than a concrete and book-learned one. Throughout the semester we've focused on the duality of this genre in the authors we've encountered, and even those who live in cities, or less rural places have a reverence for the natural land (land not paved or developed, in this case) that doesn't seem to have been bred of the city.

At the beginning of the course I felt that nature writing was the wild, lyric, expressive rambling and storytelling that a writer writes because he has to, is compelled from somewhere inside to create and honor with the gift of words and sentences. Environmental writing seemed to be the more scientific, book-learned stuff, and as the course ends, I feel mostly the same way. I know that there are cross-overs, as there should be in all good nonfiction writing; even in the fiction within the genre we see that the author hopes to inform as much as entertain. We see that as much care must be given to language as to the story itself, the story we tell in our existence on the land.

As I read the stories of the young women in this article, and then the story of a Philadelphian who came to the Rez to learn and then teach the Lakota language, I felt like I've spent a whole semester not just learning how to connect to nature and consider it, but how to speak to it, and about it, on its own terms, in its own language. What we need is a bridge over our failed communications, a means of spanning not just generations, but cultures and people and ideas. We need to close the gap between "nature" and "wild" as bad things, and develop a sense of understanding and fluency in our relationships toward all things. I'm just not sure how to go about getting at that fluency, other than writing. And exploring. And being.

Spring shed: Place Post No. 8

2010-04-12T14:07:00.001-07:00

Wind is blowing in from the Southwest when I get to the lake. Not a cold wind, but strong, the force pours into my ear as I clear paint chips from a picnic table and view my surroundings.
Ducks on the water are invisible except for the slender, black tubes of neck and curves of head. I can hear them, however, fart-like noises and squeaks reach across the water's edge. A robin, clinging to the branch above me, yells at the wind and flaps its wings, remaining if not steady, attached to its wooden landing. even though the winter wheat is a green, shimmer carpet beyond the boundaries of the area, the bird's rusty orange breast is the only brightness I see in this drab surrounding, and I am thankful for it.

There is no sun today, so even though the day is in the low 60s and imaginatively warm, I want tome color to my surroundings. Yes, thin stabs of grass poke up through the dead leaves and grasses around me, and the wheat fields to the north and south beckon with luxurious industry, but what I am feeling is a lack of color—in mind and physical presence. I feel shadowed and dark, as if the melanin under my skin reflected only "bruise" as a color.

The ducks take off, and I watch the water "settle" after them. Its ripples flow and bounce like static on a television: jittery lines that move up and down, and up and down again, then across the gray surface in a haphazard pattern. I am mesmerized by the movement, much as I am when settled (reluctantly) in front of a noise box that must be plugged in. Television transports the viewer to other places; here at the lake, I too disappear, but only to the landscape within. My semester is almost over, and I feel that I've come to see the wildness of the lake in a way I never had before. The flora and fauna were just sticks and grasses and animals..and they still are, but I feel like I'm seeing them with an awareness that others who sit at these picnic tables might not notice. I don't really feel that way about those human others—I don't feel any more connected to the people I went to school with or sit with at the bar when I rarely go to town. I don't feel any more interested in the history of my home county than I did before. I feel settled here only in the temporary way I felt settled here when it was "home:" as if it were a place to be, for a moment. Like a sun-dappled bit of grass that invites an afternoon of reading in the summer.
I have just returned from Denver, from the annual AWP conference and bookfair, and even though I went to sessions on the Nebraska writer, or the importance of place and home and habitat, instead of the rosy color of promise, my heart is shadowed like the water before me. The conference connected me to authors and ideas, and hearing the words of authors I've read all semester float above a crowd in person was wonderful. The words of Leslie Mormon Silko, and David Gessner—words in favor of ancient rootedness or of seeking it until one is connected to a new place, respectively—stick with me, but the words of Debra Marquart have probably done more for me, because she took the stagnation of small town life and wrote about it, honestly, Compassionately. But as part of her past.

The air swills around me, traces whorls in my hair and marks my skin with invisible patterns, as I walk to the edge of the water and settle on a smooth, white stump. I run my hand along the arch of thick branches, marvel at the smoothness where the tree has shed its bark. Parts of this felled giant feel like the soft, curved back of a lover, the sturdiness of shoulder blade and bone and muscle, wrapped up and protected by a porous, peach cover that sometimes shivers with resistance. The smoothness of the tree is a second skin, and I think about the many times I've talked of "skin" when referring to the frozen water. That cover is gone now, the one before me is active, fluid. Moving water.
Moving.

As I stand up to leave, I look behind me an notice a dead fish, (a huge bass? wallye?), eye sunken in and horrid, a muddy scab of brown. Two ants crawl from its gill and march across their scaly, silver territory; I squat and look at its distended belly, the yellow opening of its mouth. Dad would have loved to catch a fish this big (maybe four pounds) at Walgren, so I wonder what happened to him, how he washed up to the shore, and if he drowned in the heavy absence of vital water. He's brittle and dry, so there's no stench of rotting fish—I probably would have smelled him before now, if there had been—and for this, too, I am thankful. The air today smells light and beautiful, like spring rains and cottonwood down. It's sweet, and sticks to me, but is not sweet and sticky like some smoke, clogging the air with a resinous, wet blanket. No, it's sweet and sticky in the way pine gum is when it covers pores on your hand and lingers in the air with a movement of fingers.

I walk back to my car, across foot-deep ruts of peeling mud that puncture the road's surface, and again, I think of the skins we are shedding, always, everyone of us. After this coursework, all of it, I will never come back to the lake and look at it the same way, nor will I be able to write of the natural world without a need for deeper connection and understanding. We might spend seven years shedding our skins—a time that seems like forever—or see new elements of the world with the dawning of new seasons, but in every moment, sun-dappled or crusted with snow and ice, our own landscapes are transforming.

"The inherent emotional risks of creativity"

2010-04-02T20:42:00.000-07:00

a short video on creativity and staying sane as a creative person. I try to stay away from Gilbert (haven't read EPL yet) becuase she's soooo over-hyped, but she's super-funny in this clip. And her message is worthwhile. While creativity isn't necessarily birds and trees and bugs, I do believe there is a natural sort of pool from which creativity comes.

At any rate, I hope this clip entertains and spurs some thought.

The science of forgiving

2010-03-31T18:30:00.001-07:00

I left Sioux Falls four years ago not so much with my tail between my legs, but with my teeth bared and snapping at everyone. A friend and a boyfriend had made social life difficult for me, and the editor I'd been working under at the newspaper left for a better position. Life felt stagnant and black, like the water in the Big Sioux when it hadn't rained all summer. Chicago sounded like a good idea while I was taking a break from life, in Seattle, so Chicago became home. In the four years I lived in the Big Windy, I never got over my love for South Dakota and Sioux Falls, or the real friends I had made there; birthdays, weddings and a simple magnetism drew me back time and again.

Since I've been home in Nebraska, that longing and pull has gotten stronger, so last week I up and road tripped across the plains and made it back in town in time for two birthdays. Although the airwaves are about as lonesome as the country music that chokes them, NPR never fails to entertain and educate me; on Saturday, while passing the Wall Drug signs and deteriorating carcasses of animal after animal after animal, I listened to this amazing American Public Media story on the evolution of forgiveness. This is a story of revenge and forgiveness, a story that tells us how revenge and human emotion has evolved over the centuries, a story that tells us that we humans are "more instinctively equipped for forgiveness than we've perhaps given ourselves credit for."

I could write about how the components of this story-- an interview with the father of an Oklahoma City bombing victim, a scientific breakdown of revenge, a bit of thoughtful music-- made me feel, but I think listening to it yourself will be more meaningful for your own story.

I never sought revenge on my friend and my ex, because I wanted nothing to do with either of them any more, but instead of confronting the issue, it festered deep enough to force me away from a city and a landscape I loved.

I just got back to Nebraska from Sioux Falls, and even though I don't see either of those people any more, listening to this segment set me up for an afternoon of reflection on what was truly important to me as I went about my days in eastern South Dakota. I don't know how we ever muster up the courage to forgive and move on ( Michael McCullough, author of the book and papers this segment is based on) says that he'd like a new discourse on forgiveness to happen; a discourse that removes the softhearted wimpy connotations of forgiving to take place. Forgiveness is a strong, difficult, powerful thing to do, he says. We should respect it as such.

Seagull: Prompt Post No. 7

2010-03-31T17:57:00.000-07:00

The small white "boats" bob in the distance, like scoops of vanilla ice cream atop a dark, bluish float. I can't see the small black eyes of the gull, nor the vivid, sharp hooks of their beaks. Their cute little webbed toes are hidden beneath the surface of the water, but I know they're either tucked up into warm feathers, or paddling languidly. The seagulls pay no attention to me, but I am watching them. The tables have been turned. "The circle, as Joseph Bruchac writes, "is the way to see." In these warm feathered bodies, bobbing and drifing in the current, I see the natural world. I see a reflection and an interconnectedness. I see me.

I have always been fascinated with the seagull. As a little girl, liked the birds because I could throw my icky bread crusts overboard, and the loud birds would swoop in a for a meal, entertaining me and breaking the monotony of a day on the lake. I learned as a child that gulls are not picky; watching them scavenge on the shorelines for bits of fish skin, human refuse or even the living insects and water bugs showed me that these birds know how to make do with what they have.

Walk along the edge of any dump, landfill or polluted place, and there's the gull, loudly proclaiming himself king of all the things in the world that no one else wants. I've often wondered what, if anything, I can learn from these birds.

Once, while reading a book in a park in downtown Chicago, I'd set down the lemon bar I was eating, only to watch it slide away out of the corner of my eye, pages later. A craft gull had snuck in close behind me, nabbed the cellophane wrapper, and was slowly backing away from me with one eye trained on my face. It was the first time I'd even been so close to a bird like this, and I held my breath, not wanting to freak him out. I don't think he cared at all.. he scooted about two feet away, and looked up, then took his time pecking at my lemon bar. By that time, I realized I could no more offend him than he'd offended me, so I pulled out my cellphone and snapped a picture of him, in case no one believed me. Thankfully, my friends in Chicago "get" this kind of thing; one saw it as a message.

"You know, Mars, maybe the seagull is your totem animal."

Totem animal, huh? I'd heard of this concept, but hadn't felt like I'd even had an encounter with any animal to experience the coolness of this.

A totem animal, is, according to the Manataka American Indian Council, a spirit guide that may "teach us their powers and give as lessons of life (and these things don't necessarily have to be animals)."

Well, from that day on, I kept noticing gulls, all the time. Sure, they're all over Navy Pier in downtown Chicago, and I lived next to the lake on the North side, but even when I wasn't near water or trash or spilled food.. I'd see a gull.

There would be a magnet in a bookstore, a lighthouse with a bird atop it.

And one day, at home in Nebraska, I was feeding ducks at a small lake in the town where my mom works, and these gulls flew above me, and hovered there, caught on the wind current. Most of the flock moved on, but there was one gull in particular that kept riding the wind; he'd go higher, and move forward, then drop down and be pushed backward again, until he was above me yet again. It felt like this went on for hours, but it was probably no more than 60 seconds. There was this old dead tree behind him, and the way the sun was coming through the tree, dappled and reflected, broken into small squares of glittering, opalescent light, then landing on the bird's feathers, made me feel like there was more than woman and bird and wind involved in the moment. It made me feel like I was connected to something larger than the bird, or the sun or even that moment. It made me feel like all moments were the same and my entire life was as shot through with amber and gold and warmth as any life had ever been.

So what did the seagull mean? That a carefree, scavenging, wild attitude was always going to be part of my makeup? I guess I knew that already, but it was fun to see a similarity between me and the animal.

Since that time Raccoon has added himself to my cache of totem animals. Before I left Chicago for good, I'd been praying for a sign, and the night I first talked to my boss about possibly putting in my two weeks, a raccoon walked out of a dark street in front of me, and walked about 1/4 of a block home with me. Raccoon can often help people let go of things that no longer serve them.

I feel stronger ties and loyalty to Seagull, but it was really amazing to feel like I'd gotten the sign I was hoping for.

I know I am not alone in my kinship with animals in this manner; many indigenous peoples believe that there is power and connection and meaning in special animal encounters. For example, ancient cultures, such as the Mapuche, know that Puma and Jaguar are animals of power. Condor and Snake represent life and death and the great mystery surrounding us, and it is not uncommon for spiritual practice to invoke the names and strengths of these animals as needed. Even author Peter Coyote, who pays homage to his namesake in "Muddy Prints on the Mohair," calls upon the trickster spirit of the furred animal in both humor and contemplation.

"Coyote is the miss in your engine He steals your concentration in the Zendo… He is total effort. Any good afternoon nap. Best dancer in the house . The dealer and the sucker in a sidewalk Monte game. An acquaintance who hunts your power. The hooker whose boyfriend comes out of the closet while your pants are down. He's also the boyfriend…"

Seagull, too, is all of these things and more. He is the bird who flies with others but is not afraid to go alone. Seagull is like Gluskabe, or Ikitomi, depending on the tradition of story. He makes his home in any place, mates with anyone, finds what he needs to survive and knows how to go on. He is hated, cursed, studied, poisoned, diseased, make into cartoons and stuffed animals is stuffed and studied in museums and labs. Seagull is loud and annoying and always has something to say, like it or not or understand it. Seagull is also comfort.

I can't watch the birds bob on the water or pick through trash to this day without thinking of that day in Chicago or the moment in Nebraska at the lake. No matter where I am, what or who I encounter, I find a strength in these memories because I find a strength in seagull. I know I'm crass and loud and irritating and even animal in my actions at times. I don't so as far as theft of others' food, from behind their half-turned backs, but I know how to get what I need in order to function and survive. I am okay with going though the cheap-o bins at good will or the curbside junk left on the edge of my street corner. I am drawn to those who live likewise, the curious, the messy, the adaptable. We might be a stone's throw away from the edges of humanity and being pesky, pesty animals, but we are true to our animal nature. And for providing the example and reminding me to by myself, at all costs, I remain indebted to the seagull and the other guides who walk this planet.

Hardiness: Place Post No. 7

2010-03-28T15:02:00.000-07:00

The lake has shed it skin for another winter. Sunlight shines on the ridged surface this afternoon, and I think that the gulls bobbing on the water look like small, white boats or dutch shoes floating in the distance. In just a matter of weeks it feels like winter has come and gone, and yet there's still a feeling of harsh cold in the air. I wonder if the wildlife below notices something similar? I know that fish like rough water, still, beautiful days above the surface do nothing for for the fisherman or woman.
I still see only dead plants, and a few birds, but no abundance of animals (or people). We've made it through the winter, but where is everyone?

The trees are beginning to send out small knobs of brown buds, and I can't wait to see the green life that sprouts from them. Their barren branches are now familiar, but they're not as inviting as the fullness of color is. Is the algae and other underwater greenery undergoing a similar process? Do these things live and die and move in cycles like the same things above water? I know the water grows its own furry covering sometimes in the late summer, but that's just what I can see. The filamentous algae covers the wooden legs of the dock with a mustardy yellow throughout the summer but is absent now; but what's it like underwater? Is the curly-leaf pondweed flourishing (I scout it out online and learn that it is, but will die back in the summer)? We don't have to worry about the invasive Eurasian watermilfoil in Walgren, but I know it exists in rivers throughout the south-central region of Nebraska.

I don't think we have Zebra mussels here, like Yankton county, South Dakota, so that's one less lifeform to worry about. But for all of those that should be here that didn't make it or don't, how many of the bad guys do? How many survive our winters (the zebra mussel comes from the Caspian so it should love the cold)?

I don't think about the wildlife that I know as invasive--he plants I see, the animals.. pheasants are not native to our country either--in much the same way I don't think about how hard it is for other life forms to make it through the winter. But as spring creeps around the corner and curiosity blossoms, how much will I begin to think about the existence of these things, and mine, relative to them?

A word on "Salebarn" (the following prompt post)

2010-03-23T19:07:00.001-07:00

I went to a bull sale with my dad a few weeks ago and have been wanting to write about it since then. I've also been thinking about the "Old Indian Tales" books and characters, and the characters around my county, and The Salebarn is the result of all these things coming together. Yes, this story is fiction, but it's based on a lot of real stuff. The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is just up the road and over the state line from Rushville, NE where I worked during high school. I worked at the newspaper, not the salebarn, but I was in 4-H, with the auctioneer's son, who never showed me around the salebarn at night.

I've only posted the first part of the story here, hoping to capture and evoke the feelings of confusion, fear and familiarity I found when entering the sale barn and falling backward into my old memories of 4-H and cattle sales and time spent at the salebarn with my dad as a little, little girl. I'll post more, but I didn't want it to be a waay long post.

Thaw: Place Post No. 6

2010-03-23T16:14:00.001-07:00

Friday. March 19

Finally, I can sit outside without freezing. It'll be cold again in a bit, when the storm moves through, but for now, we're having some nice weather. The ground is damp underneath the grass and the leaves, but it is so nice to sit under the cottonwoods that for once, I don't mind the soggy coldness of winter.
The ice on Walgren is rotting today, beginning its spring thaw. A little more will go out everyday, but if we get cold weather again on Monday, that will slow it once again (It's Tuesday as I type this, and we got more snow today), but not allow it to freeze over. That's pretty much it for the winter on the lake. As the ice continues to melt for the next three weeks (or longer, depending on the weather) the hazy patches will separate, looking like oil on water.

In my light hoodie, I'm getting hot, it's almost 65 today and nothing but a mild breeze. I can hear the Canadian Geese overhead, so I know summer is coming, but today's temps aren't going to stay, not yet. That hasn't stopped dad, who's getting the boat ready and putting away the ice gear. He hopes to be on Minatare (another lake , about an hour from home) by next week. I think that's pushing it, but that's what makes him happy.

I rise from the damp spot on the ground, uncrossing my legs and shaking them. Heading down to the bridge sounds like a good idea, so I scramble down the gentle hillside and hook a hand over the wooden slat of the bridge. The little creek/crick in front of me has been running for at least two weeks; we've had more snow this winter than I have seen since my childhood memories of snow tunnels behind the house. Those snowdrifts were up to the gutters, and I suppose that was more than 20 years ago.. a lifetime, at least.

Seeing the water run clear in quick in front of me makes me smile. When I leave work in the evenings, I curse this same water, because it has pooled in the ditches along the highway that joins home and town. For fifteen miles I have to squint as I drive south; the sun, as it sets across the dried, yellow grasses, burns brightly in this melted snow runoff, and blinds me.

But here, today, looking at the results of warming temps and the coming of spring, I'm not blinded by the sun, only a little dizzy. The small ripples of water absorb some of the bright beams, which filter through the pale cabbage-colored water, but the other bit of sunshine that hits the water gets caught on the crest and moves along with it, a soft ripple of molten gold.

I want to see a fish, a minnow, maybe a turtle, but there's no activity like this yet. Maybe in a week. I lean over, squeeze and empty juice bottle in the water, suck in a great gulp of it, and return it to the Rav. It's too late in the day to go over to my old elementary school and use a microscope, but I'm tempted to pull a Dillard and see what I can see.

I have been awed and amazed all year by the readings I have had in my MFA courses. Some I've read before, others I've not, but in this light, the light of context and contemplation, I'm seeing things I've never seen before. This week we're reading about the urban landscape, how we find and create nature in the city. This nature doesn't necessarily even have to be of-the-earth type stuff, but seems to be adaptable to whatever is always around us. It is all our perspective, as Dillard wrote, it's all about how we take the time to look and see.

After leaving my bottle in the Rav, I walk over to the edge of the lake, where it's too reedy and marshy to still be frozen, and squat down, sniffing, looking to see what I can see. The edge of the ice that is close and observable for detail, is smushy looking, like wet cotton, and there are sticks and dried leaves and fine sediments stuck in it, a little further out. The mud here smells dank, like the holes left behind in week-long mud when you pull up a rock and air rushes in, trying to seal it over. It's smelly, the breakdown and decay of all the dead things that got stuck, but it's spring mud, and this thought moves me.

Cabin fever hasn't hit me as hard this year as it has in the past. I thought winter on the Plains was bad, here where everything is so wide open, so susceptible to snowing one in and blowing things closed, but it sure beats winter in the city. I feel like beyond the comfort of the winter--the bounty of snow, which means fuller lakes and rivers and better harvests, the ability to drive from place to place and not walk, and the warmth of my home (the heat is not my responsibility!)--I've come to find a general comfort in my placement at the moment. I'm certain I'm not here forever; in fact I'd like to leave next month, but instead of feeling quite so vicious about "home" I'm beginning to feel a bit of warmth.

Something splashes out beyond the silent reeds, something that has broken a spot in the ice and jumped up. It's got to be a fish, or maybe an otter? A beaver? A muskrat? A cheese rat? Who knows what it is. I eye the general area but see nothing, then walk to my car. It's inevitable: the next time I come back there will be less ice and more water; more mud too. More animals. In a month, kids will be out on the dock fishing, and the sheen of bruised, rotten ice will be gone. In a month the semester will be almost over, and it's just as inevitable that I'll be thinking strongly about what's next for me. It's human nature, nature that things come and go, change and progress. Even in it's solid, stagnant flatness, the ice too, is moving slowly. Yes, this is the thaw.

The Salebarn (part I): Prompt Post No. 6

2010-03-23T15:08:00.000-07:00

wind blew across the parking lot as Tomi stepped from her car, crunching shit-stained snow with her black heels. Her small car, its shiny green body sure to get lost in between the staggered rows of tail-gated vehicles, was nosed in forward-- no need to parallel park, here, she thought, shaking her head slowly. Life in Boston had been a shock to her system, coming from the sweeping grasses of her Plains prairie, but grandfather, he had prepared her for that one.
"In the cities, there are so many cars people park in long rows down the street. It is different in many ways, and if you park funny, your difference will show."
Tomi had always hated it when her differences showed off the reservation, but on it, she was proud of her distinctions.
"There goes Tomi 'Too-Good'," joked the boys she had no time for, when they were feeling particularly mean and nasty, but Tomi would smile and nod her head into her books, trying hard to feign indifference. She knew she would get off the rez, leave behind the sadness and misery that had so long been suffered by her people. Grandfather told her he saw that in her future, and since he knew everything, she had always believed him. His comments about her differences being beautiful were something she had never believed growing up on the edge of the reservation, but in the city, well, people had loved them.
And now, she could remember his words like it was yesterday...had six years really passed already? Was her beloved Grandfather really dying? What had he said, crackling and wheezing from her cell phone?
"No more moons for grandfather?"
Tomi knew he'd said it in an attempt at humor, poking fun at his old ways, the things lost to her people that he'd held dear, those things she's once dreaded. Things like the dances, the way the drums spoke deep in her heart and her stomach, the way the rocks sang at the lodges and whispered the secrets of her people. She’d hated being known in school for those things, the Indian girl who was bused in to town on government funds, but now, her heritage was something almost magical.

Remembering her high school days Tomi slammed her door shut, and walking purposefully, moved toward the screened-in entrance.
it had been years since she'd driven past this lot, and now, back from college, the memories of her timeworking at the salebarn haunted her. The white paint was chipped and ugly along the north side of the building, and the scattered straw, manure and yelllowed snow puddles washed the ground leading to the chutes with an equal squalor. The men and women who worked here said that life on the Rez was putrid and ugly, but did they ever take a second look at their surroundings? The kids she'd guarded in basketball or ran against in track, the ones who'd been so hard on her for the way she'd ridden her horses in 4-H, did they ever think twice about the way they treated their own animals? Had she, when she slapped rumps and prodded ankles?
As Tomi reached the screen door-- still hanging at an uncomfortable angle after McClintock lost out on a heifer bid--she craned her head around to the east of the building, so that she could just see beyond the first pens and around the chute. The pens, once red and black, “in honor of the Herefords and Black Angus that come through,” Ellis had told her, were now rust colored and bronzed, or a flaky, dirty gray.
To the south of the pens, the loading chute was exactly as she’d remembered it: weathered wood, gone gray and warped in the harsh winters, covered with shit spatters of all colors, like brown,honey,gold,yellow,tan,chocolate,raisin polka dots. This was where the animals met their new enclosures: slatted semi-trailers, horse trailers or maybe just porta-pens in the back of a truck.
Tomi was hoping for a familiar face or two, but she couldn't see anything but cinnamon hide and loopy, bubble-gum udders. The cows were still in progress-- it would be a while until the bull sale started, so steadied by the determination in her mind, Tomi pushed open the screen door and was pulled forward.

The grounds had been kept up over the years, obviously, because the parking lot was full of trailers and pickup trucks and semis—hers was the only car—and that meant that today’s was going to be a big sale, but she had wasted enough time outside already. She knew how she felt about the commerce of animals. Boston had changed that, too. What she wanted to know…would Ellis be working here today?

The first time she stepped foot in the salebarn it had been dark out, but the sky was full of stars and the Moon was shining.
The 4-H sale had ended, and Tomi's steer had brought top dollar. Ellis Drum, who's dad Gene owned Drum's auction and officiated at the 4-H sale proceedings, spoke to her back in the pens when she'd returned her steer to his holdings.
"You know, Tomi.." he'd said, slow and calculated, with the mind of a man who is used to sizing up female animals for their heft, durability and reproductive capabilities "I could take you inside the salebarn sometime, show you around.. get you a drink."
Tomi's hand had stopped brushing whorl in the middle of her steer’s hindquarters. She knew Ellis in the way everyone knew him-- good looking, funny, Gene Drum's son. Golden. They'd talked at the 4-H dances each year, shared a few, shared more than that many beers, but they'd never been friends. Not really. Why did he want to do this for her now?

"Oh, really? What for?"
Tomi knew that there would be a cost of some sort involved in this; the Drum family hadn't wrangled the largest salebarn and auction reputation in the tri-county area with nothing but their good looks and silver tongues.
"I dunno, just thought you might like to see the place we kill the animals."
Tomi snorted, whipping around and bending upright to face Ellis.
“Cut the shit, Ellis. You know as well as I do that I’ve seen death before, and I’m not scared of it. You’ll talk to me here, ask me to see your salebarn while no one’s around, but you really want something. What.”
No nonsense, matter-of-fact. Tomi still talked that way, always had; it was this sensibility that had interested Mr. Brookings when he encouraged her to go into law.
Ellis’ dark eyes had almost glowed that night, like the firebugs she’d chased up from the grasses as a child, and when he answered her, she knew he meant it.

“Business, is all. You’re a good looking girl, gonna be a woman before school starts again.. I know you want offa that wasteland up north. Come down and work for us rest tha’ summer. Help out during the year.Put up some money for college. Dad’s on the Golden Clovers scholarship board… maybe he could work something even better.”
Tomi had pulled at the steer’s halter when Ellis offered her the job, a little harsher than necessary, and the young animal had bawled. And bawled and bawled, she though, shaking the old sounds from her head, then realizing that the lulling she heard was taking place now, in the present.

Without stopping by the small cafeteria to see if Cookie still worked here, Tomi had made it from the front door to the orchestra-pit style auctioneer pen, and there, teeming and gnashing and bawling, was an old Holstein and two little calves. The cow’s black splotches were haphazardly inked into her white hid, and if Tomi squinted, they looked mildly circular. The caked-on mud and shit that had spread across her back was dried and chunky, covering up her natural color. She was a mess, and her swollen udders, looking like pulled-taffy that had been stretched waaay too far, had cracked from a winter spent being milked hard.
It was not a scene Tomi had hoped for, when she’d parked her car, or at least not the first thing she saw upon entering. Why couldn't it be the little Brayden twins, in their matching Wranglers, chasing each other over the seats and playing "bangbang" with pistol fingers? Of course it wouldn't be them.. they had to be grown up now.. junior high school at least. Or Sally, the other Native who swept out the pens and sometimes snuck inside to watch the sale? Something nice, something warm and comforting.
Right. Comforting, at the saleabarn, where lives are bought and sold and deals are made among the human animals.

That fall, after the fair was over and Tomi skipped out on the carnival and dances to go drinking, Ellis had taken her inside the salebarn. No livestock, no humans, just the two of them, and that smell. That wet, earthy smell that comes from and is a range animal. It had been her first time inside the salebarn, and even though all they did was sit up in the crow’s nest and drink bourbon, Tomi thought it felt familiar. Like maybe she belonged. She made up her mind that night to work at Drum Auction and Packing, because she knew that working in the white man’s town, trading his commodities and understanding them, was crucial to her success when she left her own broken land.

“Iminabid iminabid, iminabid, five, five five, no, six, no, seven, no, ten, do I have ten? Up ten, up ten, up ten on the dollar, to the man in the white hat, the white hat, the Stetson, yessir, number 45, is that you Bob? You are number 45, if I am not mistaken?”
Tomi was jerked again from the past into the present, hearing Gene’s undulating voice drop down and run up octaves as he raised the bidding price on the cow in the pen. It surprised her how easily the language of the auction came back to her. The “man in the white hat white hat white hat,” Gene knew him, he was a regular at the auctions, and it wasn’t uncommon for Gene to sneak in greetings and observances in the middle of a sale, then carry on with the bidding without even taking a breath. The cow and her calves, looking to be about two weeks old, sold for just over $800 dollars.
Eight hundred dollars for her life, and the lives of her children. Surely worth more? But how would Tomi know? Hadn't her own life, her hopes for something better, been commodified in a similar way, in this very place, just a few years ago?

Tomi sniffled at the cold air and watched the next items lope inside: two small, red heifers. The thing about watching an auction that always bothered Tomi was not that the animals would be killed and eaten—dinner—but that they had served as entertainment first. Mick was still working here, brandishing the prod that kept the animals in line, and as he shocked one of the heifers from behind, she jumped forward, slipped on the wet, shitty dirt, and skidded across the pen floor. The men around Tomi, intent on the sale in progress, didn’t seem to notice the animal’s fear, or frantic energy. iOr perhaps they did, and they just didn’t care? She was never quite sure which it was, but either way, it didn’t matter. What was clear was that the animal had suffered, then rushed into this pen, thinking only of something different, yet not knowing quite what.

Random sketches and thoughts: Place Post No. 5

2010-03-07T12:10:00.000-08:00

I'm clearly not a visual artist, not without the aid of a camera, anyway, but I've been sketching some of the random encounters I have at the lake. Here, the dock at Walgren Lake, snowlocked but soon to be freed by the melting waters that run in from the hills and snowfall. We went fishing just a week ago, and now, even though the ice is softened by 3-4 inches of snow, the shoreline is warming, the edge ice is thawing and a good foot of water lies between the shore and the thinnest of ice holding the dock captive. It's pretty impossible to tell, with my inaccurate depth perception and ability to draw angles and distances, but the dock doesn't stick straight out of the water like that. It slopes back, is made of wood (but covered with snow).

And a hawk, as seen from the ground. Ok, that's a terrible picture, but when he's kind of coasting above, it's hard to see the exact curve of his wings or his coloring. I'm gguessing it was a Red-tailed Hawk, since they are so common here(I see at least 5 of these guys a day), but I'm not sure. The birds in my field guide look so similar.. Regardless, hawks always make me smile. When I was little, dad used to call them 'Henry" or 'Henrietta," and until I was old enough to know better, I always thought it was up to him to name the hawk, and that it was always the same ol' Henry hanging out around the tractor or feedlot or wherever we happened to be. Our school's mascot is a hawk, so he's got some pretty big pull around here!

This UNL study, done in the 50s, shows that there were 14 types of hawk in the NE Panhandle; I can't find stats on those same birds today, but I'm sure that even though this land is sparsely populated, numbers have decreased, if only slightly.

And a wax worm, the mealy, translucent bait we use for ice fishing. These worms are the larvae of the Pyralidae, or wax moth. In nature, they live in bee hives, eat the cocoons and wax, thus earning their name. In my house, they live in the fridge (in a round, plastic case) and get lost behind the cottage cheese or other small round containers. These worms are pretty slow moving, but I came across this thread from the Ohio Game Fishing community and couldn't help but post it:

It has always been a concern that the wax worms would get left out and die from heat, so we always made sure we had them in the cooler. This is fine, however sometimes it's a pain to have to get them out and put them back, especially with kids. So, this weekend we were fishing the shoreline and I just carried them over and set them in the shade, of course the sun moved and soon they were baking in the heat. I LIKE IT! As it turns out, I discovered when in the sun, wax worms go nuts when in the heat. They were crawling all over themselves and looked like redworms in the way they were moving around and getting into a corner of the container. Also, they "grew" fatter the longer they were in the sun.

I will tell you, a warm - fat - squirmin wax worm WILL catch a ton of bluegill!

When we were done, I put them back in the cooler and the next time they were fine. The kids just loved it and I could not fish because the 3 kids were just one after another with catches, best fishing I never got to do.

So, anyone else have this happen with wax worms? Have I been living a wax worm lie all my life??"

A "wax worm lie".. ah, I love it!

***

The frost has gone out of the ground now, and with it has gone the stability of the land. When there's a blizzard blowing and zero visibility, getting to the lake is dangerous because I can't see what's in front of me, but it's not impossible. When the frost goes out, however, travel across the country roads is almost unthinkable.

We had to pull the wheels of my Rav yesterday and powerwash the gumbo off of them, because the Rav had developed a bad shake. All of the mud caked on the chassis and the tires had pulled the whole system out of balance.

I think of the people who settled this land, those who tried to move through the muck with wooden wheels and tired oxen or horses. Overland trips took forever back then, and adding this mess to them most certainly made life difficult.

I like the mud, the way it is a mixture of earth and water, the way it feels to squish it between my toes, even its variety of colors: shaley stuff so black it's almost purple; chocolate syrup smooth with a cinnamony swirly; cookie bar brown, with the warm, golden crust of a brownie. But It is a frustrating substance, akin to the quicksand that Edward Abbey encounters in his wilderness in the desert. Mud makes it easy for me to understand why settlers and farmers and ranchers come to think synonymously of "enemy" and "land." The natural world is a challenge; even in the promise of good weather.

Spring is definitely coming; the ice still coats the lake but is too dangerous to walk on, the mud is a crisscross of tracks and ruts leading the way to human productivity. We are leaving behind the winter, and in the mud we are recording our passage.

Deer in the road

2010-03-06T19:51:00.000-08:00

Deer in the snow
at least 200! Exclaims dad
and The Weasel is off, running, animal
instincts taking over for domestic stupor.

Last week, coming home from the library,
I paused at the entrance to the yard
just beyond the driveway.
Mottled and bare, or not yet shedding,
the animals crossed before me.
one
by
one
by
eighteen
ninteteen
twenty-one
twenty-seven?
Maybe
I counted them all or missed plenty.

Big brown eyes and full, sonar-ears
a doe paused beside me
sheltered in my car.
White rump and tail flicked in triumph
(I had stopped after all)
she bounded across the yard and into frozen stubble.
Fear, not hers
but mine in that moment:
would the herd keep running, plow into me?
They've done it before
and dented my conscience.

Little House on the Prairie Dog town: Prompt Post No. 5

2010-03-06T19:41:00.000-08:00

Shrieks and squeaks and mounds of dirt surround me. Prairie dog town in the pasture, and small brown animals scurry underneath and beyond me. These small furry rodents dig up the sod, the roots, the prairie, and because they are a “nuisance” to the farmers and ranchers who want the land for their crops or their animals, the dogs are deemed unnecessary.
But what really makes an animal “necessary,” or –un? What can I do as an advocate if I'm not even sure where I stand?

Ever since the 70s, when the prairie dog was placed on the endangered species list, these mama ls have made large "comebacks," according to the University of Nebraska- Lincoln.
But for someone living in an area that has never seen a decline in these animals, it's hard to know the difference between a comeback and a threatened animal.

"The fact that prairie dogs live in colonies indicates they are highly social animals. The largest social unit is the colony or town. Towns are often divided into "wards" by topographical barriers such as roads, ridges or trees, and are generally five to 10 acres in size. Although prairie dogs in one ward may be able to see and hear animals of an adjacent ward, movement among wards is unusual. Wards are divided into several smaller prairie dog social units, called 'coteries'."- from the NE Game and Parks Commission.

I pause alongside the Kearns' fence-- they don't like people on their property or in their business, and even though they are relatives somewhere back in history, I'm not about to get shot at or razzled for watching prairie dogs on their property. The small animals run back and forth, scamper atop the mounded entrances to their burrows, and chatter, squeal and roughhouse with each other. I like thinking about the burrows and tunnels they have built underground-- I am reminded of walking along the interconnected streets in foreign cities. I think of Cartagena and Barcelona, cobbled streets shielded from the sky by balconies, arches and the vines and flowers that reach for the sky from them. Even in our differences-- people and prairie dogs, the Spaniards and the Anglos and U.S. Europeans-- as social being we are similar. I see these things, but I can't find a place in the argument for one side or the other.

On the one hand, I realize that prairie dogs make up the ecosystem where I come from. Owls, weasels, rabbits, other small mammals all use the burrows once the prairie dogs have left them. But on the other hand, I know how dangerous it is for livestock who are pastured in these fields.

I drive home, sliding across the muddy road, thinking about the small animals and their communities; my community. Our girls basketball team made it to state again for the third time in a row, and they blew up on the court, for the third time in a row. They are young, but have experience... I know that they get to the big city (Lincoln is huge to most people around here) and freak out, snapping under the pressure. The media, the full gyms, the competition.. I think they feel threatened by the outside forces. That's what life is like around here. The outside world is distant, we only know what is before us until we get away to see more of it. And anywhere you go, people are leery of the unknown, the unfamiliar. A small town, simple (I don't mean dumb, just.. simple) people; a challenging region: we are sheltered, to what I would say is our detriment. But I think we are also sometimes unaware of even that which surrounds us.

I think about the Crow Butte uranium mine to the west of us (about 1.25 hours from where I live). Even though this is something local, and therefore not "threatening" and unfamiliar, I wonder how many of my friends who work there really know, I mean KNOW of the hazards of their environment. My friend Ray went to work there for his family, a better life, more money, but is he aware of the ways his work come later come back to haunt him? I'm not sure, but I doubt it. I never learned about any of that while I went to school here. I know that I don't want uranium leeching into the steams and rivers around here, but even I am not that concerned about it that I feel like picketing or writing my govenor. Those who work there have made that choice, and it's not up to me to stop them. Same thing with the prarie dogs- they aren't bothering me, so I feel more strongly about letting them live. Is this apathy, ignorance, or just my personal sense of how it is?

Screw the animals, save the humans?

2010-03-03T20:31:00.000-08:00

"You don't want to think about it... you don't want to feel guilty either."

So writes Joy Williams in her essay "Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp." I've been thinking about this essay, and Williams' message for a few days now. Last week saw the rising fame of Tillikum, a 12,000 male Orca, who has probably surpassed Shamu with his fifteen minutes of fame for killing his trainer.

I don't like zoos and aquariums (seeing a polar bear lap at his puddle of melted ice while on display in Egypt is what ruined captive animals for me- I used to LOVE the zoo in my childhood), and since then, I've never enjoyed animals in captivity the way I once did, but I was at a SeaWorld show in Texas in May (my then boyfriend had free tickets as part of his "welcome-home-from-Iraq, we hope you're not too fucked up!" package, so we went. I watched the whales, marveled at their grace and awe, and fed the walrus. It was cool to see these animals that I don't have contact with, but in the end, I wanted them to be wild.

When I heard about Tillikum, and his history, I was incredibly sad, knowing that most people were probably angry at the whale... and then I read some of the posts on the NYTimes board regarding the story: "There are no winners in this situation, only a life (more than one to date) of a trainer lost, the animal itself as a victim, and the wild world in which these creatures interact is scorned. It is time past for us to no longer treat these animals as cartoons."

And this mixed response: "It was a risk of working with wild animals. The trainers knew that. Euthananizing and blaming the whale is ridiculous as is shutting down sea parks/zoos that play a crucial role in preserving wildlife and educating people about them."

Like this person, I feel that the trainer knew her risks, but what responsibilities did the park have in ensuring her safety? What role did they have in keeping a whale in the first place? Supply and demand.. nature and wild animals have become just one more commodification, which Williams so expertly points out in her essay. We humans want, want want, we want to be entertained and awed ( I could have said no to the SeaWorld adventure, but I did go), and we don't want to feel guilty for our part in any of it. But am I not just as guilty of the trainer's demise as that of the other humans Tillikum has killed? My dollars didn't exactly pay for the ticket, but they did. I mean, my tax dollars go to the Army, which provided the ticket.. and I bought stuff while there and supported the park, which I guess, has "a crucial role in preserving wildlife and educating people..."

As for a closer look at the intersection of human and animal, last week also saw the killing of yet another mountain lion, some fifteen minutes from my town. The local rancher saw the large cat under his horse trailer, called the game warden and the cops, and the next time she moved, she was dead. I tried to debate this with my dad on the drive home from town the other day-- whether or not it was ok for us to kill the cats when we are the ones in their territory--and he said "Marcella, you wouldn't want it around here attacking you when you get home in the night, or eating Sherman (the dog). I grew up in harsh times. If a calf was sick, you killed it. If a mountain lion attacked, you killed it. Now, people get in trouble for that kind of stuff becuase they're being abusive to animals. Well, animals like that have no need to be around."

On the one hand, he was right. I don't want to get attacked by a huge cat in the middle of the night. And I didn' t ask to be born here, to be put upon this land. But I am here, so now I have to make as much of an effort to get along with what's here as I can, right? In a world that is increasingly human (I think I read a similar phrase in one of my writings for school last week?), how do I, we you, do that and save both animal and man?

The terrible oxygen: Place Post No. 4

2010-02-28T13:08:00.000-08:00

The fish come quickly, as pan fish usually do. A small, yellow jig, a 1 ounce weight and two wax worms: perch after perch after perch. This bait/lure combination works well in the shallow waters around Nebraska, and I as I pull up the small fillets with fins, I volley back and forth between feeling bad for the effective deception, and the self-reliance I am armed with. Within the first half hour of being set-up at the lake, I have at least five of the small, green and yellow fish.

Commonly known as the yellow perch, or simply "perch," Perca flavescens is about 12,000 years old. Found throughout the United States, this freshwater fish has a clean, delicate flavor unlike the rather muddy, gamey flavor of the catfish or even some Crappies. Of the fish we catch during the winter, Perch has got to be my favorite. Today, each of the little guys we catch ranges from 5-8," but it's not unheard of to catch 11-inchers in other, bigger lakes.

"Tasty little potato chips," dad says, smiling as I struggle to unhook the recent catch that's hooked itself through its nose. I pride myself on being able to bait my hooks, unhook my bounty, but when a fish gouges itself in the eyeball, or swallows the whole damn rigging, the self-assured part of me dies. Dad raised me to make sure I could do these things- bait my hooks and unhook my windfalls, but he didn't teach me how to combat the feelings of sorrow that sometimes break the water along with the goodies. As a child, I couldn't focus on fishing enough to even worry about those things, since I could hardly sit still long enough to wait for something to set my hook. As an adult, I have the patience to sit still and listen to the water burping under the ice around me, but with that patience comes the contemplation of my actions.

Nebraska's Sandhills lakes have a high alkalinity to them, and for many years of the 19th century, Walgren Lake was known as Alkali Lake. The water in this lake ranges from flame-blue to mossy green and bruised, but in the winter, the crispness of the clear, frozen water works its way into the flavor of the animals you're after. I'm looking forward to the homemade beer batter and finger-length fish-fries we'll have tonight for dinner, so I can justify my actions in that matter: at least I am working here to feed myself. If I needed to do this to survive, I have the know-how.

But the fact of the matter is that I don't need to fish to survive. I can eat all sorts of other things: grilled-cheese sandwiches, or soups or vegetables. I think through the list of all the other things I come up with-- chicken, turkey, even hamburger, and know that most of my diet consists of things that were once living but were killed for their food matter. If I ate only what I killed, I'd have to be a vegetarian. Even then, though, things would die... The great satisfaction of fishing comes, I guess, primarily in spending time with my family, and then in knowing that unlike those who simply purchase their fish-sticks in stores, I know the reality of an animal food cycle.

I rehook another wax worm, a small, steamed-onion-like larva, and drop the line through two feet of ice, and probably eight feet of water. Mom has already caught a couple of Bluegill, Lepomis machrochirus, and I wonder what other kind of fish are in store.

Bullheads, catfish, Northern Pike, Crappie, Bluegill, Perch, and even the occasional Walleye make themselves at home in Walgren, and for as long as I can remember, people come here to pull up a tasty combo pack of bite-sized fish dinners. The thing about fishing this lake is that you are here to make a meal, not a name for yourself. None of the fish in this water are not going to be worth mounting, but reaching the half-way mark in a five-gallon bucket guarantees a few tasty meals for a family.

The sun shines above us, wisps of cirrus clouds promise softly falling layers of frozen water later in the afternoon, and a whole morning passes. Mom has brought her little dog along with us-- a first for my family-- and he's bounding about our small circumference of drilled holes, lapping at the heaving water that sucks in and out of holes. He's hooked up to the gear sled, and his small lunges pull it a few inches every so often. He's kind of entertaining, but in his small, plaid coat, he's more of a plaything than a domesticated animal with wild tendencies. The anglers to the west and south of us sit hunched over their small, 2' poles, jigging and waiting, waiting and jigging. I feel like we're the group with the most action, and by 11 am, when I feel like I've had enough (we left the house at 7:30), we've got half a bucket of Perch and Bluegill, swimming sideways and slowly in their deathwater.

I catch a Pike too, " a little snake," as dad calls them, and because it had swallowed the hook and gouged its throat, when I release it, the fish is bleeding badly.

Throw it down, it ain't gonna live," orders my dad. We don't eat E. lucius. Their meat isn't as mushy and muddy as the Catfish, so they're not that nasty, but its not as buttery-flavored as the Perch, or as solid. Boney and narrow, this long, skinny fish is hard to clean, but if it weren't dying, I'd through it back down the hole. Dad would let it lie on the ice to freeze. Bloody and mouthing and S.O.S. in the silent unease of a suffocating being, the Pike wriggles in my hand for a moment. I hold him up, eye the snout, and drop it to my feet. Mom's dog (whom I call The Weasel, for his long snout and beady eyes) lunges at the fish, paws it then wraps sharp teeth over the caudal (tail) fin, flipping it. I watch for a minute, then retreat, sitting back on my bucket and jigging my pole slowly. The Weasel growls and lunges, squeaks and bares teeth; the fish continues to die, slowly.

Once last summer, while fishing for salmon on Lake Oahe, I told dad that I didn't like the way he bled the fish in the water as we prepared to leave. I'd been having a hard time salmon fishing all summer, growing more and more aware of what began to feel like greed. Two years ago we caught 45 salmon-- more than the average man, maybe even bear (OK, not really bear, but you know..), and last summer we caught at least 40. Dad doesn't keep them all for himself, several of his elderly friends can no longer fish, so he smokes the fish and gives it to them, and twice a summer he holds a fish feed in town at the golf course. I see and respect the way he spreads out the enjoyment of these fish, but I wondered if it was necessary. Yet I felt helpless and wrong in my contributions to his hoard.

The Pike barely flips its fins now, and its mouth has stopped opening and closing. It would have died regardless, had I thrown it back in the water, but if I hadn't caught it at all, I wouldn't have been the cause of its demise. I think of Buddhist lovingkindness, how all being are supposed to be equal and all actions will come back to haunt us. I think of "The Fish," a poem by Elizabeth Bishop, in which her catch-and-release is both humble and full of victory.

While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen... I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,...
They shifted a little, but not to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping of an object toward the light.

Eventually, the fish dies, his last breath a choking one, dry and raspy in the cold, winter air. Mom's dog loses interest in the inanimate fish, and I am even sorry for The Weasel. Not because he is no longer entertained--we sic-ed 'em on that poor fish to entertain us, didn't we?--but because he is a wild animal, trapped in a child-small coat, fettered by domestication and the power of bored humans.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to say "no" to dad for good, when he asks me to go fishing, but I do know that when he too, has cast his last hook and sucked in his last gasp of air, my days as predator on the ice and the water will be over. I tell myself that for now, it's OK to fish, I eat what I catch and I am intimate with the life cycles of these aquatic animals, but if it weren't for my family, fish sticks and white fleshed "potato chips" wouldn't even cross my mind or my stomach.

Way better than Cicadas

2010-02-22T21:14:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to post this link for a long time, but until I received my newest issue of the Atlantic, I keep forgetting about it. Last month an article ran about music being used to wipe out beetles plauging trees in Arizona. I'm pretty sure that this is a good thing, it just makes me feel like there's this underlying insinuation that the "heavier" music I enjoy is irritating enough to kill!

Coyote and the Lake: PromptPost No. 4

2010-02-20T13:45:00.001-08:00

"A sleek gray-faced prairie wolf! his pointed black nose tucked in between is four feet drawn snugly together; his hand-some bushy tail wound over his nose and feet; a coyote fast asleep in the shadow of a bunch of grass!--this is what Iktomi spied."

So begins "Iktomi and the Coyote," one of several "Old Indian Legends" compiled by Sioux tribeswoman and historian, Zitkala-Sa. I first began reading her stories in grade school, and to this day, her tales live on in my mind as the zenith of regional folk legends whenever I think of Plains stories. Iktomi, the "spider fairy" is a trickster, one of many who live on in oral traditions. In this particular story, he has met his match, Coyote, who is also known throughout the Native American legends as the trickster who can out-trick anybody. The site that I've linked to Iktomi's name lists Coyote right after him, and I find it interesting that there are two different manifestations of craftiness and manipulation embodied in these individuals-- man vs. nature is a clear interpretation, but I wonder what others might exist. What has been lost in the oral traditions we no long know, or could never know, as a literate society fond of linear thinking and structured sentences?

I think about these things as I research Coyote, who is known to biologists under the Latin name of Canis latrans Say-- canis for dog, latrans for barking, and Say for Thomas Say, who, as a 19th century Plains explorer first described the "prairie wolf" in 1823. I think about Coyote's reputation, his craftiness and cunning. These are the things that keep him alive in the wild, that make him him, but these qualities are the same ones that have earned him a spot alongside prairie dogs and bean blight in the hearts of ranchers and farmers. Coyote is sent to the earth by the Creator to teach man how to live, say some old legends, yet his intellect is tainted by his nature of sneaking chickens out of the coop. He is an animal of multiple personalities and personas; this gives storytellers great range in using him as a character to explain and entertain.

Coyotes are omnivorous, eating everything from berries and grasses and bugs to cottontails and family animals. These sleek animals have been documented in much of North America, so it doesn't surprise me that each Native nation has its own version of a Coyote story. We too, the descendants of settlers who took over the Plains (pushing around both native man and animal) have our own coyote stories, our own ways of dealing with the animal.

Living 40 minutes away from Nebraska's Museum of the Fur Trade, established here because of the plenitude of pelts in the 19th century, I know all about the ways in which people around here try to get rid of coyotes. We've had some around lately, and dad's been toting his gun in the evenings, hoping to put an end to the howling animals before they have a snack of mom's lil' doggy.

In the story of Iktomi and the Coyote, Iktomi carries Coyote home, thinking he will cook him up. Coyote is not really dead, but enjoys being carried across the prairie by the man (in this story Iktomi is a man, not the spider/snareweaver). Coyote has manipulated Iktomi into doing the work of walking for him, but when he arrives as his teepee, Iktomi lights a large fire and chucks Coyote into it. Upon being burnt, Coyote flees, splashing ashes and flame on the warrior; his parting laughter is a reminder to Iktomi that animal is more wily than man.

don't know if it was reading about Coyote's antics as a child, watching the Road Runner kick his hide over and over with my dad, or seeing the living animal pop up on occasion around here, but the levels of Coyote Nature interest me. His metaphor is one of being both obnoxious and wild, yet smart and resilient. He is the clever man, the fool; the savage animal and the hero. I want to think there is some of him in all of us, if only we could see him and embrace that.

During my initial visit to Walgren Lake a coyote ran across the path in front of me, and since then I've been wanting to use Coyote in a story. I don't like making things up, so it's really hard for me to imagine making up a whole world for Coyote and peopling it, but here goes.

Coyote and Iktomi at The Lake

It was winter time in the North, where Coyote lived alone in his warm home. For many long days he had been wrapped up like a blanket, wet black nose tucked into layers of wiry, buckskin fur. His stomach spoke to him sometimes, and when it did so, he ventured from his small room and foraged among the lake reeds for buffalo berry stems and the nourishment of bitter, bitter rose hips and water. His stomach did not quiet at the taste of these small, shriveled husks, but the water dimmed the pangs of animal hunger like sun star did when it lay down in the sky at night.

Coyote was growing thin, like the Two-Legged he sometimes saw dangling strings of sinew through the thick skin that Winter had grown over the water. He knew it was sinew, made from the cords of muscle and hide that Elk clothed himself in, because he could smell it anytime the Two-Legged drew near. It smelled so good, so alive. Something that Coyote hadn’t felt since the Autumn and his fat harvests of rodents, pheasant and sick deer. Coyote was known among the Animals for his pounce, his hard jaw. He could stalk animals in silence, swooping like Raven. He wore his stealth in dusky, sand-colored fur, and the strength of his mouth also rivaled Raven’s, who was known for his unending chatter CawCawCaw. But because Coyote’s mouth was not used for constant noise, but to quietly secure his dinner, his strength was more valuable, his action more beautiful.

Spring was coming—Coyote could feel the excitement of knowing another and chasing young pups in the sun—but before the Sun Breeze returned, he needed to find a meal, something warm and living. This would restore his weight; he would be bigger than Dog and glossier than Ferret once again. Coyote knew how he would do this: he would call on the Two-Legged and ask for help from him. The Fur that One wore was not his fur naturally—Coyote saw Rabbit and Beaver and Deer every time he saw this One, but because the Two-Legged did not move with the swiftness nor possess the knowledge of these Animals, Coyote knew the Two-Legged must put these covers on. Could he offer his hide, in return for a meal?

Iktomi watched the ducks fly overhead as he walked quiet across the lake. His eyes sparkled like the gemstones some Nations traded, but he knew better than to think of such folly. He was at the lake for dinner, not riches. And dinner he would have. His best tobacco had been burnt that morning—the great Water Snake would send his spirit to the surface and attach Crappie and Perch to the wishbone snare at the end of Iktomi’s sinew. He knew it would happen as he had envisioned, and as he squatted over yesterday’s opening in the water’s cold skin, he imagined how good the fish would be when steamed over young ash wood. Water wetted his lips now, and Iktomi barely noticed the way the Moon Breeze ruffled the delicate hairs of his winter furs. He had patched last season’s leggings and shoulder cloth with what was available, but he knew that lining them with Coyote would turn away the cold.
“HunHa!”

A small laugh, bitter like winter berries, escaped from Iktomi’s set mouth. Coyote. He would be lucky to catch such a one, in winter or summer Coyote was cunning; he would have to be desperate to turn himself in for a ransom of shelter or marrow bones.

Iktomi kept his sinew in the water all afternoon and evening, and before Grandmother showed her face in the west, he had lined up three rows of Crappie and one Walleye. The Finned ones said nothing; they knew the ways of the winter world above water.

As Grandmother’s face revealed itself above the horizon, Coyote stepped out of his home, arching the ruff of his collar and giving his jaw a good stretch with a yawn. His front arms slid forward as he kissed the ground, thanking Earth once again for his presence. First his right leg, then his left stretched out behind him as he warmed the muscles he used for pouncing. Coyote was proud of his abilities as an Animal, but it was his mind that he needed to stretch and exercise on this cold winter night. As he searched the horizon for movement—a feather, a tail, something—a shimmer of frost on the road caught his eye.

“Oh Grandmother,” he said, rounding his mouth as he spoke to the Moon, “your night jewels are beautiful, and I enjoy seeing the way they sparkle around you.”
Grandmother said nothing, because she didn’t need to.

Coyote started down the path across the water skin—he would see if the Two-Legged had left any fish behind from this morning. As he came closer to the spot where moccasins crouched in silence, he realized that the Two-Legged had not returned to his fire. Here was Coyote’s chance to ask for a meal, or sneak one, if necessary.

“Oh, brother Deer,” he said, hoping to trick the Two-Legged into thinking he was family. Coyote’s eyes were lowered, and his tail was pulled under tightly—if the Two Legged saw his submission, maybe he would share something with Coyote.
“I am cold and hungry on this Moon Night. You have much food and only one stomach. Your coat looks thin, but you are still alive. Will you share with me?”

Iktomi couldn’t believe his eyes. Was Coyote this close to him, this desperate in his hunger?
“Brother Coyote, It is I, Iktomi, not Deer, as you have imagined. My coat is thin, yes, you are right. I have much Fish here with me, and truly, one stomach. But if you give me your coat, I will trade you warmth for hunger.”

Coyote thought for a moment, his deception pulled out from under him. He could trade his coat for Iktomi’s fish, and return home to sleep off the rest of the Winter Moon with full belly. He would get a new coat in the summer, so this one didn’t matter. But Coyote was not sure he could trust Iktomi to give him the Fish before trading him the coat. He knew there had to be another way, and as he thought on it, Grandmother winked her eye at Coyote. And he knew how to get Iktomi.

“Here, then, follow me, Brother, down this path out of the shadows of the night.” Coyote led Iktomi off the Lake, toward the path where he first encountered Grandmother that night.
“You see, there is a sparkling rock magic on this road ahead, and I do not know what it is, but it gives off a great light. There I will remove my coat in the light.

Iktomi could not believe his luck. Not only would he get Coyote’s warm dressings tonight, but the Animal had no idea that the sparkling rock magic was only the light cast from stones glistening under the sky above.

As Coyote neared the path, the frost on the road sparkled like springtime in a mate’s eyes. If Iktomi saw this glow, Coyote was certain that the Two-Legged would become entranced with the magic, forgetting both the Fish and Coyote’s promise. Soon, Iktomi glanced the sparkling ahead of them, and he ran ahead, forgetting the delicious comfort of a meal in the greed of his desire for hard, magic rocks. He removed a small pouch and shoveled handfuls of Winter ground into the opening, smiling at the meals and the coats this richness would bring him.

Coyote snuck back toward the Lake, shrugging his coat around his ears and thanking Grandmother again for her guidance.

Cattails: Place Post No. 3

2010-02-14T17:24:00.000-08:00

I picked up a plants guide at the library the other day, so my recent lake trip was informed by this info booklet. Hoping to use it more as the shore thaws and the days grow longer. Looking at plants and then the guide feels kind of like going on a biology scavenger hunt.

Typha latifolia, or "the Common Cattail"catches my eye as I walk along the edges of the lake. These velour-like fuzz rods feel like memory foam when you squeeze them, and even if they can be bad for their environments (because they choke out the plants that provide food for ducks and other animals), the multiple benefits they offer are good. Used by blackbirds as nesting sites, the leaves of this plant also protect reptiles such as snakes or salamanders (not so good for the birds!). Native Americans have used the plant for both medicinal and textile purposes. And besides all this, there's just something fun about this weed: I think of this perennial monocot ( plant that lasts at least 3 seasons; has only one seed-leaf) as the aquatic version of the dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), because their fluffy seeds fur the air when they are released. Like dandelions, this plant is edible, and although I've never eaten one myself, I remember a friend who tried to do so deciding that the shoots would perhaps be better than the fuzz itself (long story). Maybe this spring I'll have to experiment with the tender green shoots myself.

With the strong winds and warm sun we've had lately, I'm pretty sure the water will be eating away at the ice soon, even if it is very slowly. March will bring another hard freeze and a big snow dump or two, but it's almost easy to think about spring coming.

Breakdown: Prompt Post No. 3

2010-02-14T11:07:00.000-08:00

Growing up in the country, one has a sense of life and death at all times, in all places. Thick snows blanket the winter wheat sprouting and growing below; warm wind and sun thaw these crusts, and spring comes. A calf is born in the snowstorm; its mother's dead, bloated body is hauled away by the rendering truck the next day. Kids out here don't learn about life and death from the purchase and flush of a goldfish sparkle.

And even when we don't yet know it, we are a part of the cycle.

I showed swine and poultry and beef throughout my years in 4-H: Starsky and Hutch, the pigs who ran away and frolicked under the pivot in the corn field gave way to Caesar and Calpurnia who gave way to a new set of speakers for my Jeep. Fauntleroy and Napoleon, the proud green-plumed Araucana roosters won me purple-plumed ribbons and spots in the paper and prize monies. That what these animals stood for then, in my adolescence. And Burgermeister (who funded my senior-year wardrobe and took the place of Hamburgler)...they all helped me know not death, but its place in the cycle of work and reward and creation. Here, on the unforgiving grass plains that break men with as much regularity as men break the earth, here the cycle of being is always around us.

I am thinking about loss and decay today, as I drive to the lake. The readings for my nature writing class have all focused on death and loss this week, and I am struck by how unique departure is as it graces or destroys us, as different as the sunset or the patterns in the melted mud-caked snow. The Nebraska Glaciation period cut and carved the gullies behind my house and yard then ended; the natives, the buffalo, even the people who lived here before me are all gone now. One with the earth. One essay in particular regarding death has stuck with me, not for its beauty, but because of the author's innocence.

In Apologia, author Barry Lopez performs the last rites for several road-killed animals on a drive across the country. While in Nebraska, pulling a dead badger off the road, he feels himself the recipient of a stranger's blessing.

"A car drifts toward us over the prairie, coming on in the other land, a 1962 Chevrolet station wagon. The driver slows to pass...an arm and the gesture of his thick left hand...opens in a kind of shrug, hangs briefly in limp sadness, then extends itself in supplication."

"Limp sadness?" I read this essay a week ago, shaking my head at its naivete, its misunderstanding of life and death and this Nebraskan gesture. Roadkill is not a thing of contemplation when both sides of the road are littered from day to day with the bodies of dead animals. It doesn't invite the holy, nor does it teach us a lesson other than be mindful. We are few and far between the humanly-populated sites of Nebraska; we wave with a hand out the window when we see you.

I am a skeptic, too used to roadside death to care about Lopez' badger, but I do wonder, do I not feel reverence for these deaths because they are so common, or because of how they've happened? Has growing up with an understanding and acceptance of death removed me from it, instead of making me humble?

Turning to the lake road and passing the old potato shed, I decide to stop and take pictures. It's been at least two decades since people grew and harvested potatoes in my community, but there's still talk of the industry in the state. This old building sits about four miles from my home, and I can't believe the state of things as I pull into the gravel lot around it. What was once a proud, two-story building and landmark next to our turnoff is now a pile of rotted wood and humming aluminum.

I walk across the wreckage of a ceiling littering the floor, and feel a piece of my childhood drift away. How many years did I drive past this building to the lake? Or to school? What was steady and permanent is now nothing. As much as anything, this too, is life. But inanimate and quiet when it stood, why does this testament to human ingenuity move me more than the absence of life decaying along the road?

I return home after my time at the lake, restless in mind and body. Sometimes a walk in the canyon will diffuse this frantic energy. I take my camera and my feelings to the open spaces around me. The snow has melted after the warm days, and I know the trail to the spring won't be too muddy. This trail begins at the edge of our yard and wanders through barbwire, beyond the boundaries of fencing, and down a valley before ending at the spring sunk low in the side of a hill. Faint oatmeal colored sand leads the way passed junked out cars, broken piles of feed bunk rubble and today, the long-gone body of a coyote.

Terry Tempest Williams writes that "Artifacts are alive," that "They remind us what it is to be human--that it is our nature to survive, to create words of beauty, to be resourceful, to be attentive to the world we live in." I pass first the human artifacts, the reckless tracings of modern society, and I wonder, really? Is abandoning our buildings and our vehicles to the earth really paying any kind of attention to anything? Is this any worse than abandoning each other? The First Nations left us arrowhead and oral stories; in their footprints we have deposited rusted metal and biohazard warnings.

I nudge the teeth out of the jaw bone gently, thumbing the deep cleft of the canines with my finger. This animal knew life and death in the wild, more naturally than the modern people who came before me, and certainly more fully than me. I enjoy the readings and the essays and the contemplation of life and death and nature, but until we go there ourselves...we can't pretend to know it or understand it. Not really.

A sharp wind is howling across the old riverbed, dry now in its wanderings. I kneel, rake bare fingers through the pebbles, and hope for something wonderful. I used to come out here and hunt for fossils when I was little, sending promising specimens to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I wanted to find a dinosaur, a valuable creature.. something. I can't remember now the "value" of my childhood finds, but each of the letters came back to back to me from someone who was most likely a grad student, sighing again over the newest odd fossilized thing from the 6 year-old in northwest Nebraska. No dinosaurs, no mammoths. Nothing "special." Even in my childhood innocence I had already labeled the values of death's lessons. There is nothing to hold my attention in the pebbles my fingers turn up (the shell of a land snail), so I snap some pictures and stand up.

I feel each step crumble slightly under solid pressure-- the soil here is crumbly and breaks down before blowing away for ever. Over the dried cake-batter yellow sand of the butte ahead is what I came for. The spot of land my brother once wanted to inhabit and build a house upon.

The last time we were out here, dad stood among the scrubby cedar shrubs and eyed the ground with menace, as if he distrusted the very land holding him up.

"Why anyone would want to live clear out here," he says, shaking his head at whatever it was he was imagining. I don't remind him that that just a quarter of a mile away is the house he lives in...also "clear our here" by anybody else's standards. My brother had only been situated to his new surroundings for a few weeks then, his body barely left alone in the ground. I knew it wasn't the emptiness of the land that really rankled my dad, but rather the distance that had grown between the two men. I don't know that dad would have done anything to have him back, neighbors, buddies, as it had been once before, but with something like that is better no knowing.

I come out here, to this sandy spot on a lonely hill when I need reminded that death is really its own kind of power. The quiet dip and bend of dried-out grasses or the remains of small bodies around me offers a kind of raw solace that can't be found in human comfort. I come out here to feel death in a way that roadkill and obituaries can't seem to manage.

He visited me once, in a dream, and we made our peace then, in that shimmer of a moment. We weren't close in life, my brother and I, but I come here now to visit him and his memory, instead of the place outside town that holds his body. I come here because it is my only way to get to him. And sometimes, it's the only way I know to get away from me. I come out here to know things I can't know with book smarts or language or by walking in the traditions of other ways. There is intimacy in death, and in this land, and if, as Dictionary.com tells us "intimate," as an adjective, means "relating to or indicative of one's deepest nature: intimate prayers,"

then I might not pause for thecoontail or the bits of deer on blacktop, but I know where to kneel when I feel compelled to pray.

Stability in the broken places: Prompt Post No. 2

2010-01-31T15:55:00.000-08:00

Hay Springs was settled in the 1800s, a burgeoning village of tents and shanties set up along a line of railroad track snaking through Northwest Nebraska. Saloons and ladies-of-the-night were as plentiful as the hay shocks and pools of water for which the town was named, according to tales told about the area. A couple of centuries later, we are a one-bar and five-church town; the one-night-stands of which we are all guilty are without monetary cost, and as removed as a church bell or last night's tab at the bar. I wish I could say that I never wanted to be a part of this culture, but even as a child I wanted action, excitement, something other than the farm. In junior high I started hanging out with the town kids (I was a country-school girl), and I knew that I would someday fit in with them, because their lives were the apex of exciting at that point in time.

Eventually I made it through high school, and thinking college would be different, I went to South Dakota and found myself in the same situations, with similar people (with no cops in town, we often spent Friday and Saturday nights in the bar during high school). The only things that had changed were our names, my location, and the bars. But in surrounded as I was by the friends and co-workers I had in Sioux Falls, I knew the loneliness and emptiness that all people out here seem to know. Small towns and rural lifestyles cut off from what the rest of the world seems to know; some people are as bitter and sharp as the wild grasses that grow along our quiet ditches and dirt roads. These lands are good places to exist if you want to get away from it all, but that seclusion catches up to you if you aren’t careful.
In her book Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, Kathleen Norris writes that the Dakotas are not a place of emptiness, but openness.

“More Americans than ever, well over 70 percent, live in urban areas and tend to see the Plains as empty. What they really mean is devoid of human presence. [But] the Plains seem bountiful in their emptiness, offering solitude and room to grow.”
Norris moved to South Dakota as an adult, without the luxury of growing up in this part of the country and feeling the crush of that solitude and emptiness every day, she didn’t realize that the limits of the land really made it impossible to grow. For her, coming to this place with a career path in mind, and by choice, made South Dakota feel like home. Not a horizon of forever stretching out and doubling back again into nothing.

South Dakota for me too, felt like home, in a way I'd never known before, and I did go there by choice. I stayed there for five years by choice also. But in the time I lived there I felt a part of something, but a part of something that had its own ugliness. Norris found peace in the solitude of the openness in Dakota, but in the places I’ve called home, that openness is an empty longing, one filled with the bottle. My people--whether they are in South Dakota or Nebraska, the two places I can think of as home--are all looking for something. We tell ourselves to buck up and be strong, that another person cannot provide us what we need, that we are independent individuals; we are of the plains. We are feisty, we are as strong as the wind that blows over trees. We tell ourselves we don't need the rest of the world, or outside influences (all the while wanting them) and I wonder... are we wrong?

One of my friends drove her car into a stop sign two weeks ago, waking up only when another car approached. Last week she was in the ditch again, passed out a quarter-mile from home. She was asked to leave her fiancé’s home in November; now the two of them sit at opposite ends of the bar while a grandparent watches the baby at his or her home. Five of my friends are in the middle of divorces; last night at the bar I wondered how it happened that we are suddenly so "old" and tired. How did we get where we are?

"Rarely does any creature have the luxury of fouling its own next beyond redemption," writes Barbara Kingsolver in her tracing of "The Memory Place." It may be rare for Kingsolver's people, or the animals she so loves to pollute their own surroundings, but increasingly, in a world so choked with the broken refuse of humans, these people and animals may have no choice. I love my homelands of South Dakota and Nebraska, but I cannot help but feel dirty and polluted when I am home, fouled by the inescapable loneliness of my friends and the openness of the land that surrounds them.

I am probably close to the age Norris was when she moved to South Dakota and began to make it her home. Closer to 30 now than the newbies at the bars in either of my homes, I wish for solitude simply because I want to sit down to work that is important. I want to sit down with my writing and find a place for myself between the lines. I know I cannot blame anyone for the way I act when I come home—the vodka tonics that keep on coming, I can send them back and tell the buyers no—but I hate that my writing isn’t enough to keep my occupied while I am at home. That too, is no one’s fault but my own.

As Hay Springs grew and allotments were registered and settled, the men and women of the region learned to work hard as they always had, and play hard in their newfound times of leisure and success. An escape to the saloon or an afternoon hunting rabbits provided relief from the demands of a farmer/rancher life. The sins of the father…have been passed on through the generations, as have the virtues and the patience with the land and its demands. For those who have established farms and families and successes, the lands here are not so hard, their yields much more productive. I wonder what secrets these people learned, how they came to be contented amid the frustration and the sorrow of life out on the prairie.

In “The Memory Place” Kingsolver wants to know "who will love the imperfect lands," the places that might be considered to some "a waste of finite resources to save." I drive home under the full moon, sometimes biting my lip, and sometimes sighing. I would like to be able to stay here, where my people are buried, where my memories are. But for me this is an imperfect land that goes beyond the prairie dog towns ruining pastures (and even that, some would say, is not ruination but nature) or the narrow-mindedness and gossip. This is a land so calm and peaceful and laidback that it only has itself to chew on. A majority of t he people here feel blesed to have it so "easy" but I see them at the bar looking ruined, for whatever reason. It this life any kind of real living? Because it is so simple and easy to live here, when I find myself following in their footsteps I am only moving into inertia. Stagnation. A kind of preservation I want no part of. Even in Sioux Falls, by the time I left it I realized that staying there would only ruin me too. It’s not so much different than being here at this home in Nebraska—no one to blame other than myself for what I do—but so easy to step back into my old habits when visit. I have choices, always, and so I leave these places, as easy as it would be for me to stay and sink into the oblivion and vastness of the nothing that matters here.

“One of the vows Benedictine makes is stability: commitment to a particular community, a particular place,” writes Norris in her chapter on “Beautiful Places.” My people are committed to their communities and their places, their ways of life, why, I wonder? WHY this kind of stability, if it comes only with ruins and heartache?

Sunset before the full moon

2010-01-31T15:21:00.001-08:00

5:02 p.m., Jan. 30.

Full Moon Saturday, and as you can see from the sun's parting shots, our skies hold plenty of mystery and beauty around this time of month. Sunsets are almost always like this out here, and panoramas like this make sunset a truly moving time of day.

A beautiful sunrise is often soft and pastel in color, full of promise, but not as strong. Full sun above can wash out the daytime, infusing all activity with a weird sort of energy. But dusk, when the stability of the ground rushes up to meet the descending sky, well, there's just so much in it. It passes quickly, so you've got to get out and see it before the colors get hazy.

I am facing southwest in these pictures, looking out over the cattle fences and our chicken coop. Slopes and swells of grassland canyons lie beyond the fence posts you can barely see in the top picture.

In the above picture you can see the bar of color in between the black ground and the black sky, this shot was taken at 5:21 p.m. Within minutes the day is swallowed up.

What makes these light shows unfurl as they do? I used to ask my dad about it, and his answer was that we had open skies. It has a little bit more to do with light waves, atmospheric density and the way our eyes work, but in part, he's right. Dust and water help reflect the colors of light, and we've ususally got lots of dust blowing around out here. Smog and pollution have a silencing effect on the light. Reds have the lowest amount of energy, and are shorter in frequency, so that's why we see more of them at night. It's also sort of ironic that I feel more strength in sunsets than sunrises, but I like the ferocity of red and orange.

Full Wolf Moon: Place Post No. 2

2010-01-31T11:49:00.000-08:00

9 pm. Saturday, Janaury 30.

Full moon over the lake tonight, and the clouds look like fish bones in the sky. Serrated and fine, they hang with a hollow presence, suspended above me with the weight of a navy blue sky. Quickly, a coyote runs in front of me as I nose my way along the shore; startled eyes are like moonbeams in front of me. Tonight is a Full Wolf Moon, the name bestowed upon the January full moon by the Native Americans who once roamed this land with coyote as a guide. I come to the lake tonight to see its beauty in a new light, and despite its familiarity, the shadows dancing on the ground incite in me an eerie sort of paranoia.

At the main shore a streetlight burns, its fake orange light as appealing as a spray-on tan. Because I'm here trying to see things as they really are, I move away from the main shore, go south and then west, looking for nothing in particular but the spirit of the night.

Night time in Nebraska has always been a sacred time for me. When I was 17 and sneaking back in at first light, the cover of darkness and its activities made me feel most alive. When various boyfriends lived in other places and I told them to look up in the sky, to see the Moon and feel her shared light, despite our distances we were always, in that moment, connected. The fragile quality of moonlight lends a surreal presence to everything it touches, making out world seem something more than normal; making everything a little less comfortable for humans.

No matter where I have been or how old I am while there, or who might offer company, the light that comes from the sky makes me feel like there is something special about this life. The glistening promise of stars, reaching out to us from distant and past galaxies is reassuring smile from a special someone, a reward of some kind. My life in cities has been mostly devoid of this light; light pollution robs me of that feeling and the connection to the sky and all that will be or ever was.

I drive to the edge of the lake-- as close as I can get and still know that what I am seeing is actually land, and not frozen water. It's been cold at night, in the negatives, but I'm not sure how sound the ice is, the Rav is heavy; this is the side of the lake that sometimes bubbles with new water. Because nothing looks as it normally does, I'm not tempting a horror story.

And yet everything looks like a nightmare. Dead trees strain blackened branches to the sky, bony limbs of dark wood laid cold and bare in this winter night. Even with the moon's glow my eyes fight for understanding and adjustment; a barbed-wire fence choked by tumbleweeds seems like something less ordinary until my eyes get their bearing. There are no lights on this side of the lake, and eventually, when my eyes are fully adjusted, I can take in the frost on the ground, sparkling with the only animation I've seen since that 'yote ran through my lights.

I've cut the lights on the Rav, the radio and now the heater. All I can hear and feel now is the quiet of the night. Slowly, a small anxiety warms in my ribcage, and I shake my head at this. I'm in the middle of nowhere, a place I've known forever.

But the way I'm knowing it tonight is all but familiar.

Sitting there in the expanding cold and chocolate pudding of the night, it occurs to me this is probably how many people feel in nature: paranoid, unsure of their surroundings and what lurks behind every twig and crevice and noise. How terrible it must feel to consider oneself a stranger in the natural world.

How terrible to only know domestication false light.

In front of me the lake is a section of slivers and pockets; silver bars reflecting moon light and humped waves of snow that devour it and cast shadows. I am saved by own foolishness: I would love to walk out across it, to the middle of the lake and open myself to that epicenter of rippling light. But because I am human and my eyes aren't made for this dark, I am still apprehensive: I won't risk walking out onto the lake tonight. I know my limits, but I am human, after all, and as much as I like pushing them, I think this is far enough for tonight.

I twist the lights back on and the Rav warms its metal parts with a deep intake of air, it sounds almost like a sigh. The trees spring to life in the glow of my headlight-- I see finer twigs and piles of shed leaves on the ground. Suddenly everything is made familiar. Grasses shoot across the spectrum from black to yellow, and even though it is fake light, it makes me feel better. I crush through a mirror of frozen water in the rutted road (broken bones, broken bones, I think to myself), and soon am back on the main road. It's funny, if something were out here and wanting to get me tonight, it still could, despite the headlights and plastic. How we have duped ourselves into comfort, plastic shells and fake lights.

LIGHT

2010-01-27T19:46:00.000-08:00

Dawn breaks though the windows this morning, streaming in through the eastern panes in great hazy shafts of lemon, corn husk, goldenrod and dream. Braided into thick plaits by the charcoal weight of shadows, the grizzly brown of the trees and the faint white shimmer of frosty ground, the sun's rays are captures and made solid, if only for a moment.

A small pheasant pokes his head out from between the grain bins--there's lots of corn spilled on the ground, heaping pyramids of it-- and I watch him bob his ringed neck for-ward, for-ward, for-ward into the sunlight. A pause--is he watching for the dog or eyeing the spilled corn?--
and he goes on. The morning is inching forward, creeping over the slopes of the horizon and warming life across the lawn.

All of a sudden a puff of air and moisture slides in front of the sun; these clouds are like cotton candy, spun loosely and in the same hue as a silvery-blue gun. Now the shafts of light draped across the yard have lost their shimmer, and in an instant, a split-second, the grass before me ages into hues of ashen gray. The landscape resembles a nuclear aftermath. Where once grass was crystallized by the the finest frozen drops of illuminated water now there is only a frigid pockmarked wasteland.

The glowing dew of morning has been replaced with the heavy pallor of a gray day, a lifetime of them, so it seems with this ashen color, and now the innocence of young morning reminds me of an old maid.

The rooster has disappeared, taken the gems of his emerald head and ruby-red chest back into the ethers with him. There are only blue jays in the yard now, the occasional red barn finch and... maybe the flit of a canary yellow? I could be dreaming about that one, my hopes for sunlight confusing the actuality of the drab scene outside the window.

What was only moments ago--literally the time it took my to write this out with pen and paper--a promising day has become dismal, a holocaust. So it is, another day in the January of a Nebraska winter.

I continue to peer through the lower panes of the eastern window, hoping to see an amber sheen of sunlight yet again. This gray reminds me of Seattle, but not even the phosphorescence of neon and streetlights is fooled into believing this is its place. I wonder if all people, even those in Seattle, keep on looking out the window, hoping for the faintest trace of color in the sky, throughout the winter. I woke this morning feeling light and airy, and if I give up on that feeling then it will be more than just the land that washes silently into dismal.

Sunrise is an important time day, even Thoreau told us time and again how much he believed in the mornings, and I learn more about how to act from watching the sky than the animals under it. Seems strange, since I myself am one of these animals... I've always believed that I could get through just about anything as long as the sun is shining.

Resilience: Prompt Post No. 1

2010-01-24T12:55:00.000-08:00

Grass swells and sandy hollows, the topography of Hay Springs, Nebraska.
A patterned expression of single mindedness, rows and rows
wheat corn beans sugarbeet potato
chase each other to the horizon.
Here the land is as thirsty for moisture
as the people are for excitement
gossip
firewater
Busch Budweiser Calvert
and an escape from the nothingness,
the never-ending
forever found in the fields.

Full of secrets, this land requires
a keen eye, a sharp mind
and the ability to look and listen,
a desire to learn.
This landscape yields nothing easily,
but in town
the voices whisper behind your back
like sandstorms,
so loud you know what you've said
before you even speak.

Fifty mile-an-hour winds today;
How easily the rich dirt leaves us.
Sometimes I think it should take me too,
up and blow me away.
I hate the wind when it blows like this,
galling rasping breaking
and wearing us down.
Funny
that I should love the weariness of travel,
the dirt-packed roads,
the ache for place the dwells in my soul.

Diagrammed and tangible, like memories at the quilt show,
here the seasons carry on around us.
A cold spell,
brittle and unforgiving
sits like iron atop the county;
underneath we are rusted and cold.
The only people who move now are the ranchers
or the hunters.
There's talk of spring
some years,

a figure of speech we'd like to welcome,
but she reveals a downy swell
curves a gentle finger,
then teases
and is gone.
Black ice invisibility gives way
to paintbrush summers
heat waves
mirages on the road
and a forgetting of the cold.
Then harvest.
Of course there's that one,
a season that stands alone.

Smack in the center of middle America
the melting pot placed here is cold.
homogenized, related, similar
--If you are from here, then you know.
But outsiders, passers-by, the unusual or unfamiliar
--best be just a passin' on down the road.
Stick around and stay a while,
but don't forget your place
must be established slowly
roots riverbeds and cowtrails
among the people that I know.

***

After college, each time I came home for a visit I laid low on the farm, avoided town (unless it was a holiday equalling something exciting) and all public places. I didn't really want people to know I was home, for however short a period it might be. What do you tell people when they ask you how D.C. is, or Chicago? Most of the people I grew up with were born here, stayed here for college, and will be buried along with their relatives in the cemetery outside town. Most of them are of farming/ranching stock, and it is this profession they entered after high school.

Well, things have shaped up differently this time around. I poked my nose out from under my rock by going to basketball games and junior class prom fundraiser dinners my second weekend back, and since then, I've managed to see people from town about once a week. I'm finding it amazingly easy to fall back into the swing of life here--this is both comforting and sad. Nothing ever changes, not really, and when I first thought about how to answer this prompt, I wasn't sure how I'd write about this feeling (what I see as stagnation, others might call a beautiful pattern), so I'm pretty happy with the neutrality of my writing.

I appreciate the ease of life my friends experience (searching for this is after all, part of what prompted me to leave Chicago), and for those who truly have grown into themselves, I am happy. But for my friends and community members who are battered by farm debt, mistrust and insecurities, I feel a deeply reaching hairline of sorrow.

And yet, even though there is no novelty here, for me, I see the ways the land and the weather and the living of life is a challenge, and maybe that's the only kind of challenge some people really want or need. In coming home, maybe I'm beginning to finally understand that; what worries me is that with comfort, comes comes the disinterest in any other kind of challenge.

Welcome To Walgren Lake

2010-01-22T13:59:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Walgren Lake! Situated a few miles to the south of Hay Springs, Nebraska, and a few miles to the west of my parents' farm, this lake is the stuff of legends, home to the "Walgren Lake Monster." I like to think of it as a quiet place to enjoy the soft sounds of waves rippling against a narrow, sandy shore, or the louder racket of whatever is going on in my head.

Below you'll see the original rock house built in the late 1800s-early 1900s. Using rocks hauled in from a neighboring slough, this is the small gathering house described by pioneering writers in the old newspaper clippings. A shelter for settlers hiding from Sioux on "the warpath," this house is today a gathering spot for picnics and reunions.

Taken from north of the lake house, this picture hows a bit of the frozen lake and the dock leading to the lake. In the spring, summer and fall (anytime the water is flowing) you can happen upon all sorts of families fishing off this dock. Perch, bluegill, crappie and the very rare walley can be caught in this lake, and sometimes at the mouth of the creek (we say "crick" round here. This is small-time fishing, so bobbers and garden worms do the trick.

A view of the lake taken through the lake house window. Three windows of similar construction allow plenty of light and air to flow into the building, and becuase of the material, it's always nice and cool inside.

The shoreline, frozen and solid. Even in the summer the colors aren't much different; on this end of the lake there is little beachfront, and the reeds and cattails always lend their shades of gold and brown to the vivid contrasts of green and blue water.

A frosting of fog

2010-01-22T13:42:00.000-08:00

When fog hangs in the air overnight and temps drop below freezing, one wakes to a soft kind of beauty not normally seen during the day. This tree wears a frosty coat much like the rest of the landscape; however, the tree's branches are weighed down more heavily than the limber grasses that continue to blow and bounce with the gentlest of breezes.

This picture speaks to me of abandonment: the old forgotten drainage ditch pipe, the tangle of broken branches, the gentle dip of the grasses all exude a quiet sort of loneliness. Taken behind my dad's shop, this scene is even tucked away from the regular views of the farm.

Delicate white whiskers frozen along the planks of the corral bring moisture to light in a new form; certainly, everything about the world is viewed in a different light on this morning of enchantment.

The golden promise

2010-01-21T15:36:00.000-08:00

A day out from yet another winter storm, and it looks like we might finally get all of the corn out of the fields. There's been a lot of speculation as to whether or not local corn will make weight this year, because it froze and got snowed in before maturation. When the kernels freeze dry on the cob, they lose moisture, nutrients and weight. Because our corn has been out in the field for so long now, it's hard telling just how much it will weigh at the final dump. Since lost weight means lots yields means lost money, this has been the topic of conversation between my dad and my nephew and my former brother-in-law.

I don't understand the mathematics of this problem, so I stay out of the conversations, but I do know what it's like to feel frozen in place, locked into your surroundings before you have the chance to get away.It's a lot like being stuck some place against your will, not growing in the ways you want to, and not accomplishing anything else, either. But corn kernels, inanimate, silent, what do they know of dreams and accomplishment, of a world beyond the ruddy red cob and papery-fine yellow husk? What do the kernels know of thought? Nothing. And yet there is some majesty to them, some inner ability to sprout and grow and flourish. Nature takes its course and the roots drop down lower as the sun wears on through the months of summer; leaves lengthen and grow strong; tassels blossom like golden plumes arching from the greenest of volcanoes.

Farmers notice, you bet they do, eyeing their rows at sunup and then dusk, watching their fields of green and contemplating the money in their pocket.. people notice, sure they do. Just like they notice the way their children play in the muddy rows and pick bugs off strong stalks. When a harvest runs late, as this year's has, then too, the farmer notices.

He notices the way the clouds build up in the sky after each successive snow, wondering will it blow in the northern edge again this time? Will we get a dry spell and get this out of here? He notices the way the numbers bounce up and down on the scale, 45, 47, 48, not weighing enough. He notices the way the kernels have shrunk in their valleys, little wizened teeth without any power. The farmer has a keen eye and an intimate relationship with the land and the weather and the people who know it as well as he does. But does he notice anything else, from seed-in to harvest-out? Does he notice the way his family misses him at the dinner table? Or that his eldest wants more than just a connection over the crops? Does he notice the shining bright faces of his youngest child, the rural outcast, the one with other dreams and city-bound thought? The one who is trying to shrink from the world she doesn't understand or want to like?

Not so much, because until he sees his corn in the bin and the land lying fallow, or filled wtih cattle wearing away at the stalks, all he sees is the golden promise of the future, and the future is the farm.

Walgren Lake: Place Post No. 1

2010-01-18T20:42:00.001-08:00

“The first name for this lake was ‘Sicamma Ble,’ which means “Stinker Lake.” It was named by the Lakota Sioux Indians because of the alkali smell it gave off.

In early 1885 settlers started making their homes in the area. W.A. Chappell built a rock house across the road to the west. The rock came from John Elwin Reid’s rock quarry two miles to the west. People used to gather in this house when there was an Indian scare when they were on the war path. …the lake was the meeting place for people for miles around. They would get together for visits and picnics. It was the only recreation area for miles around." - Hay Springs Centennial Book

The lake sleeps before me under the mottled sheet of snow and ice that our pastures wear in the winter. I have not been here for years, at least five of them, and I can't help but notice how small and still and quiet everything is around me. Where once there seemed an endless horizon forever slipping off into the distance there is now only a reedy outline of frozen grasses on the opposite shore. This small expanse of frozen water seemed large to me as a child, and I can hardly imagine being afraid now of swimming in the ragged circumference of water.

"The drought came in 1889 and 1890 and the lake dried up to a small puddle. When the rains started coming again the lake started to fill again… and it wasn’t too many years before people could again enjoy swimming, fishing, boating, ice skating and their many picnics and celebrations. There was a nice beach around the lake, and at this time (about 1900) it was used for horse races. About 1932 we used to use it to race our Model T Fords."

I step away from my car, the 1996 Toyota, Rav-4 in model, and taste the harvest-chill fragrance that drifts from our field to this area. It is dry and papery, a cold reproduction of air that tastes like popped corn. It is January 18, too late for a corn harvest, later than my dad has seen in all his 77 years, but today still, there is corn slowly drying in the field across from me. We have seen our share of dry weather in the last twenty years, but this winter, already, we're dealing with intensely wet conditions and a later, probably too late, harvest. The snow has kept the farmers in bars, or shops, or the office, and even though winter becomes recreation time once the crops are sold or sheltered, if we get the dry spell we're so desperately needing, the work will be a welcome, celebrated occasion. I've camped at this lake, wandered around it so many times while my dad was in the field, and even though I didn't believe the rumors about the lake monster, there was always something otherworldly and old about the mosses kissing the sandy body of land half-hidden by the mossy waters.Even though it is 2010, and I'm no longer a child, I would love to feel the atmosphere of this place during a Native scare, or a monster sighting.

"In the early 1920s the story got started that there was a sea monster in the lake. This story was spread all over the world. E.A. Johnson, who lived close by, said he had seen weird “Chimera” tracks on the ice. In 1923 a clipping from the London Times said “by far the most vivid picture of the action and features of a medieval monster which for three years has been terrifying the native of the vicinity of Alkali Lake near a small town of Hay Springs, Nebraska, USA."

I cut across the ribbon of concrete that wraps around the west side of the lake, hoping to sidestep snowdrifts that glut the dock. I've worn my rubber boots today, the green ones that are flecked with roses and match the depths of the lake, but I'm not interested in busting through the dunes of snow and taking the chance of missing the dock. instead, I loop around a clutch of cat-tails, palm a fistful of their frozen, golden stalks, and stand by the old Elm tree, the one that juts up uncomfortably, broken and weeping with the scourge of Dutch Elm disease. All of the trees around here have got it, and unless they're dead and charred from lightning, it's hard to miss the mucusy yellow snot that drains from crack and crevice.

"It is known far and wide as Alkali Lake, although it is so located as to catch a very large amount of surface water and also has an inlet from a branch of Hay Springs Creek generally known as the dry branch, which in certain seasons of the year carry heavy rainfall and overflow from the main branch into the lake, so that for the most part, the waters may be said to be fresh or at least fresh enough for fish in abundance to live in."

I walk around the old playground, see that the rusted water pump is now missing its handle, and sit on the cold sidewalk in silence. I don't think of Walgren Lake as anything special--never have-- but because I have returned to this familiar place--Hay Springs, in general-- I want to feel something special too, about the lake. It's not like Lake Michigan, the lake I to which I have become accustomed, and very few fishermen have any kind of "real" luck at this place. But in my knowledge of Lake Michigan and cities beyond this town I am spoiled; my ideas of luck in fishing run as counter to this area as the same ideas do regarding the magic of a place.

"Fishermen are seen daily in season with hook and rod. Some years ago the state hatchery deposited fist there which seem to thrive and grow to very desired size and good quality."

My back stiffens in the 40 degree sunshine, and eventually I rise, knees creaking like dry branches. I've not found my moment of magic here yet, but because I am drawn to lakes and water, I am as surely here for this place as I am for home. I turn and walk slowly back to my modern marvel of a car, and as I face south, a winged one dips his inky wing across the blue surface of the sky in front of me. It is a bald eagle, most likely one half of the pair that lives in the Cottonwood next to the Orange farm. Last year, when harvest was delayed through November and I was home to ride in the combine as we got out the last of the corn, the pair of eagles was floating and calling out their presence above us as the loud machinery spit out its corn. It is the second eagle I've seen since I've been home, and although my body connects to the Seagull as my totem animal, I find it fitting that this feathered life form is drifting toward me from the farm. It passes from my line of sight to the western edge of the horizon, back toward other small farms.

"The lake is situated in nearly the center of section 29, township 31, range 45, Sheridan County, and is about 5 ½ miles from Hay Springs. The N.E. fourth was homesteaded by Rev. Adams and is now owned by the Johansen estate, the NE fourth was homesteaded by a Mr. Fisk and is now owned by Lawrence Walgren; Mr. McDervitt filed on the SE fourth, which is now owned by Mr. Walgren, and the S.W. fourth was homesteaded by a man by the name of Chappell. It is now owned by Mrs. Anna Walgren. It has been ascertained by actual measurement that this body of water contains 113 acres and is near round in shape. At present it is from 12 to 15 feet deep, although in the spring of the year is considerably deeper. In 1900 it is said the lake was dry, and there are those who say that they have driven over the bed when there was not a drop of water in it. The lay of the land around the lake is gently rolling and affords a pleasant scene for miles to the north, south and west. On the east the view is not too far reaching but very picturesque. Nearby are farms and barn houses, herds of cattle and hogs. The farmers are prosperous and hospitable."

I don't know the names of many of the people farming the land around our pivot; the old ones I knew as a child are long since gone, and soon, I'm sure, my own familial attachments will follow. But there is something open and raw about the golden stems of wheat in the summer, or the hard-crisped shells of sunflowers in the fall that will forever linger on this land and all that surrounds it. The snow-kissed backs of Black Angus in the winter, or the rutting grunts of mini, spring hogs are becoming once again, pleasurable.

"A huge water animal again seen on surface of lake by four reliable Hay Springs citizens, also Jerry Hanks of Wyoming at about 4. It surfaced, sprayed water and disappeared again."

Maybe this feeling of connection is the magic and the mystery, something intangible that comes and goes, but always lingers. I cross once more across the rusted shadow of the swingset's form, I hear a slow "breaauup" come up from the lake, and this noise makes me warm. It is a sound like a human belching, the kind of burp that starts deep in one's abdomen and never fully reaches escape or public form.

I smile, think to myself that there is, after all, a monster in the lake, and maybe some magic to be found. I know it is simply the magic of winter, the movement of water as it flows from the creek into the monster's bed; it is the creaking crack of a sunny day and ice that grows slightly warm. But for a moment, as all things intersect and become one, I almost believe it is nature's call, a dialogue that might be entered between it and this human form.

***

I have chosen a local legend as my "place" of study and reflection this semester. Walgren Lake was first known as Alkali Lake in the 1800s when my part of the state was being settled. After the Walgren family amassed the lands surrounding it, it became known as Walgren Lake, and has been thus known since then. My great-great-grandfather Vaclav Prokop came to the US from Czechoslovakia in the 1800s, and my great grandfather Joe, who was 12 when he emigrated, eventually built his home a mile from the lake.

My grandfather Elmer built a house about 5 miles away, and when my dad married his first wife and began farming, he lived on the original "homeplace" that my Great-grandpa had homesteaded. That original house still stands today, and my dad has fields just to the west of the lake.

The "pivot" and "the Orange farm" that I refer to are the same place, a field we call "the orange" because of the orange-colored pivot that my dad bought for for irrigation. He was the first farmer in the area to use the mechanical irrigating system in the 60s, even though modern crop irrigation was pioneered in this part of Nebraska by Old Jules Sandoz in the 1800s.

Water is intensely important in this part of the state, as we suffer from dry periods and soil erosion; Sheridan County sits on top of the Oglala Aquifer, which is an immense, underground water system-- one of the largest in the United States. I have always been drawn to the water, and even though my love of it has nothing to do with farming, or fishing, I'm lucky enough to have spent a good deal of my life around water because of these two things. Because of this inherent love of water, and the family history that lies so close to the lake, it felt natural to pick Walgren Lake, which is about 10 miles from our home, instead of the rive that runs south of our farm.

The italicized parts of my setting come from the Hay Springs Centennial Book, and selections from this hefty volume will reappear throughout my place writings. The snippets were collected from old newspapers in the '80s and arranged in this book; when I worked for the local newspaper I wrote a column called "A Leaf Turned Back" which focused on similar newspaper writings.

In the Air

2010-01-14T12:57:00.000-08:00

Your gill tenses in the light

a red feather

beating against the heaviness around it.
Thin like ice under which you were hidden,

I see now how fine is the difference

between
breathing

and drowning.

Annie Proulx

2010-01-12T18:48:00.000-08:00

I haven't owned a TV in four years, and it's alarming how quickly I've figured out to use the muliple remotes linked to the behemoth Samsung my parents have. But in an effort to connect with the world beyond Hay Springs, it's not that bad. I mean, I am getting caught up on music videos from the 1980s thanks to VH1 Classics, as well as all of the episodes of Viva La Bam that I've missed since high school. Just what I need to feel smarter about the world.

However, the real gems of my TV watching time come from the Independent Film Channel (check out A Slipping-Down Life) and Ovation. Tonight I watched this show about writer Annie Proulx on Ovation, and I just wanted to share the link. I was hoping there might be a video link too, but not so much.

If you get the chance to watch Proulx talk about her writing process, I highly recommend it. She discusses her interest in nature writing, and the psychology of people who are drawn to their "homeplaces" despite the impossibility of life there.

Proxemics

2010-01-11T16:38:00.000-08:00

This is English 584, right? A writing class about nature and the environment, right? Right. And what is environment? What is nature? These are two of the most pressing questions we'll be considering this semester, questions I'm considering already as I stare at a new blog, a new "environment" for my writing. A new "place" for me to exist online.

What does it mean to feel comfortable in a place, physical or imagined? Held together by binary numbers or or created from stardust and heat, a result of the action in outer space, what are the places we pick, and how do we find our places? What draws us?

Well, this isn't my real online home, and I'm not so sure why it matters, but it does. We humans don't like being crowded into or out of our sacred spaces; we Americans especially set up and enforce our own personal space. Having developed a new found need for finding the accuracy of myself within my real, physical space (what is reality, anyway?), I'm trashing against the bubble that has now enveloped me in cyberspace.

I don't really like technology; iPhones, Avatars, memes.. social networking.. I have fallen out of what society deems today's grace. I'd rather have face-to-face communication than a digitized voice and a the emptiness of a texted page. I don't like faking it--online or anywhere--going through the efforts just because feels like just getting through the day. I don't keep up with the Jonses, or the Kardashians, or even the newest version of iTunes (ever notice how Apple makes the human i less important than the technology of the Phone or Tunes?) or Explorer, for that matter.

So I'm sulking and pouting and you'll see that the name of this blog is simply English 584. I'm not at "home" in this place, and even this posting makes me sound like a petulant child (I'd rather be fired up and inspired than bland and vanilla), at least you'll always know that my writing is honest. It's all part of my nature.