What is a colophon?
What is a cottonwood?
This book is set in a Western landscape.
It is subtle.
You can feel the weather; you can see the landscape in your mind’s eye.
It has some pain. It mirrors our own sense of uneasiness and our own need for escape.
-Nicole Pinson
“…wonderful piece of writing, about the isolated and attentive kind of life almost nobody lives nowadays, or ever did.” – Kent Haruf
My favorite excerpts:
“I laughed at the prospect, sure of a more traditional future and certain it wouldn’t be in the lambing sheds of Wyoming. But fall was hard. I was at a loss as to how to live my life and where to dig in. I saw people with companions, homes, meaningful work, but I had no idea how to become them, how to spin that web of comfort and belonging around me. I felt alone, unmoored and unworthy.” pp. 12-13
“I’m squirming with all the attention [when her parents come to visit with her], foolish with my delight, and wondering just when it was that I began to take my leave. My mother once told my brother that of her five children, I was the one she could never hold, that early on I’d always break the embrace and toddle across the floor away from her. Born the fourth of five children and sandwiched between two sprawling boys, I later chose the ease of retreating over the bruises of competition, to be the silent one and learn to succeed by keeping out of the way. My leaving took me to empty back rooms with a book, to tall orchard grasses by the creek. If these places were lonesome, they were also magical and private. I learned to entertain myself for hours with fantasies in which I was the hero, the special one, the one who could ride the horse that no one else could ride. When I was older and had a horse of my own, I packed a book and a sandwich and left on free days to roam the hills just outside of town. Then after college, I found this ranch that would feed me and pay me three hundred dollars a month to ride, read and tend to the sheep.” pg. 53
“We have plans, later, to ride over to the snowbank on the north side of Rooster Hill and bring back salt sacks full of snow to make ice cream with the grouse whortleberries we’ve picked. Our plans for the afternoon are comfortable ones.” pg. 59
Comfortable plans are something to cherish.
“I remember everything about their coming and nothing about their leaving. In my memory, they simply disappeared. John must have come and picked them up. There must’ve been hugs, good-byes, promises to gather as always for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I don’t remember. What I suspect is that I was the one who disappeared first.
If my parents had been able to ask why this remote mountaintop seemed a safe haven, I couldn’t have answered with any other story than that of the heroine, the adventurer, the brave one. We didn’t have the language of failure to describe the dark howl that simmered below the surface; our only words were those of success. What do you love? What have you lost? If I could have asked both these questions of my mother or father, what would I have been able to hear? We did what we could. We spoke the words that we knew. I gave the names of the rough beauty in which I hid.
My father had brought my mother eighteen hundred miles to see me. As a young woman, I struggled to be enough for them, to pass muster in what I thought was an inspection. But he brought her to me in her grieving, and many years later, I am profoundly touched by the simple faith of his gesture. He brought the woman he loved across the whole country. Yes, to fresh air and open space, but also to me – for solace.
That we love each other is clear. That we fumbled in that love is painful. What we had, in our shared blood, was the grace to lay ourselves out under a vast and forgiving sky and let its steady winds blow over us.” pp. 59-60
I disappear a lot. I don’t have a lot of memories of the past. Strangely, I worry a lot about the future, seemingly not being present in the moment, yet I do live in the moment and faintly remember my life. It’s sometimes a strange feeling when I stop and think about it. I have never been a great storyteller.
I daydream a lot and enjoy escapes. This is both a plus and a minus. I can plan an adventure - no matter how big or how small and no matter where - but I get bored with the mundane. I can sit for hours in solitude. I always thought I would make a good monk or be able to live in a convent.
I have always said I could have lived a life of leisure. Like the old black and white photographs of rich, educated and artistic families painting plein air and picnicking on the lawns of vast estates.
Sometimes I chide myself, and think these feelings are of privilege or luxury. I remind myself that life is difficult for many, and sometimes it is for me.
People think I have it all together. But if you watch me on a day I am alone, I am withdrawing and rebelling from this busy, aggressive and noisy world to an inner world – whatever it may be that day and usually defined by a loosely constructed list of tasks or goals written in the morning. I worry if this is normal. Am I slightly insane? Will I get Alzheimer’s? If I do get Alzheimer’s, am I already learning how to distance myself and enjoy my life?
But this is who I am. To go against it would be unnatural.
“There was a time in my life when I thought I loved at the center of the universe – would, in fact, say that I did – because I thought everything I needed was within arm’s reach: friends, horses, family, a sense of place, and a job to do. It didn’t last for long. Likely, it’s never meant.” pg. 113
“There will be times when I worry about the change, about them leaving the solid and predictable comfort of their grandparents’ home for what can seem a disorderly life that changes with the seasons. I’ll worry over my inadequacies and those of their dad. But this is the scene I come back to when I need to be reminded of what is meant to be.” pg. 131
“Both my sisters are here, one of my brothers, and three of the in-laws. I reach down to hug my nieces, all five of them, and my nephew, gathered around me rumpled and warm, showing me the rocks and feathers and treasures they’ve collected en route. I find myself entering a circle from which I’ve so long held myself apart. My family around me, come from so far and at such cost, I’m simply amazed and grateful. But then, this is what my family does. This is what my family can do.” pg. 135
“From one of the vans, my father pulls out a cooler, and over his shoulders I can see my parents’ silver service wrapped up in plastic and his black clerical robes and stole hanging from a hook. The whole back of the van’s piled high with wedding presents, all wrapped in fancy pastels with white ribbons and cards tucked underneath.
‘Dad, who on earth are all these from?’
‘You’ll see when we get them unloaded. They’ve been coming out of the woodwork the last few weeks, dropping them off. They’d all have come along if they could’ve.’
I know where they’ve come from, of course; in my mind’s eye I can see the gracious homes with perfect lawns and heirloom clocks ticking and chiming the hour inside, with season tickets to the symphony, church bulletins, leather-bound books, and generations of tradition. These are people who love my parents and so, without question, love me as well.” pp. 135-136
“Our first garden grows up rich and lush, the vegetables huge in this virgin creek-bottom soil. The kids carve zucchini boats and sail them down the creek, play softball with zucchini bats while I hover over everything in a frenzy, building a house, scrubbing it clean, working my job, keeping my husband’s edges tucked in, protecting the idea of our marriage, smiling while simmering below. I weed and pick and cook and freeze furiously after work and on the weekends, believing that a life can be built by hard work and a home created by sheer force.
I am wrong, as it turns out, but I do the best I can.”
I liked this passage because the sentence “weed and pick and cook and freeze furiously after work and on the weekends” made me laugh, smile and consider what we women do to ourselves!
I also strongly believe “a life can be built by hard work” and have struggled along with my stepson and husband when our expectations just didn’t work out. And as Laura, unfailingly doing the best I (we) can.
“Joe brings me coffee in bed every morning in the dark, shaking my shoulder gently and saying, ‘Okay, it’s ready; it’s time.’ I’ve heard him rustling around in the kitchen and stoking the fire in the woodstove in the living room, letting the dogs out, knowing that I could stay under the covers a little longer, safe, warm, cared for. He sets the coffee cups on the side table and props the pillows up behind me, climbing in next to me and handing over a mug of black coffee that steams in a room where frost creeps up the northern wall in the winter. We sip coffee in the early dark, without speaking, and watch the windows for signs of dawn. It is in this hour that we find our comfort, that we can believe each day is fresh, that the hurts from the day before have been erased, that saying we love each other is enough.” pg. 149-150
This reminds me of Brian. He often gets up earlier than me, makes coffee for both of us and lets the dogs out and wipes their paws of dew. Sometimes we don’t speak. There is an assuredness about us as we go about our morning routine. Sometimes we can communicate by eyes, hands, posture, smiles and humor.
“What I’ve discovered these last days is that the conversation of death is filled with the language of love.
“All of you here, know that you are precious. Know that you count.
“Amy, know that you are a sweet and golden light in this world and that we offer up our hearts to help you heal.
“Jenny, take our love and grow wings.
“We pray that you have found the arms of your mother.
“We wish that we could have loved you longer and more.
“Today we have to trust that our love was enough.” pp. 198-199
I think this is beautiful.
“Tents are placed to catch the morning sun on the sheer rock face or to capture the sound of running water. Each will house the dreams of its inhabitants, what’s missing from their lives, what they hope for, and inside is the peace that descends each night when the lay themselves down, sore and worn from a world that blisters their hands, pulls their muscles, roughs their skin and reminds them they’re living among bears that could eat them. For some reason, this gives comfort to us all.” pg. 206
“I wonder what it is that we clear a space for. Of what possible use is this empty space created by loss?” pg. 210
This is how I feel having gone through my husband’s horrible divorce from his ex-wife. As in a tragic crime, you are never the same. Some of my innocence and belief in people is gone. A huge hole ached for years, contrary to my nature that life can be good and things don’t have to be made to be so hard for others. I am glad this hole is healing. There was a point I never thought we’d get through it. But we are stronger for it, and know we have each other’s back, never to let struggle alone and to listen to each other’s wisdom, caution, recap and rejoicing.
“Don’t take anything for granted. Everything in your life is there for a reason and if you ignore it, you will miss out on a lot. My name isn’t anywhere in the piece, not as someone she felt responsible for or depended on. Months after the accident, when I read these pages to a friend, she said, ‘But Laura, I hear you in every word.’” pg. 213
I wonder what my relationship will be with my stepchildren when I am older, and if Brian is gone. But I take cautious risks, and when I love you, you owe me nothing. I hope I have been a good influence on them, a light in their lives, and that a little bit of me rubs off on them. They make me laugh, enjoy my quirkiness, and indeed I am sometimes only silly around them and Brian. I want only the best for them. They deserve it.
“Within hours, the camp that had been raised and cultivated into our home is simply gone, measured into even loads on either side of the packhorses. Next to each load, I throw a lash cinch and a canvas mantie, and for the hard-sided ones, an extra Decker pad.” pg. 214
I have no idea what this sentence means.
“From here, it seems the tracks of my entire adult life are visible, scratched out across this landscape that has been my constant…” pg. 217
Lately, a lump grows in my throat and chest because I have been thinking about life and dying. I don’t know where this feeling is coming from. I guess that may be why I cling to isolated moments, to revitalize and give me time to reflect and sort it out. This makes me want to spend more time with my family, friends and my pets. I think about my dad and how he does the opposite. I wonder if he every thinks about dying; he is much older than I am. Or, maybe it is just taking him longer to get to this point. I wonder why he doesn’t translate that to spending more time with us.
“My mother comes through the security doors first, followed by my father, their faces scanning the small group of welcomers. I raise a hand to get their attention and watch them break into smiles. ‘We made it!’ He’s in a jaunty tweed cap and leather bomber jacket; she’s in her soft traveling clothes and wearing bright lipstick and the earrings I’d given her for Mother’s Day. I lean in to hug them, to welcome them, and feel them to be bright sparks, alive and awake beneath my hands. It’s been over six months since we’ve been together, and they’ve come for my fiftieth birthday and, more important, for Amy’s graduation from the University of Wyoming.
Getting them settled into my home, I pour small glasses of wine, and we visit before going to bed. They’ve brought books along, notes, and are writing articles and outlining presentations. They’re deep into the conversations of an election year and worried for our country. It’s late at night, later for them by two hours, and they’re well into their eighties. But they are engaged by life, full of it, in a way some people never are. The lamp’s amber glow illuminates their faces, and I find myself drawing close as I would to a fire.” pg. 217
I love this description of her parents. I hope Brian and I stay like this, and that we are like a light to others.
“Driving down the road, I stumble over the question: ‘What is it that lets you grow old so well? Is it luck, attitude, exercise, or some special vitamins?’
This sounds silly and makes all three of us laugh. But apparently they’ve talked about it before, and they have answers.
‘Well, we try not to talk about our ailments.’
‘We cultivate an interest in young people and their lives. And we make an attempt to contribute where we’re needed.’
‘And we exercise.’
They finish with a flourish, as though they’ve made a pact and signed on the dotted line.” pg. 229
“So this is where I’ve come from, I think, the good news and the bad. In their eighties, instead of shrinking they’ve grown larger and more fierce. The bad news? There seems to be no coasting.
This is what I’m made of. From my father I have received thoughtfulness, a love of books and dancing, the inclination to play with ideas. From my mother I have inherited the courage to leap, the ability to compete, lightheartedness, an elemental surprise at being loved.” pg. 237
“In this pause of conversation, I look back and see my mother dozing with her head tilted into the window. Beside her on the seat are gardening shears and gloves, for the cleaning of her parents’ graves, and also a small cooler with chicken salad for her aunt Ella. In her lap are papers for a presentation she’s preparing, the pen fallen from her hand. In her sweater there’s a brightly colored metal pin of three female stick figures, arm in arm, their heads haloed by ropes of wild hair.” pp. 239-240
I appreciate the details in Laura’s writing. From this description, you can understand that her mother thinks of the details, that she is a caring person and that she is self-assured.
“It seems our love is never enough, by nature can never be enough, until you realize that it is or maybe once you decide it is. Then there it is, tender love strewn like petals at your feet, everywhere as far as you can see, thick and soft, under your feet. A place to lie down, a soft place that has always been there, but you’ve not seen it.” pg. 240
I think I am at this point in my life, where I am seeing and appreciating love as I had not done so much before. I am nearly 39 years old. Why did it take me this long to let my guard down? Do other people begin to appreciate their family around the same time, or are some earlier or later than me?
One of my resolutions this year is to plan and go on more picnics. I enjoyed reading about what the people in this story packed for their picnics.
“Horses get watered in the creek and tied along the fence, dozing with heads hanging and cinches loose under their bellies. We splash cold water on our faces and hands and pull coolers from the pickups to the cottonwood shade by the stream. It’s three o’clock and we’re famished, but inside the coolers if every imaginable delight: tubs of fat roast beef sandwiches piled with lettuce, green pepper and red onion; Fritos, Cheetos, pretzels and salty potato chips; a gallon ice-cream bucket full of chilled and juicy cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelon; bags of Mary’s homemade oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies; half-frozen jugs of iced tea and water. We fill our paper plates and pockets and find a spot of grass to spread out among friends and family, sure in the feeling that all of this – the food, rest and friendship – has been earned.” pg. 132
“We throw a pack saddle on an extra horse and fill the panniers with hotdogs and buns, ketchup, marshmallows, chips, apples, sunscreen, wildflower books and rain jackets.” pg. 145
“When we arrive, Gretel has draped an ivory damask tablecloth over the old picnic table out in the grass… She’s coming out of the house headlong in a flannel shirt, her arms wrapped around a tarnished silver champagne bucket filled with ice and a bottle of something French. ‘This is a dreadful affair,’ she says, ‘so we may as well spruce things up a little.’ Press and Joe grill brook trout over an open fire for hors d’oeuvres while Amy, Jenny and I set the table with silver, linen napkins and their best crystal. Gretel finds a few blooms that the deer haven’t eaten and arranges them in a low vase just as Sonia and Robert pull up. She gets out and comes across the yard, opening her arms, saying, ‘Shall we just drink and cry all night?’ We start with champagne and move to red wine as the light slants and steaks and roasting corn come off the grill. We peel the papery husks back and toast one another across the table with the ears, and when we’re done, we toss the cobs over our shoulders into the grass and gathering dusk. We laugh and laugh, but I can feel the tears lining up for our loss. I can’t imagine my life without them, without Sonia listening patiently to the sorrows of my marriage. I don’t yet know this is just the first crack in this small community, that other friends around this table will follow in the next years…” pp. 150-151
This part of the story demonstrates how picnics can bring you together; how the subtle can be made beautiful; and how relationships change as we get older. I am feeling this a little bit now because my stepdaughter is getting married. I am happy for her, but noticing and trying to figure out changing roles. For the first time in my life, it involves my role to someone else, and not me to myself and my life. I wonder how my parents felt.
“For our return trip, Gini and Peter pack for us a small cooler with salami, cheeses, roasted tomatoes, hard bread and a branch of rosemary from their garden.” pg. 188
“When the horses are brushed and saddled, I fall back to the work shed where wooden panniers are already packed with canned goods and spices from the day before. I open the refrigerators and load insulated panniers with apples and oranges, cabbage, iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, onions, and celery, then fill the hard-sided coolers with frozen brownies, cookies, ground beef, ham, bacon, sausage, steaks, and chicken, tucking Miracle Whip, mustard, and a small bottle of penicillin for the horses into one of them. With hand scales I lift each packed pannier by the leather loops and balance it with the weight of its mate, adding and removing items, and when they match, I carry them out and set them as a pair in the dawning light.” pg. 201
“We drop to the limestone slabs and pull food and water from our packs, peel oranges and divide ham sandwiches among us. We stretch our aging, achy bodies. An eagle rises from beneath the cliff. After a summer spent with strangers, the familiar presence of my family is a balm.” pg. 217
“Rising up, we drive through Sand Draw, Sweetwater Station, Jeffrey City and Muddy Gap, then pull off the highway by some gravel piles and picnic from the open trunk. The wind’s whipping, so we forego paper plates and eat straight from the coolers – cheese and ham with mustard and crackers, coffee from the thermos, dark chocolate broken into pieces – and my parents rise to the occasion with light heart and a sense of adventure.” pg. 230
Newly defined words:
“the sheep go thick and logy in the still air.” pg. 28
logy – dull and heavy in motion or thought; sluggish.
“He’ll drink whiskey ditches in the air-conditioned dimness…” pg. 30
whiskey ditches – A whiskey ditch is an alcoholic drink, primarily a regionally used term (like in Montana), describing a drink where whiskey is cut with water. More specifically, a Whiskey Ditch is a drink with cubed ice, and equal parts whiskey and water. It's a weaker version of whiskey on the rocks.
“I unwrap the loosened latigo and let the cinch drop and pull the saddle and blackets from her back…” pg. 70
latigo – a leather strap on the saddletree of a Western saddle used to tighten and secure the cinch
“This morning a skiff of new snow brightens the ragged remains of the last storm.” pg. 106
skiff – The term appears to be colloquial, used mainly in northern parts of the country and in Canada to describe a minor rainfall or snowfall or a light breeze. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a skiff as "a slight gust of wind or shower of rain, etc. Also, a light flurry or cover of snow."
“Meadowlarks are singing down in the draws and the range smells sweet and damp with morning.” pg. 114
“…by the men who moil for gold;” pg. 122
moil – hard work, drudgery
“So I take the reins and barely squeeze the snaffle bit into the
corners of his mouth.” pg. 123
snaffle bit – A snaffle bit is the most common type of bit used while riding horses. It consists of a bit mouthpiece with a ring on either side and acts with direct pressure. A bridle utilizing only a snaffle bit is often called a "snaffle bridle," particularly in the English riding disciplines.
“my mouth filling with the dirt and roil of the trail.” pg. 128
roil – make (a liquid) turbid or muddy by disturbing the sediment
“When finally packed and moving, we line out single file, a string of eight riders and twenty horses with all that we need for the week: duffels, sleeping bags, books, medicine, extra horseshoes, food and kitchen all loaded into metal panniers and hanging from the cross bucks of each horse’s pack saddle. Each load’s covered with a generous square of green canvas mantie tucked so neatly under the edges with exacting diamond hitches that the horses heading up the trail look to be carrying Christmas presents.” pg. 203
pannier – a basket, especially one of a pair
cross buck – Crossbuck is a type of pack saddle that is usually rigged for a double cinch and is best suited for carrying hanging panniers. The crossbuck is the saddle that most people think of as a packsaddle and the type you see in pictures of prospectors and mountain men. The bars (the sculpted horizontal pieces that lie against the animal’s back) are joined by a pair of hardwood crosspieces front and back that form an X. This looks like a sawbuck used for cutting firewood, and has resulted in another name for the crossbuck saddle, the sawbuck.
mantie – If you like to pack, manties are the way to go! They are easy to use, economical, durable, and multipurpose. We offer manties in traditional canvas or in green truck tarp.
exacting diamond hitches – The diamond hitch is a lashing technique used mainly in the field of equine packing, to secure a set of objects, for instance a pair of pack-bags, pack-boxes or other gear onto a base, for instance a pack saddle frame, in which case it requires the use of a lash cinch. In the general sense it requires the base to be equipped with at least two points of anchorage, and a rope which is used to lash the object down onto the base.
“Also with us is Camille, a small, lovely Georgian in her seventies who’d grown up riding hunter jumpers. She comes out of her tent every morning completely unruffled, as though she’d slept on the ground every night of her life.” pp. 206-207
“Our trail down to the lower Yellowstone is jackstrawed with dead timber, burned in the Mink Fire of 1988.” pp. 208-209
jackstrawed – “Visually, jackstraw (or jackstrawed) timber resembles the child’s game of pick-up sticks, writ large: a pile of fallen trees, most often conifer. Jackstraw timber provides both protection for new growth (inhibiting browsing of vulnerable aspen sprouts) and fodder for forest fire. Jackstrawed timber occurs naturally—the result of mortality, of blowdown, of fire aftermath—and is also orchestrated by humans to discourage browsing by animals. With poetic license, various writers have used jackstraw to describe both the chaotic arrangement of all manner of objects, man-made or natural, literal or figurative, and the delicacy one must employ in moving one piece without disturbing the rest.”
“On my last day here I walk the dirt road back up to the high basin, with chinook winds blowing up the valley and softening the snow.” pg. 241
chinook - a warm, dry wind that blows at intervals down the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains
Bell, Laura. (2010). Claiming Ground. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
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