Fools for Hiking, Fools for Love

Reading Gail Storey's new book I Promise Not to Suffer, brought to mind a book I once became fascinated with when I lived in Wyoming - Seven Half-Miles from Home by Wyoming artist and naturalist Mary Back.  Suffering from circulation problems bad enough to kill her, Mary was eventually unable to walk more than one mile. Determined not to stay inside, she plotted out seven half-mile trails radiating out from her house, one path for each day of the week.  Every morning before breakfast, she took a different route—out half a mile, back half a mile.

"Each walk brings her home through another world—the world of the living river, the boggy meadows and swamps, the fence rows, the thickets, the forests, her human neighbors yards and gardens, and the desert.  All these worlds form a great circle—the circle rotates around Mary and she around it.”  (From Crossing Wyoming by David Romtvedt.)

I love the intimacy of Mary’s paths, how each led her home—but I also love how she understood that within a half-mile radius of her home existed a world so large in scope that it would take her a lifetime to know every nuance, every season, every tiny inhabitant.  

In the essay collection Hiking Alone: Trails Out, Trails Home, New Mexico author Mary Beath writes, “The land itself wraps you in a new skin. But you also feel your own skin turn inside out…You swallow the landforms and open meadows and forests whole; and they swallow you.”

Circling the world.  Swallowing the land.  What is this hunger many of us have to leave our comfortable domesticated lives for the discomfort of nature’s rocky and arduous trails?  

Gail Storey promised not to suffer when she agreed to hike the Pacific Crest Trail with her husband.  I’m not talking a half-mile trail here.  I’m talking about a 2,663-mile trail from Mexico (south of the border) to Canada (north of the border).  Amazing!  

“I was shocked into my own existence,” writes Gail after hiking a sleet-covered switchback while being pelted with wind and ice, “born wet and confused on all fours on the muddy earth, deep in the loamy musk of it.” 

Yes, we do yearn for this primal reconnection, this reentry into our origins.  Not all of us, but enough of us that we hunger for stories like Gail’s because they remind us that we are not alone in this yearning, not alone in our desire to balance the exhale of our frantic lives with the inhale of nature’s rhythms.

Featured in the Denver Post May 14, 2013

Gail’s husband Porter estimated the trip would take six months, beginning with late spring storms in southern California, and culminating with early fall blizzards in northern Washington.   
Each chapter of I Promise Not to Suffer begins with a reference to distance, which helps us get our bearings:  We’re this far from Mexico.  We’re this far from Canada.  

For the reader, though, the journey is not so much a linear undertaking marked mile by mile on a map, as it is an emotional journey—taking us into the depths of our own lives subtly and gracefully as Gail navigates the emotional terrain of woman, wife, partner, and daughter. She does this far more gracefully than she was able to navigate the physical terrain of the PCT (she portrays her occasional “ungrace” with a witty, humorous flair).  

This is a funny and poignant read.  And so artfully crafted that it’s easy to miss the simple elegance of her prose.  Gail is a fool for love, and when she waxes poetic about Porter, I find myself enthralled.  “When he holds me, light-boned against his sculpted muscles, I know I’m being held. No matter how deeply I look into his gray-green eyes, I never touch bottom.”  

Nature can cradle us too, sheltering us within sculpted river alcoves, offering majestic heights so our dreams can take flight, or drawing our gaze down to the tiniest Bleeding Heart, reminding us that the pulse of all we love beats deep beneath every step we take. 

Cowboys, Indians, and the West: Frozen in Time?

When I shared this photo of a stallion stolen from the San Antonio, Texas area on my FB page, people seemed amazed that there were still horse thieves in the world. Yes, there are—and not just between the pages of Louis L’Amour novels, either.  According to the International Livestock Identification Association, hundreds are stolen each year.

In South Dakota back in the 70s, when my partner John Gritts was Director of Financial Aid at Black Hills State University, there was still a city ordinance against three or more Indians walking abreast of one another down the sidewalk.  That meant that John, enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, couldn’t walk side by side with his sons. Of course, he did anyway, and eventually the outrageous and archaic ordinance was stricken from the city’s law books -  but not until about 10 years ago.

Will Wilson, self portrait

Do we all walk with one foot in the past?  Where exactly does the past meet the present?  This is not a new question for novelists, especially writers of historical fiction set in the West.  Where exactly is the West, and how do we create a dialogue between the West's past and present with an eye toward the future? 

Photographer Will Wilson (Diné Nation) explores this question by reaching backward in time to the dialogue begun by historic photographer Edward S. Curtis.  Wilson challenges the romantic stereotypes found in Curtis's iconic photographs of Native Americans and seeks “to do something different."  Wilson uses the same technique that Curtis used (tin type photography, a wet plate process), but his subjects are contemporary.   Last week, the Denver Art Museum exhibited Wilson's photographs as part of this “Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange.”

Museum special project coordinator Rose Eason writes, “Will has set out to capture portraits from today’s American Indian communities to counter the representations of Native American cultures frozen in time.” Read more.  

When John Gritts was asked to take part in Wilson’s project, he was also asked to bring “an item of significance” to help illustrate the dialogue between the old Curtis vision of Native Americans frozen in time, and the contemporary reality.  John took a few different items with him, including a traditional Cherokee hunting jacket and a portrait of his great great grandmother who walked the Trail of Tears when she was a child.  Here's a photo of John, taking a photo of the portrait Wilson took of him, holding Grandma Dockie's portrait.  I love the picture above because it conveys the overlapping movement of time.

 A few months ago, I went to the Denver premier of the documentary Losing the West.  “With sweeping shots of the Colorado Rockies, the film explores whether cherished Western traditions and this fiercely independent lifestyle can survive as they collide with inevitable population growth in the West and its dwindling natural resources."

The main storyline follows the life of cowboy Howard Linscott, the original Marlboro Man, drawing a parallel between his waning life and the demise of the small ranches, farms and families of the West.  Directed and produced by Alex Warren, the film makes a powerful statement, raises critical questions, and links up viewers, both rural and urban, with ways to take action.

Will Wilson and John Gritts

Is the West vanishing?  Has it vanished already?  Are cowboys, Indians, farmers, and ranchers frozen in time?  Has the dialogue between the past and the present been silenced?  Can writers help to keep the rivers of time flowing by making sure that our characters are real enough to step out of the past and converse with the present?  And what the heck does that mean, anyway?  I guess I'm asking if we can resist being lazy.  Can we believe enough in the story we're telling to step away from all we think we know about a person, or a people, or a culture, and bravely admit we don't know?  And then do what we need to do to find out? I hope so. The future depends on it.

END NOTES: Read The Atlantic's April 8, 2013 article "Native Americans: Portraits from a Century Ago."  More on stolen horses at NetPosse.