WALKING WITH THE SPIRIT OF WALLACE STEGNER AT DAWN IN EASTEND, SASKATCHEWAN - 12

Some years ago Mary and I stayed several days in Eastend, Saskatchewan, where Wallace Stegner spent about ten years of his childhood. I had read Stegner's Wolf Willow, and I wanted to see for myself, as I always do. The visit was a remarkable experience for me, and produced this essay (which was previously published in New Stone Circle magazine in slightly condensed form).

I am walking back towards

the motel now, stretching my stride and being careful not to catch my toes on the occasional piece of uneven sidewalk. The sun is behind me, my shadow before me. I am exhilarated by the intensity of the experience, seeing Eastend as the sun comes up, imagining Wallace Stegner seeing it with me.

When I get back to our room, the smell of morning is in my clothes. I have to wake my wife and tell her about the three deer that had come out of darkness. I don't tell her I've walked with Wallace Stegner. I've come back to my motel room an unrepentant middle westerner. I know I need farm, not ranch; fields, not range; crops, not the luck of the draw. My cattle would need to know fences, which western cattle don't. I need the square certainty of quarter section and section and township, the endless checkerboard of gravel roads mile after mile in all directions. The short grass prairie of southeastern Saskatchewan can make you believe in forever, but the middle west brings the certainty of another kind of eternity - solid, sure, secure.

Middle west. I like the sound of that word - middle. I like the roll of it. I like what it means and what it suggests. Middle ground, middle west, in the middle of the middle, a middle state, middle people, a middling land. All the manic poet word play of it. Only a man given to obsession can get excessive about "middle."

Yet I have to admit these westerners and the middle westerners I know are as much alike as they are different. The rhythms we experience may not be the same, yet westerner and middle westerner alike understand the cycles of life and nature. Both have thrown themselves into a life on the land. I think of the cemeteries I walked along the way to Eastend: western men and women have spent themselves entirely; how is their determination different from the Iowa farmer's steadfastness?

There is an Eastend in each westerner, I realize; a Curlew in each middle westerner. We are what we are in reference to place, specific and local, each with its own lay of light, its own peculiar stink. Each with its strands entwined in our souls.

To be continued....

Comments

[Miss Poola]

I just thought I'd stop by and say howdy again. I was chatting in cyberland with Phil Hey the other day and he mentioned you. He was surprised that I already knew about you. Silly man. He tells me you are busy and very productive. Good going! Hope you are doing well. By the way, I finished my script (spin on the Wizard of Oz tales) and the show was quite a success. L. Frank Baum's granddaughter came to see it. Small world, huh?

[Tom Montag]

Poola--hello, hello from cold and snowy Wisconsin. Congratulations on your Wizard of Oz show. I suppose Phil told you I published his HOW IT SEEMS TO BE: NEW & SELECTED POEMS. Things go well here - yes, I am busy and productive to a degree, though I never achieve quite as much as I'd hope. I hope you continue successfully.