11/16/09 4:00pm
In winter, day and night get closer. They’re pushed together, seeking warmth. Down in the valley, street lights beam white, but the sky still glows pale, electric. It’s not yet night. Black tree branches, silhouetted on the fading canvas, look like skeletons of lovers embracing.
In winter, I hear clearly. Sounds cut through the crisp air. Up the hill, highway traffic rushes, swooshes, shakes the reeds of the wheat stalks. Its dull drone says hello. The stalks shiver. I shiver too.
Far out over the sky, tiny black birds whirl. They circle the city, trying to catch a wind gusting south. Their tiny beaks part and the sound is right there in my ear, the caw caw caw. That’s how crisp this air is.
Footsteps on my tree-house stairs. Her heart beats faster every step she takes. Warm breath meets the icy air. I hear this too, in winter.
There’s more to feel now that it’s here, the frozen months. My neck prickles, tiny icy pins. I pull my jacket tighter. The air backs off and moves to my cheeks. I feel them flush. I rub my face. Like a child, I turn away from the cold. Where next will you make me shiver?
Pointy branches. Frozen grass blades. Icicles, they’ll come. Words that cut through crisp air, direct and unavoidable. Dullness disappears with warmth.
I feel things in winter, a sharpness. Goosebumps under my big white blanket, a shiver not from cold. I trace my finger along the knots of a spine, blow a cold breeze to shake the limbs. Say hello.
And I’ll feel the pedal under my foot as I roll up the window to shut out the cold. Early morning, I’ll find a gust of wind heading east and drive toward the sun. I’ll absorb the highway noise as it echoes behind me, before me, all around me. I’ll find where the day and night grow close, and I’ll meet them halfway.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Response 10: Jimmy Santiago Baca
I’d just finished reading the excerpts from Jimmy Santiago Baca’s memoir, “A Place to Stand.” From where it left off, I was crushed, though hopeful, knowing he was experiencing revelation in prison. He was writing, dreaming, finding hope through poetry. The memoir offered snippets of his early poetry, rudimentary rhymes and dabbling in a foreign language. But his tragic childhood still haunted me. I picked up “Martín & Meditations on the South Valley,” flipped to the first page. I read the first stanza and felt triumph.
I was so moved by Baca’s poetry, as well as by his memoir, and I’m grateful that I could read excerpts of both forms at the same time, for I feel both works are informative, if not crucial to one another’s experience. Experience is what makes Baca’s writing powerful, what sets him apart from others. He had a tragic upbringing; he was abandoned by his parents, abused, mistreated. He was homeless, alienated from his past. Many go to prison, but it was there for Baca, that he actually found what he had lost, rediscovered that his “home” was much more rooted than in a house, deeper than a “family.” In his memoir, he writes, “One day, looking up from my journal to stare absentmindedly at the cell wall, I experienced a revelation. On the wall – in the sand and mortar and stones and iron and trowel sweeps – were the life experiences and sweat of my people. It contained a mural of my people’s toil, their aspirations, their pain and workmanship. I imagined my grandfather’s hand smoothing out the concrete…The iron that made the bas came from a mill in Silver City; the workers who had built the mill came from little villages on the plains. The dirt that mixed with the cement, before it was scooped up and trucked and delivered to make this wall, had been prairie soil where families camped and a woman had lain and gave birth to a child. People had slept on this dirt, tilled it for their crops and gardens, built their adobe homes with it” (239.)
Baca rekindles a tie with his people that he had lost in his upbringing. He reconnects with the land he can call his home, though he never did before. As I read through “Black Mesa Poems” and “Martín & Meditations on the South Valley,” the characters from this land came through vividly, as if he had never been separated, as if he had never felt lost. In “Too Much of a Good Thing,” Baca voices farmers and their crops. He often refers to the cycling of the seasons, the snow, the fall. In segment XII of “Martín & Meditations on the South Valley,” the narrator becomes one with the land.
I dream
myself maiz root:
swollen in pregnant earth,
rain seeping into my black bones
sifting red soil grains of my heart
into earth’s hungry mouth.
I am part of the earth.
When reading “A Place to Stand,” I was enchanted by the childlike voice which he embodies to describe these extremely vivid experiences. Of course, he is a child in many of the segments and the language is appropriate. Yet, while the language is simple, the descriptions still grasp the range of human emotions associated with the experiences. In the prologue, when Baca describes visiting his father at jail for the first time, he writes, “I wanted to tell him I was sorry. I didn’t want to keep him in jail. Only when he was drinking did he threaten to beat Mom up, wreck the car, lose his paycheck gambling, or sometimes not show up for days. He was not drinking now. We should have let him come home with us” (2.) The sentences are direct, the emotions straightforward. But they are sharp, and they bore through us because we know they are coming from a child, but resonating years later in the heart of a man.
The language of Baca’s poetry is quite opposite to that in his memoir, and it makes me think of prison and freedom. Every sentence is chocked full of descriptive words, sparing literally no space for a boring verb or noun. He hardly ever uses the verb “to be” in present or past tense. I feel the care with which Baca chose his words, as if he’s appreciating the beauty of that which he’s describing in a way a person who has always been free can’t even see. He picks the words like they’re fruit from a tree; why use any but the ripest, the sweetest, the tastiest?
I had an image of mother in the morning
dancing in front of the mirror
in pink panties,
masking her face with mascara,
squeezing into tight jeans,
Her laughter rough as brocaded cloth
and her teeth brilliant as church tiles.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Jimmy Santiago Baca’s work, and I can’t wait to meet him on Thursday. I wonder if despite his troubled childhood, there was any instant when he found himself considering language in his youth. With such talent, I wouldn’t be surprised if even as a child, he spoke to himself when no one knew. Perhaps he didn’t even know he was doing it. Does one become a poet like a phoenix rising out of the flames? Or is language a part of us? Like the land was a part of him, only needing to be discovered, relearned, really felt?
I was so moved by Baca’s poetry, as well as by his memoir, and I’m grateful that I could read excerpts of both forms at the same time, for I feel both works are informative, if not crucial to one another’s experience. Experience is what makes Baca’s writing powerful, what sets him apart from others. He had a tragic upbringing; he was abandoned by his parents, abused, mistreated. He was homeless, alienated from his past. Many go to prison, but it was there for Baca, that he actually found what he had lost, rediscovered that his “home” was much more rooted than in a house, deeper than a “family.” In his memoir, he writes, “One day, looking up from my journal to stare absentmindedly at the cell wall, I experienced a revelation. On the wall – in the sand and mortar and stones and iron and trowel sweeps – were the life experiences and sweat of my people. It contained a mural of my people’s toil, their aspirations, their pain and workmanship. I imagined my grandfather’s hand smoothing out the concrete…The iron that made the bas came from a mill in Silver City; the workers who had built the mill came from little villages on the plains. The dirt that mixed with the cement, before it was scooped up and trucked and delivered to make this wall, had been prairie soil where families camped and a woman had lain and gave birth to a child. People had slept on this dirt, tilled it for their crops and gardens, built their adobe homes with it” (239.)
Baca rekindles a tie with his people that he had lost in his upbringing. He reconnects with the land he can call his home, though he never did before. As I read through “Black Mesa Poems” and “Martín & Meditations on the South Valley,” the characters from this land came through vividly, as if he had never been separated, as if he had never felt lost. In “Too Much of a Good Thing,” Baca voices farmers and their crops. He often refers to the cycling of the seasons, the snow, the fall. In segment XII of “Martín & Meditations on the South Valley,” the narrator becomes one with the land.
I dream
myself maiz root:
swollen in pregnant earth,
rain seeping into my black bones
sifting red soil grains of my heart
into earth’s hungry mouth.
I am part of the earth.
When reading “A Place to Stand,” I was enchanted by the childlike voice which he embodies to describe these extremely vivid experiences. Of course, he is a child in many of the segments and the language is appropriate. Yet, while the language is simple, the descriptions still grasp the range of human emotions associated with the experiences. In the prologue, when Baca describes visiting his father at jail for the first time, he writes, “I wanted to tell him I was sorry. I didn’t want to keep him in jail. Only when he was drinking did he threaten to beat Mom up, wreck the car, lose his paycheck gambling, or sometimes not show up for days. He was not drinking now. We should have let him come home with us” (2.) The sentences are direct, the emotions straightforward. But they are sharp, and they bore through us because we know they are coming from a child, but resonating years later in the heart of a man.
The language of Baca’s poetry is quite opposite to that in his memoir, and it makes me think of prison and freedom. Every sentence is chocked full of descriptive words, sparing literally no space for a boring verb or noun. He hardly ever uses the verb “to be” in present or past tense. I feel the care with which Baca chose his words, as if he’s appreciating the beauty of that which he’s describing in a way a person who has always been free can’t even see. He picks the words like they’re fruit from a tree; why use any but the ripest, the sweetest, the tastiest?
I had an image of mother in the morning
dancing in front of the mirror
in pink panties,
masking her face with mascara,
squeezing into tight jeans,
Her laughter rough as brocaded cloth
and her teeth brilliant as church tiles.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Jimmy Santiago Baca’s work, and I can’t wait to meet him on Thursday. I wonder if despite his troubled childhood, there was any instant when he found himself considering language in his youth. With such talent, I wouldn’t be surprised if even as a child, he spoke to himself when no one knew. Perhaps he didn’t even know he was doing it. Does one become a poet like a phoenix rising out of the flames? Or is language a part of us? Like the land was a part of him, only needing to be discovered, relearned, really felt?
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The Tap Water's Fine!: Pollution and Alienation
The problems Pittsburgh is having with overflowing sewers during nearly every rainstorm is a serious issues to me, as it seems to be about more than just the water, the sewers, and the rivers. Of course, I was interested in how this could happen. How every bit of rainfall could cause a back-up of raw sewage, which eventually overflows into local creeks, streams, and the main rivers of the city.
One source blamed record rainfall and the heavy stress it’s put on the sewage treatment systems. Another article sited technological decisions made at various points throughout the city’s history, such as to deal with wastewater in fast-growing suburbs through septic tanks or separate sewer systems that only provided for domestic waters and not storm waters.
What can’t be debated is that the sewage, along with chemicals and other pollutants that run into the waterways after heavy rains, pose major crises for Pittsburgh residents, as well as the wildlife that inhabit the area.
The first article I read assures the reader, “Treatment of drinking water is not harmed…” Yes, your tap water will still be filtered properly, despite the sewage in the rivers, streams, and lakes. But the article didn’t mention the fish – trout, bass – we take from the river to eat. What about the deer who drink from the river? Or the crops that soak up groundwater, polluted by these chemicals and sewage. Is their water filtered for them too?
The Pittsburgh water issue is part of a much larger crisis, one that’s plaguing all of this country on many fronts. We put things on our mouth, we chew, we swallow, without knowing what they are. Are they even foods? We certainly don’t know where they come from, or what their ingredients are. Just like this reporter didn’t think to address the greater issue at hand – that the water isn’t just drank directly from our taps – it’s absorbed by our plants, lapped by the animals we eat – we are alienated that which nourishes us. Food. Water.
I think of Janisse Ray and her writing about the Longleaf Pine Forest. The ecosystem was so intricate, and we came to know it through her stories of the salamander, the gopher tortoise, and the indigo snake. We learned how they lived symbiotically, and how the extinction of one species was like a deadly domino effect for the rest. We came to care for that ecosystem in the way that she hoped, through her passionate writing, but most of all through just through the awareness she brought to us. I didn’t even know these forests existed before I read her book.
I think the bones of this environmental issue that I’ve written about above is not just the sewage or the rain, but the alienation. We have this problem in the first place because of the overlapping of ideas, the development of a city over a long period of time, and the lack of consideration for key elements that would’ve sustained the system’s success even as rainfalls and populations increased. We develop and urbanize and search for solutions. But we have to try to see that the solution is to take a step back and remember how the world works naturally, because that’s the way that’s it’s going to work best. To write about this would be to create an awareness somehow, in the way that Ray did perhaps, gently. She was effective in relating the stories to her personal life, and I think that would be a good way to both avoid too much tension and also to draw out mirroring themes.
I don’t pretend to have solutions for the wastewater, but I know that we can’t create elaborate systems that transport toxic materials long distances if they’re faulty.
We have to be conscious that everything we throw away, pour outside, put on the ground (or on our lawns) will come back to us. The earth cycles, it lives. We wonder why people get sick with cancer, why they’re infertile. Think about the chemicals you’re pouring out – it will end up in the water and back in your food. And think about your food – it’s what gives you life. Think about it. Think.
One source blamed record rainfall and the heavy stress it’s put on the sewage treatment systems. Another article sited technological decisions made at various points throughout the city’s history, such as to deal with wastewater in fast-growing suburbs through septic tanks or separate sewer systems that only provided for domestic waters and not storm waters.
What can’t be debated is that the sewage, along with chemicals and other pollutants that run into the waterways after heavy rains, pose major crises for Pittsburgh residents, as well as the wildlife that inhabit the area.
The first article I read assures the reader, “Treatment of drinking water is not harmed…” Yes, your tap water will still be filtered properly, despite the sewage in the rivers, streams, and lakes. But the article didn’t mention the fish – trout, bass – we take from the river to eat. What about the deer who drink from the river? Or the crops that soak up groundwater, polluted by these chemicals and sewage. Is their water filtered for them too?
The Pittsburgh water issue is part of a much larger crisis, one that’s plaguing all of this country on many fronts. We put things on our mouth, we chew, we swallow, without knowing what they are. Are they even foods? We certainly don’t know where they come from, or what their ingredients are. Just like this reporter didn’t think to address the greater issue at hand – that the water isn’t just drank directly from our taps – it’s absorbed by our plants, lapped by the animals we eat – we are alienated that which nourishes us. Food. Water.
I think of Janisse Ray and her writing about the Longleaf Pine Forest. The ecosystem was so intricate, and we came to know it through her stories of the salamander, the gopher tortoise, and the indigo snake. We learned how they lived symbiotically, and how the extinction of one species was like a deadly domino effect for the rest. We came to care for that ecosystem in the way that she hoped, through her passionate writing, but most of all through just through the awareness she brought to us. I didn’t even know these forests existed before I read her book.
I think the bones of this environmental issue that I’ve written about above is not just the sewage or the rain, but the alienation. We have this problem in the first place because of the overlapping of ideas, the development of a city over a long period of time, and the lack of consideration for key elements that would’ve sustained the system’s success even as rainfalls and populations increased. We develop and urbanize and search for solutions. But we have to try to see that the solution is to take a step back and remember how the world works naturally, because that’s the way that’s it’s going to work best. To write about this would be to create an awareness somehow, in the way that Ray did perhaps, gently. She was effective in relating the stories to her personal life, and I think that would be a good way to both avoid too much tension and also to draw out mirroring themes.
I don’t pretend to have solutions for the wastewater, but I know that we can’t create elaborate systems that transport toxic materials long distances if they’re faulty.
We have to be conscious that everything we throw away, pour outside, put on the ground (or on our lawns) will come back to us. The earth cycles, it lives. We wonder why people get sick with cancer, why they’re infertile. Think about the chemicals you’re pouring out – it will end up in the water and back in your food. And think about your food – it’s what gives you life. Think about it. Think.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Vista 7
Part I: At My Spot, Everything is Gone or Giving in
After a week away, I come back to my spot on the hill to discover that all the leaves have let go. Some cling stubbornly to the skeletal branches, but soon they too will be shaken by these wintery winds. I am shocked by the change in scenery. How bare the hillside is. Or maybe I’m just frozen in place; today is definitely the coldest day yet. Ten minutes pass, and I’m no closer to sitting down or even reaching for my pen and notebook. The leaves at my feet are pear-shaped and larger than my hands. I pick one up and wave it back and forth like it’s a white flag. I give in. Today I woke up with a “cold.” As far as I’m concerned, it’s winter.
As I imagined earlier in the semester, my vista has opened up now that the leaves are gone. I can see through the open branches, down the hill, out over the entire valley. Some houses have lit fires and white smoke rises in straight pillars from little chimneys.
But the birds are gone. The crickets are dead or underground. They’re no longer singing from the trees or chirping from the reeds. The hum of machines fills these voids. Their lull comes at me from every direction, so soft it’s almost not there at all. If you don’t think about it, if you pretend it’s not there, the humming fades into the white sky, the numbing cold. And it’s gone.
Part II: I Decide to Walk Down the Tree-House Staircase
Tonight I decided to take a different route while walking home from class. There have been a number of robberies in my neighborhood lately (armed, at night,) and seeing as the way I go is very dark and not the most direct, I thought, why not be smart? I looked at a map and discovered that my best option was none other than my tree-house staircase! I was so excited to walk down the stairs I’d been sitting in front of and staring at for the past two months.
I descended the twisty stairs, illuminated in the night. I thought how in the summertime I would feel like I’m descending into the depths of the jungle, for then the plants were thick with leaves and probably grew right in through the railings. Maybe squirrels dropped nuts on its roof. Did they hit suddenly, scaring students, then role downward and slide back into the forest? I turn a right angle. Down more steps.
I reach the bottom of the staircase. There are less steps here than on the staircase I usually take. I look around me. A parking lot. And buildings. A man in his twenties unlocks the door to his car. This is where those deer were going, I think. Why were they going here? Is this all they have? I was so surprised to see the deer that night in such a populated space. But Chatham’s campus is natural and spacious, like a park. I am disappointed that this is where the staircase leads. Of course I have to be honest – I knew the steps would not lead down to a Garden of Eden. But for the deer, I’d hoped.
After a week away, I come back to my spot on the hill to discover that all the leaves have let go. Some cling stubbornly to the skeletal branches, but soon they too will be shaken by these wintery winds. I am shocked by the change in scenery. How bare the hillside is. Or maybe I’m just frozen in place; today is definitely the coldest day yet. Ten minutes pass, and I’m no closer to sitting down or even reaching for my pen and notebook. The leaves at my feet are pear-shaped and larger than my hands. I pick one up and wave it back and forth like it’s a white flag. I give in. Today I woke up with a “cold.” As far as I’m concerned, it’s winter.
As I imagined earlier in the semester, my vista has opened up now that the leaves are gone. I can see through the open branches, down the hill, out over the entire valley. Some houses have lit fires and white smoke rises in straight pillars from little chimneys.
But the birds are gone. The crickets are dead or underground. They’re no longer singing from the trees or chirping from the reeds. The hum of machines fills these voids. Their lull comes at me from every direction, so soft it’s almost not there at all. If you don’t think about it, if you pretend it’s not there, the humming fades into the white sky, the numbing cold. And it’s gone.
Part II: I Decide to Walk Down the Tree-House Staircase
Tonight I decided to take a different route while walking home from class. There have been a number of robberies in my neighborhood lately (armed, at night,) and seeing as the way I go is very dark and not the most direct, I thought, why not be smart? I looked at a map and discovered that my best option was none other than my tree-house staircase! I was so excited to walk down the stairs I’d been sitting in front of and staring at for the past two months.
I descended the twisty stairs, illuminated in the night. I thought how in the summertime I would feel like I’m descending into the depths of the jungle, for then the plants were thick with leaves and probably grew right in through the railings. Maybe squirrels dropped nuts on its roof. Did they hit suddenly, scaring students, then role downward and slide back into the forest? I turn a right angle. Down more steps.
I reach the bottom of the staircase. There are less steps here than on the staircase I usually take. I look around me. A parking lot. And buildings. A man in his twenties unlocks the door to his car. This is where those deer were going, I think. Why were they going here? Is this all they have? I was so surprised to see the deer that night in such a populated space. But Chatham’s campus is natural and spacious, like a park. I am disappointed that this is where the staircase leads. Of course I have to be honest – I knew the steps would not lead down to a Garden of Eden. But for the deer, I’d hoped.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Response 7: The Tenderness That Fills Open Space
Wyoming. Desolate. Empty. Vast stretches of plains and sky. In the winter, howling winds. Frozen. This is Gretel Ehrlich’s landscape in The Solace of Empty Spaces. Her description of the land is minimal. She can only write so much about the space between one thing and another. But the ways in which this uncharted landscape – this wild space – have shaped the culture of the people who live there is more significant than we imagined.
“To live and work in this kind of open country, with its hundred-mile views, is to lose the distinction between background and foreground. When I asked an older ranch hand to describe Wyoming’s openness, he said, “It’s all a bunch of nothing – wind and rattlesnakes – and so much of it you can’t tell where you’re going or where you’ve been and it don’t make much difference” (2.)
Background and foreground, I believe, has multiple meanings in this context. The people who live in this landscape are relatively new there, and not too long ago, Wyoming was part of the “Wild West.” The open space, the lack of buildings and cities, allows for an autonomy not found in more developed areas. You can’t tell where you’re going, and it doesn’t make a difference, because you have the freedom to go and do whatever you want. You can live on your ranch and raise your cattle how you want them, and I get the feeling from the way that Ehrlich has painted the landscape in this book, that no one is going to come and tell you otherwise. But background can also refer to heritage and social standards. Having recently moved to this place and adopted this lifestyle, old ways must have been discarded. Cowboying is a new lifestyle unique to the United States. Who were these people before they came here? Who will they be when the wild is all gone? Their freedom is unique to this area, nurtured even more by their isolation. They are held to no standards. They follow no preconceived notions of what it means to be a cowboy. Women cowboy as well, and within this book are female characters named Mike and BobbyJo. It doesn’t make a difference. They know who they are.
Perhaps the strongest connection between the landscape and culture in Wyoming is that of the cowboys. Ehrlich tears down misconceptions of this role, the stoic figure America characterizes thanks to Marlboro advertisements and Western movies. She reveals what makes so much more sense: that the cowboy is connected to the land that he works, the awesome landscape that he takes in every day, and the animals that he births and raises. These are not tough men who lack emotion. No, these are men who are required to tough it out, to possess patience and resilience. One man tells Ehrlich, “Cowboys are just like a pile of rocks – everything happens to them. They get climbed on, kicked on, rained and snowed on, scuffed up by the wind. Their job is ‘just to take it’” (50.)
Ehrlich finds that the cowboy’s coarseness is a mere surface for his underlying tenderness. Because of the harsh winds and conditions, a cowboy must be resilient. But they are also compassionate because of what they do. “Because these men work with animals, not machines or numbers, because they live outside in landscapes of torrential beauty, because they are confined to a place and a routine embellished with awesome variables, because calves die in the arms that pulled others into life, because they go to the mountains as if on a pilgrimage to find out what makes a her of elk tick, their strength is also a softness, their toughness, a rare delicacy” (52-53.)
What Ehrlich finds from living in Wyoming that this duality of character is something that she comes to embody as well. She braved the winter in a frozen cabin with no one except her dog, finding solace in the solitude. “The toughness I was learning was not a martyred doggedness, a dumb heroism, but the art of accommodation. I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly free” (44.)
She finds that “What can seem like a hard-shell veneer on the people here is really a necessary spirited resilience” (43.) While people may shoot the hats off their neighbors in silly fights, they also care for each other. Wyoming, with only a few towns and one university, becomes cozy for Ehrlich in its vastness, because with less human spaces, people congregate more. Friends drive hours to each other’s ranches for dinner. They offer help when its needed with the cattle. The landscape of Wyoming, so vast and empty, has created a people who look for the tenderness, who search through that cold space for the warmth of another heart. The people of Wyoming are rooted in their land; they care for the animals, who outnumber them, and they look forward and backward, not sure which is which, but live on.
I grew up in a small beach town in Connecticut, close to New York City. Many of the residents were originally New Yorkers. My parents moved my family from Manhattan on my first birthday, believing a life in the suburbs would be ideal for their baby girl. We have beaches, but the water is not the ocean – it’s the Long Island Sound. Our town is charming, quaint, beautiful, and considered a suburb of New York City. But it is not diverse like the city. Growing up, I was not exposed to the rich culture that any city, especially New York, has to offer. When I think of my childhood, I think of playing on the beach, in the tide pools, on the jetty. My mother would let me and my little brother run away for hours at a time, knowing that we’d be safe. There is no surf in the Long Island Sound, no real danger. We lived in a smaller, sheltered, more “idyllic” version of the city; the Shakespearian forest that city-dwellers escape to. It was like a vacation to the Cape, but one that never ended. The Long Island Sound is a small body of water – I could always see the other side. Are we sheltered because of the protective setting? We came to live here for that very reason.
On September 11, I watched smoke rise on the horizon from where the towers had stood. For the first time, I felt exposed, part of something bigger, closer to something dangerous. The city and all the possibilities within it were closer than I had ever imagined. And beyond the Long Island Sound was an ocean. I appreciate the protective arms of the Sound, that we can wade in its shallow waters and not worry about being swept away by bigger waves. I know every rock on that beach by heart, and I’ve discovered every creature that crawls or swims in the tidal pools. And I did it all on my own, the Sound protecting me.
“To live and work in this kind of open country, with its hundred-mile views, is to lose the distinction between background and foreground. When I asked an older ranch hand to describe Wyoming’s openness, he said, “It’s all a bunch of nothing – wind and rattlesnakes – and so much of it you can’t tell where you’re going or where you’ve been and it don’t make much difference” (2.)
Background and foreground, I believe, has multiple meanings in this context. The people who live in this landscape are relatively new there, and not too long ago, Wyoming was part of the “Wild West.” The open space, the lack of buildings and cities, allows for an autonomy not found in more developed areas. You can’t tell where you’re going, and it doesn’t make a difference, because you have the freedom to go and do whatever you want. You can live on your ranch and raise your cattle how you want them, and I get the feeling from the way that Ehrlich has painted the landscape in this book, that no one is going to come and tell you otherwise. But background can also refer to heritage and social standards. Having recently moved to this place and adopted this lifestyle, old ways must have been discarded. Cowboying is a new lifestyle unique to the United States. Who were these people before they came here? Who will they be when the wild is all gone? Their freedom is unique to this area, nurtured even more by their isolation. They are held to no standards. They follow no preconceived notions of what it means to be a cowboy. Women cowboy as well, and within this book are female characters named Mike and BobbyJo. It doesn’t make a difference. They know who they are.
Perhaps the strongest connection between the landscape and culture in Wyoming is that of the cowboys. Ehrlich tears down misconceptions of this role, the stoic figure America characterizes thanks to Marlboro advertisements and Western movies. She reveals what makes so much more sense: that the cowboy is connected to the land that he works, the awesome landscape that he takes in every day, and the animals that he births and raises. These are not tough men who lack emotion. No, these are men who are required to tough it out, to possess patience and resilience. One man tells Ehrlich, “Cowboys are just like a pile of rocks – everything happens to them. They get climbed on, kicked on, rained and snowed on, scuffed up by the wind. Their job is ‘just to take it’” (50.)
Ehrlich finds that the cowboy’s coarseness is a mere surface for his underlying tenderness. Because of the harsh winds and conditions, a cowboy must be resilient. But they are also compassionate because of what they do. “Because these men work with animals, not machines or numbers, because they live outside in landscapes of torrential beauty, because they are confined to a place and a routine embellished with awesome variables, because calves die in the arms that pulled others into life, because they go to the mountains as if on a pilgrimage to find out what makes a her of elk tick, their strength is also a softness, their toughness, a rare delicacy” (52-53.)
What Ehrlich finds from living in Wyoming that this duality of character is something that she comes to embody as well. She braved the winter in a frozen cabin with no one except her dog, finding solace in the solitude. “The toughness I was learning was not a martyred doggedness, a dumb heroism, but the art of accommodation. I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly free” (44.)
She finds that “What can seem like a hard-shell veneer on the people here is really a necessary spirited resilience” (43.) While people may shoot the hats off their neighbors in silly fights, they also care for each other. Wyoming, with only a few towns and one university, becomes cozy for Ehrlich in its vastness, because with less human spaces, people congregate more. Friends drive hours to each other’s ranches for dinner. They offer help when its needed with the cattle. The landscape of Wyoming, so vast and empty, has created a people who look for the tenderness, who search through that cold space for the warmth of another heart. The people of Wyoming are rooted in their land; they care for the animals, who outnumber them, and they look forward and backward, not sure which is which, but live on.
I grew up in a small beach town in Connecticut, close to New York City. Many of the residents were originally New Yorkers. My parents moved my family from Manhattan on my first birthday, believing a life in the suburbs would be ideal for their baby girl. We have beaches, but the water is not the ocean – it’s the Long Island Sound. Our town is charming, quaint, beautiful, and considered a suburb of New York City. But it is not diverse like the city. Growing up, I was not exposed to the rich culture that any city, especially New York, has to offer. When I think of my childhood, I think of playing on the beach, in the tide pools, on the jetty. My mother would let me and my little brother run away for hours at a time, knowing that we’d be safe. There is no surf in the Long Island Sound, no real danger. We lived in a smaller, sheltered, more “idyllic” version of the city; the Shakespearian forest that city-dwellers escape to. It was like a vacation to the Cape, but one that never ended. The Long Island Sound is a small body of water – I could always see the other side. Are we sheltered because of the protective setting? We came to live here for that very reason.
On September 11, I watched smoke rise on the horizon from where the towers had stood. For the first time, I felt exposed, part of something bigger, closer to something dangerous. The city and all the possibilities within it were closer than I had ever imagined. And beyond the Long Island Sound was an ocean. I appreciate the protective arms of the Sound, that we can wade in its shallow waters and not worry about being swept away by bigger waves. I know every rock on that beach by heart, and I’ve discovered every creature that crawls or swims in the tidal pools. And I did it all on my own, the Sound protecting me.
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