In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [0]
Cover
Title Page
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
About the Author
Other Books by this Author
Copyright
In consideration of their privacy, the names of some of the people appearing in this text have been changed.
An earlier version of Chapter Four was originally published in The Georgia Review.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are many people without whose support I would never have found my way back: Mary Clearman Blew, who shared with me her vision; Claire Davis and Dennis Held, who offered friendship no matter the season; and Robert Johnson, upon whose quiet belief and confidence I could always depend. Thanks to Robert Wrigley for seeing me through; it is my hope that our children—Philip, Jordan and Jace—will add to this story their own. I would also like to thank Keith and Shirley Browning, Margaret Bremer, Ripley Schemm, Annick Smith, Bill Kittredge, Judy Blunt, Julia Watson, Dee McNamer, Renée Wayne Golden, Bruce Tracy, and all the others who offered their encouragement and direction. Thanks, too, to the Idaho Commission on the Arts and the PEN/Jerard Fund.
I am also grateful to those who have dedicated their time to uncovering and retelling much of the local history, which might otherwise have been lost. Among many upon whose knowledge and research I depended were Lalia Boone, Cort Conley, Ladd Hamilton, Louise Shadduck, Ralph Space, Sandra Taylor, and Johnny Johnson.
In attempting to acknowledge the inevitable disparities between my recollection and that of those who might tell this story otherwise, I recall a line attributed to Barbara Kingsolver: “Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.”
For my husband, Robert Wrigley,
my saving grace
In memory of Nan,
whose wisdom and courage
continue to sustain me
And for my parents
Willows never forget how it feels
to be young.
Do you remember where you came from?
Gravel remembers.
Even the upper end of the river
believes in the ocean.
Exactly at midnight
yesterday sighs away.
What I believe is,
all animals have one soul.
Over the land they love
they crisscross forever.
—WILLIAM STAFFORD
“CLIMBING ALONG THE RIVER”
Until the spirit be poured
upon us from on high, and the wilderness
be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field
be counted for a forest. Then
judgment shall dwell in the wilderness….
—ISAIAH 32:15,16
CHAPTER ONE
Past the Clearwater Timber Protection Association and the “Fire Danger” board, across the creek and before the dump, the small house squatted in a pocket of red fir and pine, not visible from the road. The locals called the hollow Dogpatch. The Joneses lived nearby, and Gerty Buck and her son, who owned a motorcycle, and someone else across the way who had two German shepherds chained to a clothesline. The dogs were the first things my younger brother, Greg, and I saw when we stepped off the bus after school. They barked ferociously, racing back and forth between the two T-shaped poles, until we disappeared down the steep path leading past the woodshed and root cellar to a small piece of flat ground surrounded by trees.
Beside our house, painted the same umber red as other shacks built by local loggers on company land, flowed the spring, and from its constant source we took our water. Each day the train, pulling its load of logs, ran the route from Headquarters to the mill at Lewiston and back, and my brother and I, feeling the tremor of its coming before we heard the engine’s rumble, ran to the rear of the house and through the trees to wave at the brakeman and engineer. When not in school, we filled our days exploring the near woods, digging after ground squirrels, amassing piles of found treasure: feathers blue as river water, bones of deer, old buckets and chains, nests stitched through with colorful bits of moss.
A narrow footbridge crossed the spring to the path leading to