Godiva Country, Montana
She’s a big country. Her undulations
roll and flow in the sun. Those flanks
quiver when the wind caresses the grass.
Who turns away when so generous a body
offers to play hide-and-seek all summer?
One shoulder leans bare all the way up
the mountain; limbs range and plunge
wildly into the river. We risk our eyes
every day; they celebrate; they dance
and flirt over this offered treasure.
“Be alive,” the land says. “Listen–
this is your time, your world, your pleasure.”
William Stafford, June 16, 1993
You Reading This, Be Ready
Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life–
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
William Stafford, August 26, 1993
Dear Good Friends:
William Stafford is our hero for lots of reasons. He was born in Hutchinson, Kansas, in 1914. In World War II, he lived his faith as a witness for peace, serving in Civilian Public Service camps–like the Montana ones that Dave continues to research and speak about. He wrote a poem every morning, including all the years that he taught at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon. He died two days after he wrote You Reading This, Be Ready. He wrote a poem that day, too. We aim for his discipline, his passion, and his wide, loving alertness-his “breathing respect.”
2003 sped by. In our historical memories, this is likely to be:
* Yet another year of fire and smoke. Blazing heat arrived the second week in July. Lightning triggered the Wedge Canyon fire on July 18-southwest of Dave’s family’s property in the North Fork of the Flathead. When the fire crews finally pulled out in October, an edge of the fire was just two miles away from the cabins. Rather than spending much time there, we tried to breathe and stay cool in our Helena basement. Montana’s fires, however, were once again Amanda’s bread and butter—as she worked through the summer for the U.S. Forest Service.
* A year of varying emotions about our work. Marcella found a full year of Montana Heritage Project work exhilarating. She got to travel to Project schools and to Washington, D. C. She’s learning pedagogy and PowerPoint and PhotoShop and how to coordinate work by email. Dave got to write “historical minutes” for legislators who robbed the Society of $700,000 in 12 months and for an institution that now focuses more on marketing than public service to Montana’s historians. Dave looks to his speeches, his books, and his articles for reward and inspiration.
* A placid year at home. We experienced the exasperations that go with home repairs and replacements; the return of our beloved Helena Brewers baseball team; Emily and Sergio’s excitement in telling us of an impending child–their first baby, our second grandchild (Heather’s Rhain being the first); heat-starved raspberries and fulsome potatoes; the start of Amanda’s student-teaching semester-her last; further sad losses in the bunny-garage (we’re down to one); Dave’s receipt of the Montana Historical Society Trustee’s Educator’s Award; Marcella’s sorting (with her sister, Sonja) of the Sherfy family’s last McPherson, Kansas, belongings.
Beyond the events and heat and smoke and in the spirit of William Stafford, in our hearts, we will remember:
* The reassurances of Em and Sergio’s furniture moving and nightly fire reports from Polebridge, all part of their two-week summer vacation that became a much longer fire-watch—at the expense of Sergio’s dissertation-writing time.
* That magical moment when 1,000 feet of garden hose and some discarded vacuum cleaner tubing carried water from a spring to an otherwise parched meadow.
* Amanda, poised and confident, surrounded by kinetic sixth grade boys huddling over her clipboard as she drew up basketball plays (a demanding student teaching sidelight).
* An untidy flock of magpies, scrambling from treetop to treetop to catch the VERY last rays of long summer sunlight.
* Ivan Doig’s dedication of Prairie Nocturne to us, a beloved and puzzling talisman since Carol and Ivan are our teachers whose disciplines, imageries, and friendship shape our lives.
* The North Fork sunset that washed the Rockies with the most brilliant reds and oranges we can remember.
* The curious little fox who lingered around the cabins for a weekend–with his perfect Fuller-Brush tail and immaculate black sox.
* Simms High School juniors–poised, articulate, thoughtful–explaining to a crowd of 200 how the Sun River Valley has changed and has stayed the same since 1910.
* The great rush of joy and reassurance that we feel in seeing and talking with you–our good friends from all the past and current chapters in our lives–at the end of a day, over a meal, by phone, in the midst of book signings, through letters and emails. When we turn around, here and now, you are what we want to remember most into the evening.
