Drumlummon views: the online journal of Montana arts & culture, volume 1, number 3 (Fall 2006/Winter 2007) (2025)

OCR

THE ONLINE JOURNAL OF MONTANA ARTS & CULTURE

HELENA, MONTANA[...]

The editors welcome the submission of proposals for essays and
reviews on cultural productions—including film[...]ing arts, scientific inquiry, food, architecture and
design—created in Montana and the broader American West. Please
send all queries and submissions to info@drumlummon.org.

We are not c[...]Statement

Copyright for contributions published in Drumlummon View: is retained by the
authors/artists, with oneitime publication rights granted to DV Content is free to
users. Any reproduction of original content from Drumlummon View: must a) seek
copyright from the authors/ artists and b) acknowledge Drumlummon View: as the site
of original publication.

COVER IMAGE: Gordon[...]

THE ONLINE JOURNAL OF MONTANA ARTS & CULTURE

Editorrinrtbief[...]

COPYRIGHT STATEMENT/MASTHEAD 2
FROM THE EDITOR 6
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 7

THIS ISSUE’S ORIGINAL WORK 8

“Scrabble,” a story by Caroline Patterson 9

“Close to the Fire,” a story by Thomas Thackeray I9

Eight po[...]hort film by Amy Brakeman Livezey
(Online)

FROM THE ARCHIVES 56

Second installment: “Cabin O’Wildwinds: The Story of An
Adventure in “Homesteading,” by Ada Melville
Shaw, illustrated by Irvin “Shorty” Shope; originally
published in 777e Furmer’i Wife, I93I 57

ESSAYS 69

Archite[...]Montana, Evolving Place,” by Lori Ryker 70

“The David and Ann Shaner Resident Studio Building, Archie
Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, Helena,
Montana,” by Rick Newby 85

“The Archie Bray Foundation Series,”a portfolio ofblack—and—
white photographs by J. M. Cooper 94.

Healtl; 108

“‘To Turn the Dark Cloud Inside Out): American Red Cross
Home Service in Montana, I9I7—I925,” by Joan
Bishop I09

“Ghost Illness: A Cross—Cultural Experience with the Expression
of a Non—Western Tradition in Clinical Practice,” by
Robert W. Putsch, III, MD I26

Literature 146

“A Montana Coal Miner: History and Poetry,” by Peggy Riley I47

from 777e Tree ofM[...]n Tulki, by Robert Bringhurst I65

“High, Wide, and Greening: A Survey ofMontana’s
Environmental Li[...]ival,” by Wilbur Rehmann I87

“David Murray & the Montana Jazz Community,” by Alexandra
Sw[...]

“Remembering Bill Stockton,” an essay by Donna Forbes & a
poem by Rick Newby I95

“Tensions, Paradoxes, and Impurities: The Truth of the Matter:
Paintings by Sandra Dal Poggetto,” by Mark

Stevens 200

Food/Agriculture 219
“Grubshedding: The Art of Eating Close to Home,” by Ari
LeVaux 22o

TRAVE[...]TIONS 227

“Levantine Diaries: Looking for Home in Lebanon, Iraq, San
Francisco, Kentucky, and Places Like That,” by
Clay Scott 228

REVIEWS 241

jeannette Rankin:A Politieal Woman by James Lopach and Jean
Luckowski and jeannette Rankin:Ameriea’r Conreienee
by Norma[...]24.2

Motberloa/e: : Legaeier ofI/Vomen’x Liver and Laborr in Butte, Montana,
edited by Janet L. Finn and Ellen Crain, reviewed by
Mary Hoffschwelle 24.8[...]by 0. Alan Weltzien

Ofltbe Grid‘Modern Homer and Alternative Energy by Lori Ryker,
reviewed by Flo[...]Connell, reviewed by Rick Newby 258

Refleetion, an exhibition by Nan Parsons, reviewed by

Dale Livezey 260

Edd E nderr, part of the exhibition, F igure. Plate. S pate, reviewed by
Michele Corriel 262

A Montana Dream Nuteraeker, by the Missouri River Dance
Company, reviewed by Mary Scriver 265

IN MEMORIAM 269

Patricia Goedicke, by Meliss[...]

6

From the Editor

Welcome to the third issue of Drumlummon Viewx, the online
journal of Montana arts and culture published by the cultural
nonprofit, Drumlummon Institute. Anyone who missed our first,
double issue, the Spring—Summer 2006 Drumlummon Viewx,

can still[...]intend to archive all back issues on our site).

The response to our first issue has been gratifying, even
overwhelming, and I encourage you to visit this issue’s C ram Talk:
Our Readerx’Letterx for a few of the enthusiastic responses to DV’x
launch.

With this issue, we continue our commitment to covering
the myriad expressions of Montana arts and culture with in—
depth essays, portfolios of original work in the literary, visual, and
media arts, reviews, and moving memorials to mark the passing
of leading Montana culture—bearers. As with the first issue, our
range is wide, stretching from health care to emerging loc[...]ences to regional architectural
expressions, from an analysis of the state’s environmental literature
to a meditation on the writings of coal miner/ poet Joseph
Meagher of Roundup.

We feature powerful work by the two poets—Lowell Jaeger
of Bigfork and Roger Dunsmore of Dillon—who, together with
Sandra Alcosser, were finalists for the position of Montana’s
first Poet Laureate. Our art section features appreciations of
Bill Stockton, the late, great modernist sheep rancher/ painter of
Grass Range, and an essay on the distinctive work of Sandra Dal
Poggetto by Pulitzer—winning biographer and critic Mark Stevens.

And in our “Travels 8cTranslations” section, Emmy—winning

journalist Clay Scott meditates on notions of “home,” traversing
the terrain between Montana and Lebanon.

We continue to strive for a balance between the local and
the global, “a regionalism that travels.” Perhaps the critic Tony
Baker, in writing about the profoundly rooted work of Basil

Bunting, the great Northumbrian poet, expresses it best:

[Hn an age when language is homogenised so easily because
so easily transmitted, the words that arise as the particular
result of contact with a particular place are likely to be the

truest: the local is indeed the only universal.

Whether it is Canadian polymath Robert Bringhurst
striving to understand his coming to consciousness on the banks
of Montana’s trout streams or architectural theorist Lori Ryker
exploring notions of “Learning Montana, Evolving Place,” the
artists and thinkers in this issue offer us a marvelously rich mosaic
(to use a key metaphor employed by the late Montana historian
Dave Walter, honored in this issue).

Thank you for your interest in Drumlummon V iewr%l
those thousands of downloads! Please continue to let us know
how we’re doing. And watch for our Spring 2007 issue, due out in
June (if you’d like to join our Drumlummon Alerts email list, send

an email to that effect to info@drumlummon.org).

Rick Newby

Editor—in—chief, Drumlummon V iewx

rnewby@drumlummon.org

Here at Drumlummon Views, we are infinitely grateful to three
groups of truly generous folks, those who support our efforts
financially, those who volunteer their time and wisdom, and those
who contribute their stories, poems, essays, reviews, images, and
ideas to enrich each issue.Without them Drumlummon V iewr and
Drumlummon Institute itself could not, and would not, exist.

To see a complete listing of our financial supporters, visit
the Drumlummon Institute home page (www.drumlummon.org)
and click on Drumlummon’s Funders. Our volunteer su[...]r utmost
gratitude: first, our hardworking Board of Directors,Jeff Williams,
Matt Pavelich, Patty Dean, Niki Whearty, and Rennan Rieke;
second, the deeply knowledgeable members of our Board of
Advisors (on the DI home page, click on Drumlummon Board
ofAdvisors); and third, Drumlummon V iewx’ contributing editors,
who come up with many of our story ideas and indeed contribute
their own work to DV (see the journal’s masthead).The writers,
thinkers, and artists—from many different disciplines—who share

their marvelous efforts in DV’r pages provide the journal’s lifeblood;

you will find their names in this issue’s Table of Contents and their
impressive biographies in our contributors’ notes.

Our gratitude, too, goes to the following individuals and
institutions who have helped in myriad ways: Chere Jiusto,
Montana Preservation Alliance; Lory Morrow and Becca Kohl,
Montana Historical Society; Robyn Peterson, Carol Green, and
Nancy Wheeler, Yellowstone Art Museum; Liz Gans and Cheri
Thornton, Holter Museum ofArt; Manuela Well—Off—Man,
Montana Museum of Art & Culture; Josh DeWeese, Steven Young
Lee, Robert Harrison, and Jill Oberman, Archie Bray Foundation;
Debbie Miller, Minnesota Historical Society; Robert Bringhurst
(for his typographical wisdom); Marcella Sherfy; Donna Forbes;
Mark Stevens; Ari LeVaux; Clay Scott; Suzanne Shope and the
Shope family for their continued willingness to let us reproduce
drawings by Irwin “Shorty” Shope; and the many others who have
offered us story ideas, moral support, and good cheer.

Finally, our thanks go to Geoff Wyatt of Wyatt Design,
Drumlummon Viewx’Art Director, who has designed this issue so

b eautifully.

THIS ISSUE’s ORIGINAL WORK

Caroline Patterson

Netty rested her glasses in her lap, but she didn’t put them on.
She liked[...]g her world into focus, she liked to be
damn good and ready. It was startling, this moment of sudden
clarity, when the black mailbox and the oak tree and the Dainty
Bess tea roses emerged from a blur of color. It stunned and
saddened her.

While she waited, her past visited her: Her husband,Thomas,
who always bowed to the ladies, his waist like a hinge, and held out
his pinky finger when he drank tea. Who respected her and bored
her and died quietly at fifty. The hairdresser, Mavis, who permed
her hair orange once.The neighbor woman, Marla, who came to
the back door, holding out the red—streaked palms her husband had
pressed on the stove when his supper was burnt.

There was Olivia. The petunias made Netty think of Olivia:
the sweet, peppery smell of the wide—faced flowers that spilled over
the window boxes and onto the porch where Netty would see her
today for the first time in fifty years.

Olivia putting petunias into red clay pots, tamping down the
dirt while she trilled, “I—i—i—t’s summ[...]her yellow hair into a bun as she flitted around
the two—room schoolhouse where they shared a teaching post,
scattering hair pins in her wake, calling, “Netty have you seen my
papers?”

Netty, whose papers were in the satchel at her side, waited
in their only armchair. She had sighed andthe room,
faster and faster, slipping on her dress, damping down the stove,
hopping on one foot then another as she put on her shoes.

Netty walked across the room, picked up Olivia’s papers, and
handed them to her.

“You really have a gift fo[...]really have a knack. Can you button my dress?”

The most unfair part was, when they arrived at the
schoolhouse, Olivia looked cool and lovely as if she’d just bloomed
and her pupils all loved her. Netty, they feared.

She pushed her feet to get the porch swing going again, and
remembered the morning she decided to see Olivia. At the kitchen
table, shed a vision of her life splitting apart, like great chunks of
ice shearing off a glacier and bobbing out to sea. Olivia was on one
of them saying, “I like deliciom colors. Yellows and reds.”

Fifty years, she told Marilee, her daughter, in the middle
of breakfast. Fifty years is long enough. Long enough for what?
Marilee said. Long enough to hold a grudge, Nett[...]people you belong to them? I
guess, Marilee said and handed her the toast.

The station wagon sailed into the drive and minutes later,
Marilee came out on the porch, saying about the children’s
swimming or was it tennis, something about good weather and
luck.

Netty didn’t say anything. Age boiled things down to basics
and she no longer answered things that didn’[...]

of “home,” which would bother Marilee almost to[...]e?”

“Put on your glasses.” Marilee thumped the black leather
case on the ice cream table. “You need your glasses, Mother[...]Netty put her hand on her daughter’s. “That is the point.”

Marilee started as if she’d been sho[...]be
excited,” she said, then she hurried across the porch with small
quick steps, almost ajog, the boards sighing under her feet.

Excited, Netty thought and she felt a longing burn through
her like smoke.

As she settled her glasses on the bridge of her nose, and the
muscles in her eyes sprang alive and anchored her in the present
again, the moment returned and arced through her heart like
lightning. The moment Olivia stood at the door of the hospital
room, her hand fluttering to the hair at the nape of her neck, and

she whispered, “Frankie and I are going to be married.”

September 27, 1928. The wipers whispered, onrward, onrward,
the hymn Netty’s mother practiced each week for church, the
chords thin and mean—spirited. Netty loathed it but she couldn’t get
it out of her mind.

She shifted on the cracked leather seat to look outside. It
was an early storm. Snow swept from the green, unmown fields to
the base of the Bitterroots.The mountains were shrouded in black—
bellied clouds, but every once in a while a peak appeared, sharp and
pointed as a tooth.

Olivia wanted to take the bus together, to make an

entrance—Olivia liked entrances—but Netty insisted on traveling
alone. She liked to mark big passages of her life alone. She
graduated from college and now she was going to support herself
and her mother by teaching in Elk, Montana, with her best friend
Olivia. When Frank finished law school, they’d marry and settle in
Bridger.

She thought of Frank, of the wind rippling his taffy—colored
hair last July, when they rode horses at his ranch up Ninemile. She
had never ridden. He gave her a lead—footed sorrel that hung its
head and shuffled the path after Frank’s restless bay. When they
came to a meadow, Frank stopped and turned around in his saddle.
“Are you sore, Netty?” he asked as sh[...]“Do
you want to stop?”

Netty looked at him. His eyes glinted back at her from
behind his rimless glasses. There was a quickening inside her, a
pleasurable dropping down, and she shivered and banged her
heels in the stirrups. She kicked again, and the horse’s legs began
churning through the oat grass until the black—eyed susans blurred
into streaks of yellow. She kept galloping toward the dark line of
forest.

“Netty!” Frank said when he caught up with her. “What’s got
into you?”

She nudged the horse on.

Frank’s laughter floated out behind her. “I don’t know if
Bones is ready for you!”

She reined the horse to a stop. “And are you?”

At the picnic later, he pulled her down on the checkered
cloth. Ants swarmed over the chicken bones, the plates smeared

with potato salad. He ran his hand up her leg. She kissed him and

II

pushed it up further.

At the station in Elk, a man threw her trunk in the back of
his cart. He gave her some blankets and slapped the seat next to
him. “Model A’s broke,” he muttered as they clattered off down
the road.The snow thickened, swirling through the apple orchards,
whitening the horse’s rump, and she was half—frozen when they
arrived at the schoolhouse.

She opened the door.

About a dozen children stared back at her. They were dressed
in overalls or thin grey dresses and holding buckets, dirty and
lusterless as their eyes.

“I thought school started tomorrow?” Netty said to Olivia,
who was bobbing up and down, working the pump.

Olivia laughed and stood up. “Welcome!” she said and held
her arms out. “We’ve got the only indoor pump in town.”

Netty took over, while Olivia stoked the fire. As she gave
them their water, they gave he[...]Satchel McLeod—till their buckets were filled and they
put on their overcoats and stood by the door.

“Do they need help home?” Netty looked at the children.
“Do you need help home?”

The children stared back at her.

“I guess not,” Olivia said. “They come back every night.”

When the children left, Olivia filled a basin of hot water
at the stove, and walked to Netty’s chair. She knelt down and
unbuckled her galoshes.

Netty held her feet up.[...]t them down.”

“They stink, Olivia. They’re what you might call ripe. I can do
this myself.”

“Don’t be silly.” Olivia put he[...]“I want
to.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Of course I don’t,” Olivia said as she squeezed the excess
water from the washcloth.

Netty looked down at Olivia. Her face grew moist and her
hair caught the light from the lamp and flicked gold into the room.
She wrapped the cloth around Netty’s feet, first one, then the other,
and Netty felt the heat as it pulsed and stung and traveled up her

legs to her heart.

She was setting out the tea things when the Thunderbird
rolled to a stop. The brakes wheezed. A harried—looking man in
sunglasses slammed the driver’s door, checked his watch, then
rushed around the car to help the passenger to her feet.

Gravity, Netty thought. It keeps working against us.

The old woman inched her walker up the sidewalk, her white
hair swaying with each step. As she talked to the man at her side,
she didn’t seem to see the way he kept measuring the distance to
the porch, and scowling.

Netty clenched the tablecoth as a sour taste rose up from her
heart and scalded her throat. She took a breath, set down the sugar
bowl. “Olivia!” she cried, “You haven’t aged a minute!”

Olivia stopped at the bottom of the porch steps and looked
up. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice[...]age. Just ask my son Larry here.”

As she said this, Olivia looked a little to the left of her.

12

Cataracts, Netty thought, and graciously held out her hand.

“The world,” she said to the third graders, “is made up of
large bodies of water and land.” She rolled down the overhead map,
and held her pointer on blue expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. In the
thin January light, dust motes spun to the wooden floor and for
some reason this made her sad. “Continents,” she said. “Can you
say continents?”

As the ragged sounds of their voices filled the room, the
children’s faces seemed to dim and recede from her.

She was saying, “The seven continents are. . . .” when the
rushing sound started in her ears and she asked them to keep quiet.

Something was wron[...]. “We are continents!”

Stars floated across the periphery of her vision. There was a
banging noise and she was sure the wood heater had exploded and
she remembered telling Thomas, the oldest, to check it.

The next thing she knew Olivia was standing over her,
wringing her hands, and saying “Netty, what happened?”

Netty lifted her head and said, “North America, South
America, Australia, Africa, Antarctica, Asia, and Europe.”Then
she shut her eyes and didn’t wake up till they carried her across the
schoolyard.

That night, Frank sat at the edge of the mohair sofa and said,
“Don’t go.” He had driven down from Bridger to join Netty for the
Elk Primary School Cake Walk and Dance. He put his hand on

her forehead. “You’re feverish.”[...]erself up into a sitting position. “I decorated
the schoolroom. I baked a cake. I got the orchestra and by God, I’m
going to enjoy myself.”

“Damn[...]he said. “You always push things.” He
opened the wood heater door, and jabbed a poker at the fire.

The logs shifted.

She said, “You don’t understand.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’ll turn on me.”

“[...]’ve fired teachers for less,” Netty said. “And I can’t
afford to lose this job.Tel_l me, how would I survive? What would
my mother do? What would we do?”

“We’d get by.”

“I feel just fine.”

“You’re too damn stubborn.” Frank stared at the fire, his eyes
glassy. “You get stuck in things.”

“I do not,” she whispered. “I’m not like that at all.”

He looked over at her, the poker dangling from his hand. “If
I ordered you to stay home, as my future wife, would you?”

“No,” Netty said.

“What about “love, honor, and obey?’”

“I’d obey you if you were right,” Netty answered.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Frank said quietly

A log sparked. He turned it over, and the coals flared and
dulled in the cold air.

The pineboard room was bright with crepe paper garlands.

13

Rows of desks had been unbolted from the floor and stacked in

a corner, and on makeshift tables of boards and sawhorses, there
were nearly a dozen cakes—layer and sheet cakes of vanilla, lemon,
chocolate, and spice.

By the door, Davey Doe’s five—piece orchestra tuned up. The
drummer juggled his drumsticks.The violinist, the man who met
Netty at the station, pulled his bow across the strings and a chord
rasped out over the room. One woman traced a box step, and when
she was done, she looked up and laughed.

Nearby, Olivia was taking dimes for the cakewalk and when
she saw Netty, she waved.

In the wake of a thin hush, Netty crossed the room with
Frank at her elbow. When they passed Clinton, a red stain spread
from his cheeks to his ears and he giggled and looked away, and
she knew it was a good thing she’d come.

They walked to Olivia, who was standing in front of a large
chalked circle, sliced up like a pie and numbered.

“Are you sure you should be here?”[...]ivia gave Netty a look, then Netty turned to face the class
and shouted, “Attention!” and her children looked back at her with
a familiar mixture of boredom and dull hatred.

As the noise grew around them, she nudged Olivia. “Go[...]ke with
seven—minute frosting.” She turned to Frank. “That goes for you
too.”

“Are you sure?” Olivia said.

“Of course, I’m sure.”

The players took up their positions. Netty looked at the

conductor and as she brought down her arm, the orchestra played,
“Smile, Darn Ya, Smile.” People began to move slowly around the
circle.

Netty watched as the fiddler’s arm sawed up and down, and
the coronet player arced his back and tilted his horn into the air,
thinking how old she felt. She drew a number from a bread bowl.
“Four!” she called.The music stopped and a farmer’s wife threw her
meaty hands up and walked away, laughing.

One after one, she called a number, until only Olivia,
Clinton, and Frank followed each other around the bleary circle.
Between the two adults, Clinton walked the circle with great
concentration, never taking his eyes from his feet.

“Well at least the caller’s my fiancee,” Frank said.

“But she’s my best friend!” Olivia cried.

Frank laughed. “No, I’m quite sure she’s on my si[...]e!” Olivia flipped
her hair over her shoulders and squared her back.

The crowd hooted.

Frank looked at Olivia, and something in his gaze stabbed
Netty. She wanted to net that look and make it come to her. The
room grew unbearably hot.

Later, she remembered things in this order. She called out
“Six!” Olivia cried, “Oh noI”There was a scraping noise, then a
scuinng of feet as Davey Doe and the Pioneer Club Orchestra
played “Smile, Darn Ya, Smile” for the tenth time that night.

It was walking pneumonia.[...]tal, to a dun—

colored room with high ceilings and rattly windows. She was in an

I4

oxygen tent while coctors came in and out of her room and shook
their grey heads at 1er. Olivia took over her classes. Frank came
when he could, anc brought her a hothouse orchid stuck in a bottle
of Great Falls Select. He brought Olivia up on weekends, and the
two of them snuck in sandwiches and beer.

Three weeks ater, her fever shot up to 103. Olivia was visiting
and she stayed by Netty’s bedside, putting cool washcloths on her
forehead until Netty told her to stop it, she felt like a sponge.

Olivia foldec her hands and was silent. “The children miss
you,” she said final y.

“I bet,” Netty said. The mention of the children panicked her.
She lifted her heac from the pillow. “What about my job?”

“I nearly forgot!” Olivia drew a large paper valentine out of her
satchel and handec it to Netty. It was a red heart pasted on a doily
and filled with stic {—like handwriting. “This was the children’s idea.”

“I know whose idea it was.” Netty fingered the papery lace.
“Thank you, Olivia. But tell me, do I still have a job?”

“You’re wrong. The valentine was Clinton’s idea.”

Chills racked[...]fore Netty could find out that
Olivia was right, the valentine was Clinton’s idea, and before Netty
could find out that the Bitterroot County School Board had voted
to replace her for fear of infection.

Several days later, Olivia stood in the doorway of the hospital
room, her fingers working loose hairs back into the braids circling
her head.

Netty turned to look at her. “Come in,” she said. “I won’t bite,
you know.”

Olivia looked across the room at her.

Netty had a thin needle taped in her arm, her brown hair

haloed her head, and over the bed, there a sampler said “Healing
Begins in the Heart.”

Then Netty saw Olivia’s open hands and bent waist and the
way she strained forward as if she were trying to give something
and take something away at the same time.

Olivia’s hands dropped to her sides, and hung there.Then she
leveled her gaze at Netty and said, “Frankie and I are going to be
married.”

Netty pulled out the IV. She walked across the room to the
window, a single streak of blood coursing the white of her arm,
and as she looked out at the town, she remembered thinking how
bright it was, how sharply the buildings and trees and people were
etched so sharply against the snow.

“Get out,” she whispered.

The memory was like a crystal, and as Netty examined it over
the years, its changing planes and colors revealed new infuriating
things.

For the first several years, she was furious about Frank. How
he deserted her, how he took away what she bad with him, like that
moment where she’d galloped across the meadow, Frank calling
behind her, and she kept riding until the sound of his voice trickled
away like water, and then she rode further. She had thought about
writ[...].

Later on, it was their timing that galled her. The fact that
Olivia told her while she was flat on[...]” she’d whisper with grim happiness. “Fever of 103!”

But from the day Olivia had stood in the hospital doorway

until the time her own legs began their steady arthritic burning and

She’d remember the night she and Olivia lay in their beds,
the fire popping and hissing in the stove, talking about how they’d
decorate their houses. When Olivia walked across the room, her
gown billowing white into the dark room. She crawled in beside
Netty, her hair fanning across the pillow. “I hit a boy,” Olivia
whispered.

“[...]ut I did,” Olivia said. “He was smarting off, and he
wouldn’t stop, and I walked up to him, Netty, and—instinct just
took over.” She turned on her side to face Netty. “The worst thing
is, I don’t feel sorry. I don’t feel sorry at al[...]er arm around her. “You’re sorry,” she said and Olivia
looked at her, her face shining.

It was this face—Olivia’s delicate, sweet face with her eyes
turned down at theand the smile turned into a leer and the face laughed, emy.

At first, the pain came in stabbing waves and she’d leap out
of bed and burn things: Olivia’s handkerchiefs, pictures, lockets of
hair. Later, the very syllables of Olivia’s name seemed to pierce her
heart, in and out, like stitching, till the pain gave way in her later

years to a sharp, peculiar feeling of pleasure.

A year after they were married, Olivia wrote her a long letter
in her flowery script. She went on and on. “We just didn’t expect
it,” she said. “We just didn’t have any idea. Having hurt you is my
cross to bear, and I beg the Lord every day for your forgiveness.

Please, Netty.” She underlined the “please” four times.

After she read it, Netty folded up the letter and put it in her
undergarments drawer. After she closed it, she looked up in the
mirror a long time, watching her face go in and out of focus, then
she slowly turned the key in the lock.

Each year, she added another Christmas card, first from
North Dakota, then Iowa. There were black and white pictures of
Olivia and Frank dressed in old—fashioned costumes or Santa Claus
outfits, then holding one baby after another. There was the grainy
color photograph of the six of them, Frank and Olivia, grey and
slightly stooped, the children looking apologetic. Each year, Olivia
looked more bird—like, and Frank became pale and bloated, as if he
needed more and more flesh to anchor him there.Then the pictures
stopped, and there were only cheap cards of holly or reindeer and
Olivia’s lone signature.

Netty had tried to fo[...]down at her writing table, laid out a fresh sheet of
stationary with “Mrs. Thomas Fullerton” on top, and touched the
nib of her fountain pen to the paper. She wrote “Dear Olivia,” and
stopped. She stared at the paper. She wrote “I,” then a thin line of
ink trailed off down the page.

Over the years, the memory hardened and settled inside her,
settled between her and Marilee, who had tried, since she was a
child, to shake something loose in her—and every time she looked
at her daughter, it was a c[...]how me why I should
let go.

Netty was silent for what seemed like hours while Olivia

had been going on about her granddaughter, the little actress, and
Marilee had been glowering in her direction. Finally, the phone
rang and Marilee leaped up to answer it.

They were silent[...]es?” Netty said. She pressed cake onto her fork and listened
to the distant watery sounds of children playing..

“Why. . . ” Olivia looked down at her lap, and then back at
Netty. “Why don’t you tell me ab[...]ren?”

“Let’s see,” Netty said. “Thomas is in third grade, he doesn’t
do very well, he’s fat, he can’t run an entire block, and he likes
to kill birds. Katherine is in fifth, she’s got bucked teeth, a sour
disposit[...]ed at
Olivia, “to make her friends unhappy.”

The sound of passing cars slid between them.

Netty unfolded the Scrabble board on the table, and lined up
her letters on the wooden easel. She looked politely across the table
at her opponent.

Olivia bent over her purse and, to Netty’s satisfaction, drew
out a large magn[...]cted, Olivia
started out with words like “Ox” and “Fan.”

Olivia started describing the rest home her son kept her
in, the best in Butte (ButteI—Netty thought—the best in Butte!)
where they played mah jong on Wednesdays. “Mah jong,” Olivia
said absently, “was Frank’s favorite—he liked the sound of those
tiles.”

The taste again. The bilious, sour taste that carved the edges
of every day and laced the nights and nursed that other pain, that

of seeing what you didn’t want to be and then becoming it. Just say
you’re sorry, she told herself, and she blurted, “How’d Frank go?”

Olivia paled.

“Well?” Netty said. Wo[...]unbidden, on
her lips.

“Heart,” Olivia said, and her finger traced slow circles
around the board. She looked up and laughed, “I always told him,
too many steaks and butter pats!”

“Were you there?” Netty said[...]ur feet, Netty.”

“So you did,” Netty said, and her tea cup chinked as she

replaced it in the saucer.

This time they did not talk. Marilee swung in and out of the
house, watering the flowers, bringing pictures of the children to
show Olivia.

Olivia laid out her tiles. “Ever hear anything about Professor
Murray?” she finally said. “Remember Teaching Methods 11?
“When the attention drops, get out thewhat happened.”This is the time, she told
herself. She will tell you what happened, then you will take her
hand and say, forgive me.

“Lord, I don’t want to dredge up all that stuff. What good

“Far behind mme of us,” Netty said.

“Can’t we just bury—”[...]night we were coming back from seeing you, Netty,
and we stopped to let some cattle cross the road. We were just
waiting, talking about you, Netty, I swear it, when Frank kissed me.”
A blush crept over her face. “And I kissed him back.”

Netty looked at Olivia. She imagined her mouth forming
the words, and she waited for something to well up in her heart,
but she felt instead a terrible panic of things giving out, like some
essential starch had[...]u know
wbatyou‘ve done? Doyou 1747):? any idea? andand stopped.

There was a slight tapping noise as they set tile after tile on
the board. Netty was keeping score. She was winning, but not by
as much as she’d hoped. Filling in her letters after a turn, she lined
up the tiles on the easel, the word popped out, plain as day. No, she
told herself. Move on.

Then Olivia gave her a milky smile, and Netty looked at her
and laid out the word “betray.”

She put her hands in her lap, and waited. She watched as
Olivia rose up to hold her magnifying glass over the board, and the
letters grew large and ripply in the glass.

Olivia looked at the board a long time. She sat down heavily
and sighed. “You should forgive me now, Netty.”[...]ints?” Netty said. Her hand draw a shaky eleven in

the column of numbers under her name.

“You’re being childish.” Olivia’s voice[...]“Your turn,” Netty said.

Olivia rose up out of her chair, and gripped Netty’s wrist.
“Give it up.”

Netty stared back at her, surprised by the strength of Olivia’s
grip. She could hear the swing creaking, and the sound of a bicycle
screeching in the dirt, then she said in a small voice, “I can’t.”

“Be like that,” Olivia said. Her eyes burned, and she snapped
down her tiles, one by one, until she spelled “cake.”Then she smiled

sweetly. “Triple score.”

Still, as she watched Olivia go down the steps, she wanted to
stop her and say, “Remember when they went through our trash?”

One night in Elk, they woke up to the sound of footsteps
outside, and they looked out the window to see two men in
overalls, going through their garbage, tossing bottles and cartons
onto thethe floor. Then Olivia sat up and
whispered, “I’m scared.”

Netty pushed to get the swing going again. From the house,
she could hear water running and dishes knocking against one
another, Marilee saying to her husband, “I wouldn’t call it a disaster,
but you know Mother. . . .” In a while, Marilee would come out
to see if she’d[...]care.

She plucked a dead blossom from a petunia and crushed it in

18

her hand.

On the sidewalk, she could see Olivia’s back receding,
growing small and dim and white, then she stepped into the mouth
of the car and her face turned back once to look at her.

The sun was setting, and the sky had turned a deep electric
blue. The street was quiet, except for the sounds ofwomen’s voices
calling their children in. She swung her head blindly toward the
rumble of the motor, toward the rise and fall of Marilee’s voice, and

she whispered, “Forgive me.”

19

Claxe to the Fire
Thomas Thackeray

Someone is fussing with the fire, and when I open one eye, I see
that it’s Ma poking at the coals and putting in some split wood and
sliding the draft cover open. Ben stands up stretching and wagging
his tail, nuzzles Ma’s hand, and clicks across the wood floor out
into the kitchen.I snuggle deeper into the down sleeping bag. I
shift so I can pull my pillow out of the gap between the arm and
the cushion on the sofa. When it gets too cold, we can’t heat the
upstairs bedrooms, so I have slept in the living room for the past
two weeks. On the other side ofthe room, Skychild snores softly
from his bedroll on the floor. A gust of wind rattles the windows.

I blink awake again. Now Ma is firing the cook stove. I hear
her shaking down the ashes and crumpling newspaper to get it
going.I doze off untilI hear the door slam and the Old Man’s
voice, “It’s chilly today.”

“What’s the thermometer say?” Ma asks.

“32 below. That’s without the wind. Looks like we’ll be
staying close to thethe week before Christmas anyway,” the Old Man
answers. And I know with that statement that it’s settled. I’ll stay
home from school until Christmas break is over.

It was a lucky break for me that the storm blew in on Friday

night. Otherwise I’d have been stuck in town at Grandma’s house
instead of snowed in at home. I put on my Pendleton shirt as I
slide out of the sleeping bag and swing my legs of the sofa and
into my Levis. I lace up my felt shoes and pad into the kitchen. Ma
pours my tea, and I dump in some sugar and stir then wait for the
swirling leaves to settle out.

“S’pose you’re anxious to get back to school,” the Old Man
says with a wink.

I grin at his joke. “I s’pose,”I say.

“We’ll be feeding with the sleigh again today,” he says.

I nod.

Ma forks bacon onto a tin plate that she sets on the side of
the stove and pours batter.I hear it hiss as it hits the hot grease.
The smell of breakfast has roused Skychild and he comes out of the
living room rubbing his eyes and coughing. He is only nineteen,
but he sounds old in the morning. He sits next to me at the table
and Ma pours him a cup ofcoffee. Even over the bacon and coffee
I detect the scent of tobacco on his breath and of buckskin from
his moccasins.

“I better wear your mackinaw today,” the Old Man says.
Skychild has a Hudson’s Bay mackinaw that the Old Man always
claims to want to trade him for.

“Don’t let him talk you out of that coat, Raymond,” Ma says.
“You’ll need it today. It’s 32 below and the wind’s blowing.”

“I heard the wind come up last night,” Skychild says.
“Looked out the window and saw stars. Knew it’d be cold today.”

“It’s drifting pretty good,” the Old Man says. “I had to shovel
to get the door open on the cow barn. Old Ada wouldn’t give much

mi[...]

“Not many mosquitoes today anyway,” Skychild says. He
pulls the lid from a can of Bugler tobacco andthe can and places them in his
shirt pocket.

Skychild has been teaching me to use his cigarette—rolling
machine. I watch as he lights one and draws in the smoke, and I
wonder why people smoke.The tobacco smells good to me until it

burns. Then it stinks. I have all my layers of clothes on by the time
the Old Man and Skychild are done smoking.

The Old Man parks the sleigh on the lee side of the haystack.

Skychild and I throw bales and he stacks them until the sleigh is
loaded. Ben grabs a mouse we have disturbed and shakes it until it
is dead.We all climb aboard.The Old Man puts the earflaps down
on his cap, grabs the reins in his mittened hands, and clucks at
the team. The sleigh runners have frozen down while we loaded,
and Joe and Willy, the matched bays Ma named for Bill Mauldin’s
soldie[...]emselves against their collars to break
it loose. The hames squeak against the collars and the harness
chains jingle as we begin to move. Once we leave the shelter of
the haystack the wind bites into my face and I turn my back on it
and hunker my shoulders. Ben leaves his mouse and drops into the
tracks behind us.

When we reach the feed grounds that lie within the river

brush, Skychild jumps off with the axe to chop waterholes. While

the Old Man and I cut twine and dole out the hay to the cattle
strung out behind us, I think about Skychild. We hired him as

a favor to his grandfather, Little Owl, a man who helped my

own grandfather when he settled this ranch. I wonder how long
Skychild will work until he “gets the thirst,” as the Old Man
describes it, and leaves. Hired men come and go, but I notice they
all seem to share a common thirst that can’t be quenched on the
ranch.

We save one bale as a bench to sit on for the ride home.I
slide my heavy overboots across the sleighbed kicking off the last
bits of hay, then sit on the bale next to the Old Man who turns
the team so we circle toward the river. The wind seems to be dying
down.

Skychild is squatted facing us next to the opening he has
chopped in the ice. He has one glove off and is smoking a cigarette,
and with his other hand he holds the axe upright, bit down, in the
waterhole. The Old Man halts the team twenty yards away, but
Skychild offers no in[...]opes down to greet
him.

Skychild sits staring at the waterhole, smoke from his
cigarette mingling with the fog rising straight up from the water.
I notice that the wind has stopped. Skychild’s dark features seem
unnaturally pale.

Ben barks and turns back toward us.

“Something’s wrong,” the Old Man says.

I jump from the sleigh and run down the gentle slope to
where Skychild squats. With his bare hand he flicks the cigarette

into the water where it hisses; he watches as it dr[...]

21

washing up against the edge of the hole. He pushes the butt under
the ice with the axe and then offers it to me. Dumbly I grab the icy
handle seeing the bright red spatters of blood where the river hasn’t
washed it clean. More blood stains the ice around the hole.

“Where’s all the blood from?”I start to ask, but then I see
the diagonal gash across his rubber boot. “You’ve hurt your foot,”I
say needlessly.

The Old Man helps Skychild to the sleigh. We lean him
against the hay bale. “Help him get his glove on,” he says, and he
slaps the reins spooking the team into a fast trot toward home.
Skychild allows me to slip on his glove; then he stares at his hand
as though not sure it is part ofhis body.

“What happened?”I ask, but he just keeps looking at his
hand.

“Get that boot off,” the Old Man says.

I glance at the bloody foot, then take it carefully in one hand
and begin unhooking the buckles with the other. Skychild gives
no sign that he is aware of my actions. In the cold the blood has
formed brilliant red crystals as it mixed with the ice on his boot.
Trying to be as gentle as possible, I slide the boot off his wounded
foot. I stare at the long gash across his moccasin. I can see the
severed end of what must be a tendon looking unnaturally white
against the sliced flesh. I feel breakfast rising, so I look away and
take big gulps of icy air to hold it down. Heavy white clouds are
moving in from the northwest. I hear the syncopated clomp of the
horses’ hooves up front, the jangle of the harness chains against the
doubletrees, and the squawk of the runners on the snow.

Looking backI see that Ben has fallen in behind us and
is running to keep up. I have disturbed the wound, and blood

begins to ooze from it and drip onto the bed of the sleigh where it
puddles and begins to turn to a reddish slush in the cold.

Skychild has begun shivering violently by the time we get
him into the house where Ma takes over. The Old Man and I
unhitch the sleigh and take the horses into the barn. “Pull their
bridles and give them some extra oats,” he says. “Your ma[...]to swap horses?”I ask.

“No. I’ll leave Sis and Qleen in case you and your ma need
‘em. We’ll feed with them tomorrow.”

By the time I get to the house, Ma has dressed Skychild’s
wound. He sits in one kitchen chair with his foot propped on
another. His features no longer seem so ashen, and he is sipping
a cup of coffee that he holds with both hands. The trembling has
subsided. Ma has stacked three old quilts on the bench by the door
and has two thermos bottles on the counter. Ben sits by the stove
licking his paws and chewing balls of ice out of the hair between
his toe pads.

“You coulda just said you wanted to go to town, Sky,” the
Old Man says. He is warming his hands over the kitchen stove.

Skychild offers him a weak smile.[...]oo cold.”

“Wind’s not even blowing now,” the Old Man says.
“Practically tropic.”

Once we’ve warmed ourselves, the Old Man and I hitch the
team back to the sleigh. The sky has completely clouded over by
now. We load eight or nine hay bales and build a sort of shelter
where Skychild and he can ride.

“See you in the morning,” he says. Frost has already formed

on his scarf from his breath.

He clucks at the horses.Joe and Willy step off smartly
hauling their light load.

“Stay close to the fire,” he says and raises a mittened hand.

Ben gives chase, but I call him back. Ma and I watch until
the sleigh disappears into the coulee, then we go into the house.

After lunch we sit at the card table we’ve set up in the living
room next to the wood stove. She works at a jigsaw puzzle, and I
roll some cigarettes with Skychild’s roller and rub my stocking—foot
on Ben’s back. Occasionally I hear the stove metal creak. The clock
in the hall strikes the quarter—hour. I glance outside and see that
snow is beginning to fall again. Soon it will be time for evening
chores. Ma will have to milk Ada, and I’ll feed and water the barn
animals.

Suddenly something occurs to me. “Won’t Sky want his
tobacco?”I ask.

“Raymond’s far too young to be smoking so much,” she says.

And she fits another piece into the puzzle.

from high borders of our rooms.
She’s a monstrous killing machine

s[...]r universe.
Why,I say to her, bother?

She points the broom at me.
Cobwebs. Knit gauze curtains
in neglected corners

between us.

She pokes

and I squirm, the straw
scratches inside my sweatshirt,
behind my ears.

Until my book slips out of reach
and I roll to the carpet
laughing.

I close my eyes.

Tiny spiders line the freeways
leaving my heart.

Dream I’m a whole w[...]ly I surface.
Ammonia smells.
Cotton rags. Bucket
of suds. White

ceilings .

I open a window.

Inhale.

She enters from the garden.

Fistful of lilacs.

Hot Summer Sunset
Huge man “I’m talking
in t—shirt and boxers. Barefoot, with this goddamn plant.”
settled on his concrete
porch stoop, drinking beer. One “What’s it say?”
thirsty geranium in a pot
beside him. The man mops his forehead.
I walk past Puts his glasses on. “Maybe
toward home, old enough for[...]you to know.”

not much more than that. Watch

the man gesture in the air. “Ask.”I say.
Hear him talk to no one
near by. He looks at the plant.
So I stop and ask. Looks at me.
“Who are you talking t[...]

My mother clipped and mailed to me The State Biologist estimated

local news about two young bucks the buck who died with a slug in his heart
during rutting season who quarreled had lugged the “badly decomposed carcass”
and locked horns. Part of the survival of his foe for nearly six moons,

dance, to battle until someone loses all, possibly over forty miles of mountainside.
possibly to starvation, having so attached himself He said coyotes likely fed on the dead flesh
to the other’s rage. at night—only the spine, forelegs, and head remained—
The victor, and had pursued the buck to the end

in the unforeseen way one’s luck of his grisly ordeal.

can double back, stumbled some time later Now I read

under the cross hairs of the rifles scope, and bear of new burden on my brow.

and the hunter reported the deer I wonder what prompted my mother

had been “waltzing erratically” in choosing this story for me. I wonder
sideways and backwards through a thicket if the hunter draws any lesson here.

of alders and hackberries. Wondrous I’ve forgotten the exact numbers,

as that might sound, he pulled the trigger but someone tallied the points on each rack.

CVCH SO.

26

Polebridge Mercantile

Drive miles of gravel
up the North Fork on a Monday
your Daily Planner says

you have no time.

Let the washboard unrattle you,
ruts and potholes

slow you down.

Don’t park in front of the only pump
in Polebridge, Montana. Someone
might want gas

someday. Don’t be the one

who gets in the way.

Stand still three breaths

inside the Merc. Let the screen

door bang behind you.

Smell the yeast, rising. Sweet medicine

of huckleberry muffins.

Smile back at the woman

in the apron. She’s brown,

baked and plumped up

just right. In the air there’s reggae
everywhere and no tape player

in view. She sways shoulders and hips, plays
her long hair easy

side to side. A d[...], trail—mix

brownies with oats enough

to seed an acre. And chocolate chips

because they’re good too.

Life is short. So little time.
Makes you want to burn the date book.
Sell the condo. Move way out in the woods

with people who understand cookies.

Let the rest of the world keep it straight.
Let your hair grow[...]

over a fallen jack pine.
Brace my elbows

on my knees.

Bears do it.
Birds and squirrels.

Even slugs.

Gnats. Aphids.

Easy to spot elk
and deer doo. Complex
record ofjust who

passes by. And when.

I stand, zip

and study my scat—print.

Stuff I’m stuffed with.
Earth to earth.

Mud.
Of the Makers design.

The Meat Grinder

Mother clamped it to the chopping
block, and I remember her shoving
long hunks of baloney into the hopper
at the top, turning the crank

and through the grinder’s iron teeth

squirt ground sausage into the bowl below.

She yanked the crank with lots of muscle,
always, throwing her weight into it

as if the handle were heavy or the sausage
tough. As if it had to be done quickly
with all the determination it takes

to rip a bandage offa wou[...]’d asked.

I was surprised how easy it was. How the sausage,
when I cranked, flowed, made no resistance,

and even if I worked slowly the job was over

too soon. I was six or seven and felt I must be

very strong, much stronger than my mother

to master this task so easily. Now I wonder

so many years afterward, by the sweat of my mother’s
brow, what relish she found manhandling

that meat grinder. How she tore the butcher paper back
as if she were afraid of sausages, as if she couldn’t resist

doi[...]

Her waitress smock snugs telltale
tight around the middle. Even

the extra apron only makes the problem
more plain. She’s “expecting”

and like the lady in the last booth
along the highway window says,

8173 don’t look too 17511[...]That’s Birdie Jackson

whose son’s locked up in Deer Lodge
for shooting his ex—girl and ex—girl’s
new guy. Nobody killed nobody.

Plenty of yak, yak, yak

in a town where some people know
everybody’s business a whole lot
better than most of us know our own.
Birdie says it in a hissed whisper

to her blue—haired coffee pal. A private
tone, but funny

how the whole place falls quiet

at exactly the right wrong moment
and what’s not to be said aloud

gets headlined like big city news.

Birdie’s crony nods and sips.
Wanda Whose—Last—Name—I—Forgot.
Tretski. Trotski. Petruski. Like that.

Still owns the Lazy Double H,

at least all what’s fenced, but rents

it out now since she’s moved to town
after her husband smothered

under a load of manure. Rolled

his John Deere. Bigger story there, too,
the particulars of which could be had

at any table across the room. Asked for or not.

Wbat a xbome, Wanda adds,

Sbe’x xoyoung. The question

who’s the new daddy

drifts in cigarette smoke. Sizzles

on the grill.I catch myself blushing,
like it could be me, and it could’ve been
thirty years ago. In fact, I’m pretty sure
it was.

My dad’s face[...]rve

enough to announce my own

big news. He knew what I know now.
So what could he do but nod, pat my

shoulder, force a smile?

Birdie snags the waitress to question

this or that about the bill. Silly,

but I hold my breath to listen

how the topic moves closer to painfully
obvious. Both Birdie and Wanda fidget
in the bottom of their handbags

like they can’t remember something
they’ve just remembered again

and then forgot. Look Hon, Birdie

says without looki[...]21m. It’s a wad. Maybe

forty bucks. Wanda does the same.

Out—of—state plates zoom past

like nothing happens here. And I grin
through two eggs and toast. Savor
the coffee, every next swallow.

Tally comes to five seventy—five.

I doubt there’s much more than that in my pocket,

but count on it . . . I leave it all.

We Can Live Together This Far Apart

Today I hiked the old logging road
far as it would climb.

Into coo[...]s

high enough clouds

passed through me.

Fog at the summit opened

to spotlight

a slant hundred yards downwind,
a bear,

cinnamon, almost blonde.
Craning his nose.

Sniffing. Ears forward.

Overcast poured in between us,

and I backed away. Till sunlight

exposed the golden bear had stepped back too.

Both of us facing the limits
of common ground. His bounds
closing in

as my SPCCICS expands.

My lonely return home
echoed every footfa.l_l, each

rock kicked loose along the trail.
A disruption. Magnified,
how ripples grow. A signal.

How people march.

How worlds come and go.

For My Father

It wil be raining

in February in Lodi
the cay you die.

I wil, rest my hand

on your bald head,

feel the warmth fade
slow y from your body.

I wil, be[...]l be russet—cloaked

sparrows taking shelter on the porch.

I will set out a pan ofbread crumbs.

At the cemetery the grave—digger,
a young guy named

Walkington,

will apologize—

your death—date

not yet carved

on the pink stone.

And I will make

my older brother

pour half your ashes
into the frozen ground.
And the wind will blow
your dust out

across the snow.

Dog Spelled Backwards

I miss my old dog

when I hear the garbage truck
clanging in the alley

and there is no one to bark at it,

CXCCpt me.

I miss my dog

when I see Jenni’s pizza crust

left on her plate and no one to eat it,
no one to lick out the bowl

used for making enchiladas,

CXCCpt me.

I miss my old dog
when it is thirty below zero
and there is no one but me

to go photograph the frozen river.

I will miss him in the summer
when there is no one to lie on
the blanket between my feet
in the bottom of the canoe,

not CVCH me.

I miss him

when I’m swimming across the lake
so much slower than all the others
and no one dog—paddles back

to check in on me.

My dog never had fleas,
but he loved to roll in dead fish
and smell like a rotten toe.

Not me.

He’d let me[...]ring days for just so long
before he’d threaten and sputter
and nip at my hands

and get up and walk away.

He left his white hair all over our house,
on the rugs, on our clothes, in the car,
little balls of hair in

the corners of the bedroom.

Not me.

I miss my old dog
when the house creaks
and I think it is him
up walking around

or moaning.

Not me.

It m[...]to miss someone so.

I guess that’s why

I put his ashes under the Christmas tree.
I guess that’s why

when you tu[...]lls dog.
Not me.

(for Max, born under thejuniper and pinion pine wood pile at
Hopi Third Mesa in a snow storm, Thanksgiving day,

1988, to Twister, his blue heeler mother)

the company men smile slightly:

Aurora Borealjs

(for Jenni)

We walk the dog together
for the first time in weeks.
Eerie streaks of light

waver the sky.

We spin round and around,
our heads bent back,
watching green radiance
dissolve and reappear

like signs in some forgotten tongue.

The dawn is the ancient goddess Aurora.

For her sake, they say,

her husband got the gift of immortality,
but not the gift of perpetual youth.

He grew older and older

and uglier and smaller

until he ended up

as a grasshopper.

His green sky.

I remember the day we flipped our boat
on the big lake, the wind blowing it

far down the bay.

You, a fast swimmer, could have

caught up to it.

“Don’t leave meI”I cried out,

and we stayed together,

awkwardly working our way

two hours to shore

through cold, choppy water.

We spin now in this mid—night,
northern—dawn gone

all to starry, green streaks,

crazed and comforted and close—
grinning like two old grasshoppers

in the solar wind.

River Ark

We lash the bleached, oversize pelvis
to the prow ofthe canoe.

Green and yellow—striped clam shells,
signs of a muskrat living here,

litter the riverbank.

A pair of geese takes off suddenly,

the sound of feathers striking air,

one farting with every beat of its wings.
A green fireball arcs across the sky.

In one generation

the cottonwood trees will be gone.
Four hundred thousand cords

cut from these groves

in less than forty years—

steam—boats up the Missouri

to settle this country,

turn Indians to whiskey, bison to dust.

Someone says there’s a lizard with two penises.

Is it like a double—barreled shotgun,

the girls ask,

only you can’t pull both triggers a[...]teel fence stakes

bent over by ice,

camp amidst the very trees

where Governor Stevens

made his treaty with the Blackfeet.

Deer bones scatter a dry watercourse.
Tomorrow, I will see the diamond back of a snake
just beneath my foot,

miss by inches, spin and hop away.

We will climb a black mudslide

picking chunks of broken mica,

uprush of river air cooling our bodies,
pieces of petrified wood in the layer

of undisturbed dinosaur bones.

Woody will build a sweat—lodge by the river,
caring for his young son

while he sings and wields the splasher.
Someone will mention King David dancing
before the Ark of the Lord, David shouting,
naked in front of his servants’ daughters

so his wife despised him in her heart.

We are not King David and his people
dancing before God’s law.

We have heard the rattle of the snake
and seen the fire—ball

slice open wide the diamond sky.

We are jubilant, green

before the river’s ark.

Snowy Owl
(for Jen)

We have just left
the small herd of mules

fumbling chunks of apples
into their mouths

with loose, dry lips.[...]cks

on freezing nights.

Your head swivels round and around

cart—wheeling with another

low over the grain fields.

In the far north,
you are called Okpit,
something about[...]te feathers
flecked with dark.

Your mouth opens and closes
but you make no sound

that we can hearthe British statesman
at the conference to ban the use of air
power against civilians, 1932,

gave us this definition of Empire:

“We have to reserve the right to bomb niggers,”

he said, speaking of the Afghans, Kurds, and Iraqis.

(Air power is the reason why
the ratio of civilian deaths
to soldiers was 5 to 1 in the

20‘11 century as opposed to
1 to 5 in the 19‘1“.)

And this week, on the fiftieth anniversary

of the first ascent of Mt. Everest, (Chomolungma)
a hundred and seventy—five people

have attained the summit,

including those competing to set

a new speed record and a personal fitness trainer
who claims that viagr[...]m getting altitude sickness.

“Everest sells” is the latest word.

No wonder the medicine men,

stunned on alcohol and coke,

are sprinting naked down the freeways.

At the base of the Bear’s Paw Mountains,

Snake Creek, where the cavalry caught up to Joseph,
where the very stones are scarred

from the hail of bullets, Nez Perce families keep
feeding their ancestors around the kill sites:

a baloney sandwich on a plastic plate,

an open pouch of Prince Albert pipe tobacco,
braided sweet grass by a can of Pepsi,

pieces of candy wrapped in colored cellophane.
And even though the dim cattle never stop their
stupid mooing (as if 1171's was what all

the lying and murder were for),

even though Poker Joe is dead

and death camas blooms along the ridges,

even though. . . .

The grasses have overgrown

the mass grave site, a nest
of dark beads crowns the boulder

where Ollokot,Joseph’s brother, fell,
and my young friend,

making a simple tool,

polishes a coyote’s fractured leg—bone

until it glows like amber.

He stepped cautiously through the doorway
and waited for his eyes to adjust.

In the dim light he saw an old Korean woman,
terrorized children huddled up against her.
He pulled the trigger on his M1,

emptied it into the thatched roof,

and stepped back out

through that doorway.

N[...]

Is tbere anytbing more beautiful tban a long sbot of a
man riding a borse well, or a borse racing free across a
plain? Is tbere anytbing wrong witbpeople lowing sueb
beaut[...]orb it
tbrougb tbe medium ofa mouie?—John Ford

In the twentieth century the motion picture industry manufactured
a prodigious archive of western frontier imagery. A popular genre
of escapist and juvenile entertainment, the western also provided a
vehicle of expression for some of the great film artists, particularly
directors like John Ford, Anthony Mann, Sergio Leone, and Sam
Peckinpah. I grew up with their films and countless others, seeing
them as degraded television signals and projections on the screens
of small—town theaters and drive—ins in Colorado and Texas. Now,
I relish the restored films available on DVD and the occasional
additions to the canon like 777e 777ree Burials ofMelquiaales Estrada,
Broken Trail, and 777e Proposition.

My appreciation for the great film westerns has only grown
with the years, enriched by cross—disciplinary readings in history
and literature, and a growing understanding of the connections
between the formal and narrative devices of traditional pictorial art
and those of the cinema. I’ve also benefited from the exhibitions
and programs at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center and other
museums and my ongoing associations with artists and scholars in
the field. For the past twenty—five years, most of my paintings have

been inspired by and derived from western film images. I’m drawn

particularly to the action scenes of black and white westerns dating
from the late 19305 through the early 19505. Flying teams of horses,
stagecoaches smothered in illuminated dust, desperate bandits

on the run, cowboys, cavalry troopers, and fearless Indians—wild
riders allflre the main subjects in my work.

Like John Ford, who may be the greatest artist of the West
in any medium, I find the beauty ofa horse running across an open
plain to be irresistible. I strive to capture this furious action and
suspend it in a matrix of dancing paint. Distinct from traditional
western genre pictures—which endlessly inventory the minutia
of period gear and settings in high—keyed color—I attempt in
my paintings to embody something that is more elemental and
timeless, animated and abstract. Distilled to black and white
and tinted shades of gray between the two, the images in my
paintings are stark, graphic, and charged with painterly energy.
Though they are derived from fugitive television images, the
paintings, as paintings, are still, silent, and non—ephemeral.They
register the technological transfer of primal shadows onto electro—
luminescent screens and our collective, national consciousness. A
shimmering blur of perception, passion, and memory is transposed
in an interchange of gesture and description, painted marks
loosely defining familiar forms and simultaneously arresting and
embodying movement.

My work is informed by a post—modernist aesthetic of
appropriation, allegory, and mediated experience. At first, I had a
subversive or satirical intention. The early work was intentionally
crude and also tended toward darkness and expressionistic violence.
I’ve always liked what painter Marc Vischer wrote in 1988 about

an early group of my western paintings. “For McConnell, a

As I’ve matured as an artist, my intentions have become
more constructive and my inclination is to honor the heritage of
the West, the cinema, and the tradition of the great painters—
Remington and Russell, yes, but also Manet and Sargent, Pollock
and de Kooning, Kiefer and Richter. In the brochure that

accompanied my exhibition at the Yellowstone Art Museum in

2005, curator Elizabeth Guheen wrote: “Like the work of John
Ford, Gordon McConnell’s narrative paintings are thematic and
allegorical. They are a continuum of expression and painterly gist,
serial explorations of the character and shape of space, light, motion
and place. His landscapes are views of a multi—faceted terrain

of action, melancholia, and weather and dust where narrative is
parsed and strung out like the film stills that have inspired them.
However, their rhythm is more Pollock—like than technologically
driven.[...]ons, these are restless, gestural paintings. . . .The strength
of Gordon McConnell’s work flows from an authentic, intellectual
curiosity, and a conviction about painting and what it means.
From his improvisational use of appropriated source material and
characteristic (ostensibly) black and white environment he creates
evanescent, allegorical landscapes that alternately evoke both the
old and new geography of the West.”

February 2007
Billingr, Montana

x 12 inches. Collection of B illings
Clinic. © 2006 Gordon McConnell

x 12 inches. Collection of B illings
Clinic. © 2006 Gordon McConnell

12 x 12 inches. Collection of
Billings Clinic. @2006 Gordon
McConnell.

Gordon McConnell, Into the Night, 2006, acrylic on (1271‘sz 24 x32[...]

Gordon McConnell, In Hot Pursuit, 2006, acrylic on bardboardpan[...]

Gordon McConnell, Trailing Across the Flat, 2006, acrylic on mnvm, 24 x35 intbex[...]

FROM THE ARCHIVES

57

Cabin O’Wildwindy: 723 Story of a Montana Rant/J

Installment Two
Ada Melville Sh[...]Shope

Note: While researching farm home designs and interiors in

723 Farm3r3" Wgfia. 723 Magazin3for Farm I/Vom3[...]y
literate first—person narrative written from the perspective of a
woman homesteading alone near Bilings, Montana. Ada Melville

Shaw, writer and editor, suHragist, and

in several installments in 1931—1932.We reprint here the second
installment, published in the March 1931 issue with illustrations by
Montana ar[...]rther research, Patty Dean writes: “Considering the
exceptional circulation 723 Farm3ri W {fie monthly enjoyed and its
enormous influence, counsel, and dialogue with early twentieth—
century farm women across the United States, it is somewhat
surprising that so little is known about Ada Melville Shaw, the
magazine’s managing editor from 1915 to 1928.

“Born in Montreal in 1862 to Anglophone parents, Ada

author of the lyrics to the hymn, “Al,
the Day” (ca. 1900; music by James M.
Black), had staked a homestead claim
in Yellowstone County in late 1915.
Shaw would later serve as an editor

at (and frequent contributor to) 723
Farm3r3" W g'fia, a popular magazine
devoted, in Dean’s words, to “providing
a forum for farm women, actively
soliciting their ideas, letters, and

experiences, employing a crew of field

editors who traveled across the United
States, encountering and reporting

on the farm woman in her many
work roles.” With paid subscriptions
n[...]n, 723
Farm3r3" W {fie brought Shaw’s account

of her homestead stay to its readers

Maud Melville came to the United States in about 1880 and was
naturalized in 1894., three years before she married Iowa evangelist
John Barber Shaw, twenty—three years her senior, in Chicago. At
some point between 1900 and 1910, Shaw was widowed and is
listed in the 1910 US Census living in Broadview, Montana, as

a writer and companion to fifty—year—old Margaret Sudduth, an
unmarried journalist. In September 1911, Shaw made a homestead
entry for 160 acres about five miles southeast of Broadview in
Yellowstone County and took up residence on the property in
April 1912.

“Annual spring flooding of two to three feet in depth
compelled Shaw to apply for a reduction in the required area of
cultivation in October 1913. She wrote: ‘.. .I am a self—supporting
widow living alone on my ranch and there is not a male man [sic]
within reach to give me any EXACT information on this point of
commuting—or any other. I believe our Uncle Sam is at the service
of such! —especially since some of us are beginning to vote . . . a
reasonable speed—up on the application now in your hands would
be eternally appreciated. I am 8 miles from town and walkin’s [sic]
bad.’

“Apparently not recei[...]application, Shaw left for St. Paul that December and
filed a Notice ofAbsence in January 1914 on 7773 Farmer} W973
letterhead: “[...]tive months on my
homestead, near Broadview . . . and am now availing myself of
the government’s permission to absent myself for a[...]ed five months. My land, being good only for hay and pasture,

does not support me. I have a temporary position in this city [St.

Paul] which I can retain if I wish. . . .’

“She returned to her homestead in May 1914., and an
inspector finally examined the homestead in July 1914 as part of the

reduction request pI‘OCCSSI

There is a house ...offrame construction of3
rooms. Said house is well-finished and furnished and
has a reasonable value ofs5oo.There is a chicken house
and a cave cellar; also two wells one being 44 feet deep,
and the other 22 feet deep. . ..The land is fenced on the
outside boundaries, making 2 miles of fencing having a
reasonable value of $200, there are no cross fencing. Total
value of improvements is about $850....The applicant had
at the time of examination 20 acres plowed out on the
NE , ten acres ofwhich had been sowed to oats the
preceding spring and which at the time of examination
showed a very poor stand and practically a failure so
far as a crop was concerned. The oats mentioned, which
were sowed in the spring of 1914 was the first crop of any
kind to be so planted by the entrywoman on the land.
Practically the entire area embraced in this homestead
with the exception of about 15 acres of the breaking
mentioned is flooded in the spring forming a marsh,
and stays wet until too late in the spring to be put into
crop. . It is thought that the entrywoman is a widow,
has no one depending upon her. The entry woman has
broken out 20 acres, as mentioned above, and has seeded
10 acres of it to oats, which have proven a failure. This
land is what is locally known as greasewood land; and no

one in the vicinity has successfully raised a crop on this

59

character of land. It is recommended that this applicant’s
final proof, when offered, be acce[...]ke her three—year
proof to establish a claim to the land. Witnesses for the final
proof include Margaret Sudduth’s niece, Mabel L. Sudduth, of
Comanche who testified she had known Shaw for about twenty
years and “known the land’ for about fourteen years. Ada Melville
Shaw received Patent 4.90501 in September 1915.

“Settling in St. Paul—it’s not clear what happened to her
homestead—she continued her career at 7773 Farmer’r Wife, writing
a few editorials, some of them centering of women’s suffrage.

One essay, published in August 1923, perhaps drew upon her

ho mesteading years:

One of the members of 77.72 Farmer} Wife family
who is old enough to look back to the days when
’suffragists’ were almost taboo in polite society—that is
to say among average folk—says there is no lnew woman’
although there is a lot of talk about her. We are inclined
to think this friend is right. There are a lot of bugaboos
that exist only in words and imagination.... Womanhood
is a fundamental principle. . . . It is not a matter ofup-
to-dateness. All these womanly things I found my farm
friends being and doing. Some of them wore ‘knickers’
and some wore old-fashioned skirts; . . . 1 bank on the
country woman to preserve the old ideals, making them

new every day and fresh every evening, ideals that will fill

our schools and colleges with the best of brain and brawn
in lads and lasses who will go out and up to be the leaders
of our land. There is a deep reason why this is so and I

think it is that the country woman lives naturally. . . .

“With the monthly’s subscription circulation approaching
900,000 issues in 1926, Shaw advised its readers that “When
the November magazine reaches our readers, I shall have retired
from office life to enjoy my remaining years in the less strenuous
demands ofa writer’s desk at home.’

“She continued to write poetry and stories for magazines
until her death in 1937 at age seventy—four at the Church Home of

Minnesota in St. Paul.”

1%?

Those who have had a close—up view of the opening of
government lands to settlement and cultivation by homesteaders
understand that the settlers, roughly speaking, fall into three
groups:

First, and worthiest, there are the serious—minded who take
up land with the single purpose of living on it and doing their best
to make it profitably productive. These are in the main men and
women who understand farming, or, even if not expert farmers
at least have a certain wisdom toward life and how to live it, and
learning as they go, are not to be beaten in the never—too—easy
game of growing up with the new country. In the long run, this
group becomes the “old settlers”—the very backbone and reliance

of the community.

60

Cousins to these, but in great contrast to them are the
settlers of the second group, the failures and semi—failures. For
various reasons of ignorance, laziness, shiftlessness, stupidity, or[...]t whenever they seem
to be getting on their feet, the something we call Bad Luck, these
people, coming to the new enterprise full of hope, either pull
up stakes more or less early in the game and move on; or if they
remain, they become to a grea[...]eir
neighbors%sking for credit, loans, assistance of this kind and that.

Then there is a third group which Uncle Sam seems unable
to eliminate or forestall—the fake homesteaders, the gamblers, the
tricksters, who join up with the game for any but the one legitimate
reason. These are a positive detriment to all with whom they come
in contact and but for the fact that they too have a way of moving
on—to search for further easy gains—wo[...]no little discussion among
neighbors as to which of these three groups the writer of this story
belonged. It was plain to be seen that a city woman who had yet
to learn the difference between rye and barley would be but a poor
hand at cultivating vi[...]an alone could hardly make a permanent “home” in that
rigorous country; yet—I have built a house better than the common
run of shacks and made it more attractive and comfortable than
was usual with those who were there merely to get and run; the
depth of my ignorance, the shallowness of my purse, the inadequacy
of my strength were perfectly well—known to my observing fellow
homesteaders and if they did not classify me with those floaters[...]every possible dollar, they certainly

did put me in another class—that of plain fool.

Cabin O’Wildwinds was planned for a home. The
requirements of the law tied one to the land for not less than five
years—I hoped to identify myself with that portion of the West for
even longer than that. I had therefore specified and paid out my
few hard—earned dollars for good building material and good work.
Alas! Before I had lived on the dear little place for a year I was
singing with Buttercup of Pimzfore.

All t/Jingx are not 1017a! [1723) xeem/

Skimmi/k mmquemda ax cream.

Not all the tradesmen failed me but enough of them did to
make my house and poor shelter against wind and cold and dust
and heat and rain (when the blessed moisture came).The walls
developed cracks, the roof developed leaks, the putty fell out and
the poor glass splintered, the “select” flooring was of boards made
from trees that had been well roasted in forest fires and very early
in the year stripped up into a surface of splinters that made them
impossible of perfect cleaning. I paid for good doors—they shrank
and cracked until they were splendid ventilators. The little root
cellar which was to keep my future ga[...]winter
consumption, turned out to be a mere hole in the ground—the
nicest kind of hidey hole for all the itinerant insects and small
animals abroad, and the first consignment of vegetables, a gift from
a good neighbor, froze solid.The only undesirable creature that
failed to live in my cellar was the one animal which is a symbol of

wisdom—the snake.

61

What a debt we as a people owe to the pioneers—the land
tamers—the home builders, who, driving the wild beasts before
them, brought to reality their vision of fields of grain, the gleam
of lamplight from dear home windows, the church spire and the
school bell, and for the cry of the coyote substituted the triumphant
challenge of the iron horse! Sad for us as a people to take our vast
cultivated areas too much for granted, forgetting the human pains
and heroisms that bought them for us and our descendants. Walt

Whitman has immortalized the pioneers:

‘Notfor delectationx tweet;

Not tlJe cmbion and tlJe Ilipper, and tbepeacefnl and
tlJe xtndiom;

Not tlJe riclyex xdfe andpalling,[...]tlJe corpnlent xleeperx Ileep? Have tlJey locked and
bolted doom?

Still be onrx tlJe diet bard, and tlJe blanket on tlJe
ground,

Pioneerx/ Opioneerx.”

The mistress of Cabin O’Wildwinds was one of this notable
company, albeit she fell into line late in the march and touched
but the edge of the great experience. But through fellowship with
neighbors, it was her privilege to study the pages that these heroic
folk wrote in the annals of their country and glimpse an inspiring

core of history not revealed to every eye.

Nearest to my Cabin, of these neighbors, were the
Heathlowes—Dave, his wife Mary, and a family of ten boys and
girls—most of them old enough to earn and go away from home
save when the heart—tug of their gentle, self—sacrificing mother
brought[...]ently back. Dave Heathlowe pursued two
callings—the ministry and the farm. He was good at neither.
Although hard worki[...]eavy—handed—a hard husband, father, neighbor. His young stock
not infrequently died from harsh treatment and his “gospel” was
as punitive as his whip. But Mary—Mary was beloved of the
entire community. It was she who gave their huge barn of a house
its magic air of comfort and hospitality, though actually it was
comfortless in most essentials and there was but little to spare from
the pantry for hospitable sharing. And Mary, pitying me in what
she felt to be a foolish and certain—to—fail endeavor, took me under
her wing. She cast about what she could do to help me “make a go
of it” and the only thing she could think of was to set me up in the
chicken business.

“Oh, you’ll learn!” she assured me when I protested that I did
not want animals of any kind about the place and gave her what
seemed to me to be good reasons. “If you’re g[...]!”

So, on that memorable day when I moved into the Cabin,
Mary was hot on my trail, bringing in her one—hoss shay, a shabby
and old but still workable incubator and the gift of sixty—six
eggs. I threw up unappreciative hands! I had still to learn what it
means for a woman placed as she was, broken in health, poor in
purse, overworked, without companionship in her man, her older

children leaving home[...]

62

and spare for a gift sixty—six eggs. Oh, how much I had to learn!
Of true heroism, unobtrusive self—denial, sheer pluck, genuine
manliness and womanliness. Since those days, when I hear
delicately sheltered women complaining about this and that and
the other, I can feel only pity for them that fate has spared them
the grilling processes by which largeness of soul and toleration of
mind are developed. Mary with her work—broken n[...]hes, her ill—fitting shoes, was a
real woman—and surely that
is all that a woman needs to
be in the final outcome of
things.

I installed the
unwelcome incubator in my
bedroom, right beside the
bed, for it needed twenty—
four—hour—a—day attendance,
it being impossible to depend
upon the flame of the smoky
lamp. For after all, when you
set eggs to hatch, there is
an inner feeling of responsibility toward the helpless, developing
life—you must do your best by it even though later you slay and eat
it. Somewhere I bought enough eggs to make up the one hundred,
which the machine would accommodate. But what was I going to
do with one hundred chickens! I cried—for even I knew that they
had to have shelter and intelligent care, water and feed, and I had

none of these at hand.

“Oh, you’ll learn!” said Mary again. “And there will not be

one hundred chicks—you’ll be lucky if you get a fifty—percent
hatch—the machine is old and you’re new. But fifty chickens will

give you some food and eggs.”

I could not contemplate even fifty with any serenity.
However, I studied the tattered book of directions and a stray
Government Bulletin on how to mother motherless chicks. And as
the days went by I became genuinely interested in the game.

The first week in the
Cabin would have been one of
unrelieved wretchedness but for
two things: Much work to do
and a head full of visions and
dreams. It was real filn getting
the little home into shipshape
order although I could not help
a nagging thought as to what
I should do to pass the time
when everything was in place
and the simple machinery of
daily living set going.

Unless, as in the case of the Heathlowes who had to have
room and rooms, the one— or at the most two—room shack is a
regular feature of the first year or two on the homesteads, with
every equipment of the cheapest and most temporary. But I had no
less than three rooms: Living room, Iz'XIo', bedroom the same size
and a wee kitchen, 8'X8'. And in the three rooms I had no less than
five good—sized windows which I left uncurtained and unshaded—

there was no one to look in and there was a wonderful world

63

without to see as much of and as often as possible; my windows
gave me five splendid, ever—changing pictures of which I never
tired. But most of my acquaintances thought I was foolish and
extravagant—they could see enough of “these awful plains” without
adding windows. The plains were never awful to me, save as beauty
in vastness takes on an awe—inspiring character. And then it is good
medicine for the smallness of our souls.

I had brought a lot of books with me and my splendid
friends back East kept adding to the supply. In the four available
corners of living room and kitchen I had shelves running from
floor to ceiling, and the carpenter managed to wangle a small closet
beside the brick chimney so that I was the envy of women who
had “no place to put anything,” causing a general reign of disorder
about them. My “wee bit hoosie”I managed to keep as tidy as a
model house in a department store plus a decided hominess which[...]ce here,” quoth one
bachelor. “Not thinkin’ of gettin’ married, be you?” My assurance on
that head was so clear and so positive that the question was never
raised again.

Besides my book[...]ood field glass, a good
microscope, a typewriter and a sewing machine. The microscope
and the typewriter were noted with something like scorn—what
did you do with such contraptions on a farm? “But then x173 ain’t
goin’ to farm none—she’ll up an’ hike out 0’ here the first time the
thermometer goes out o’ sight.”

On the building—papered walls I had some good prints, a
map of the United States, a world map—for there was always a
ferment in the Balkans and I liked to keep posted, a map of the

State and a map of my quarter—section. But no calendar. This was a
mistake, as you will presently see. Outside, I had a thermometer—

would the mercury go out of sight? Oh, well,I meant to stick!

So, while the rain came down during the first week of testing,
I created my home and, on paper, laid out my first garden. I already
had an enormous package of seeds which I had ordered late in the
winter. I’d £17010 these scoffers who wondered what “that there old
woman thought she was a—doin’ on a homestead!”

But despite all my resolutions to the contrary that week and
many weeks that followed, tested my courage to the bottom. For
one thing there was the gumbo. No one had told me mine was
gumbo land and if they had I should have been none the wiser.
Very soon my new floors—and my very new thoughts—were
“sicklied o’er” with the sticky grey “cast” of gumbo. Both cat and
dog showed their hatred of it—I had to mak their poor paws in
warm water—and I could illy spare water for such purposes—to
relieve them of the misery of the adhesive mass that daily got
between their toes. For the first time in my life I was completely
out of touch with humanity and for day following day could not
discover on the distant road even a passing horseman. The stillness
punctured only by the steady drip of the rain—I was not yet wise
enough to be thanking God for that fall of moisture, the howl of
the wind and the night song of the coyotes, stretched on my nerves
to the twanging point. And I said to myself, “If I feel like this now,
what is going to happen to me in the five years ahead?” And once
again I would whisper to my humiliation: “Oh, fool! fool! fool!

Then came the rainbow. A rainbow that has sent its

heavenly glory through the years that have passed since it faded

from earthly sight!

It was at the end of the first week in the Cabin. There was
a sudden lightening of the persistent gloom. For the thousandth
time I went out on my porch—glory be/The clouds were
breaking away. The rain had almost ceased. And over yonder,
yet so close as to seem almost within reach of my hand, was
a rainbow and such a rainbow as my city—hindered vision had
never dreamed could be. Stretched entirely across the dome of
the sky, its broad bands of pulsating color jewel—clear against the
soft grey background of clouds, was the marvelous “token of the
ancient covenant.” And at the base of either arch, there spread
back on the wet earth for miles, a glowing reflection of the arch
in the sky. It was unbelievable, unearthly, soul—shaking. While I
held my breath, watching, the secondary bow appeared, scarcely
less brilliant than the original, and after that even a third lovely
dim replica.

All of this which I have struggled to describe, was in itself
enough to shine away my gloom but there was yet a crowning
touch. Straight before me and directly beneath the center of the
main arch there came into view a distant homesteader’s shack, a
lowly house indeed, and in its window shone a light—the ray from
a common kerosene lamp—but a beam that came straight across
the miles to me, like a living beacon of promise. The poet writes of
a man so blind that

‘14 primroxe by a river} brim
A yellow primroxe war to bim,
And it war not/Jing more.”
I thank “whatever gods[...]es that night so that I saw not “just a rainbow and a lamp

in a window”but something that sang its message in remembered
words from the ancient Book:
(‘Ybe beavenx declare t/Je glory ofGod and t/Je

firmament xbowet/J [7LT bandiworb. . . Day unto day ntteret/J

xfeee/J and nig/Jt unto nig/Jt xbowet/J know/edge. . . Ybe ea[...]ord} andtbefi/inexx tbereof. . . He ix t/Je King of

Glory/ . . . I ba‘ve let my bow in tbe ciondx. . . t/Je ever/axting

eo‘venant between God and every living t/Jing. . . “

The distant little home with its bravely twinkling light,
lowset like an earth—born star beneath the uplifted glory of the
rainbow typified to me the coming of bome to the arid land
and the safety of the pioneers who had adventured upon those
uncompromising plains as men put out to sea in frail boats.
Somehow they should arrive! And as they set their small human
lamps of endeavor to shine out on the darkness, symbols of
forthright human endeavor, hope, comradeship, and while their
labor transmuted the cactus—besprinkled sod and the untamed soil
into gracious fields and bountiful gardens, over all should be spread
the power and the glory of the eternal Light which shineth out of
all darkness and drives it to its lair.

That vision was worth all that it had cost to make it possible
and its power still lives. I have watched that land and its people
suffer from drought, hail, economic stress and failure.I have seen
no small company strike tents and leave the battle, so far as they
were concerned—unfinished. But the great end—which the lesser
must ever serve, shall not be defeated. Al[...]ost nor
ever shall be while there are true hearts and industrious hands.
Whitman understands the weary way of the Pioneer:

“Ha; t/Je nig/Jt dexeen tied?

65

Wax t/Je road of/ate xo [oi/Mme? Did we xtop
dixcouraged, nodding on our way?

Yet upswing [your Iyie/dyou, in your track topaure
obiiviour,

Pioneerx.I O pioneerx.I

“Ti/i t/Je xound of trumpet,
Fanflzr oft/ye day—break call—bark lyow loud and

clear Ilyear it wind;

Swift/ To [/72 head oft/y[...]g to your
p/acex,
Pioneerx.I Opioneerx.”

While the gumbo dried, while faint hints of green
illuminated the dun of the sod, while the greasewood slowly put
out its salty green spikes, I kept on keeping the incubator. The
silent machine really grew eloquent to me. Would the twenty—one
days never be fulfilled? And what should I do with one hundred

motherless chicks?[...]sleep—leaping up on my bed, a forbidden luxury, and pawing me
in frantic excitement. My first thought was robbers—someone
breaking in. Then I heard it: Cbeep/ Cbeep/ Cbeep/ That life[...]ere a few hours before—a miracle! I gently took the
lone wee yellow thing out and, to Lassies’ huge discomfiture,
cuddled it ben[...]to appreciate my human hovering so I replaced it and then,
overcome by a vision of myself in new character, collapsed on the

bed in gales of semi—hysterical laughter: There I was, erstwhil[...]there were sixteen lusty chirpers but after that
the miracle ceased working. I was in despair. The bulletin which I
had studied carefully, had something to the effect that if for various
mysterious reasons, the birds did not pip the shells at the given
time, there were Caesarian tactics that could be employed to set
them free of their prison. All remaining silent in the incubator I
rolled up my sleeves and went unwillingly to work. . . . Those who
know ch[...]horrid séance! Endeavoring to
save life,I slew! And shudderingly as I slew,I cremated! And when
my heroic endeavors were concluded, I still had but the sixteen
original cheepers to the good.I called anathema down on Mary’s
innocent head and was sure I should never be able to eat another
egg so long as I should live.

Now Mary had been watching the calendar and when the
chicks were about three days old came to see how we had fared.
She gasped at the small family. Then she comforted me. Doubtless
I[...]something
according to Nature. Next time would be an improvement. Then
we chatted about this and that and in some connection the day of
the week was named. “But this is not Wednesday!”I corrected her.
“Oh, but it is. Dave preached on Sunday. On Monday I washed—
yesterday, Tuesday, I finished up all of my ironing so I could get off
to see you this afternoon.”

I did some thinking. Then a great light broke in upon me.
For some occult reason those sixteen birds had arrived at the first

possible moment—due to rain and loneliness and depression, I had

66

lost count of a day and had performed my Caesarian operations too
won—p[...]all. I fairly wept. But Mary went off into gales of laughter
until she too had tears on her face.The old wooden hen had done
her smoky best. She had n[...]. “I
wonder,”I mused, as Mary wiped her eyes and gasped with sheer
enjoyment, “if Jonah knew what day of the week it was when the
whale spewed him out on land!” For I had been swallowed up for
three weeks in a very whale’s belly of gloom and discomfort—no
wonder I had lost track of a mere day.

Mary patted my cheek comfortingly as, after a cup of tea, she
climbed into her rickety old gig and turned the mare homeward.
“I’ll send one of the boys over tomorrow with a good big calendar,”
she said. “It’s about the only thing you haven’t got—except
experience.[...]some. You know—only don’t
tell anyone—I’m the preacher’s wife and it wouldn’t do—I’d give
all I’ve got and some years of my life to change places with you!
Wouldn’t it be heaven to be alone—to read and rest and think and
write to my old friends and loaf and do my hair and keep my nails
pretty, and get acquainted with myself once more! But I guess it’ll
be just work, work, work, to the end.”

“Oyon dang/Jinx oft/ye wext/
Oyonyonng and elder dangbterx/ Oyon mot/Jeri and
you wivex/

Pioneerx/ O pioneerx.’

It was when the chicks were about two weeks old and could
still be kept under my eye in their movable box that the Episode of
the Cake took place.

All sorts and conditions of folk took up homesteads.
Among the many whom I met was a tired—out court stenographer
who came in search of health more than dollars. She was full of
enthusiasm and poetry and plans when I first saw her—but a
conquered woman when she drove from my Cabin door enroute
for an east bound Pullman. In some way she had acquired great
skill in making cake and brought with her when she came stores
of spices, flavoring extracts, raisins, currants, citron, nuts, coloring
matter, what not. She had a horse and small cart and proposed
to make up the cakes in batches and then drive leisurely from
home to home, selling t[...]a lovely
scheme. She would have employment, come in touch with the
people and turn an honest dollar while waiting for her first wheat
crop to come in. But she never had lived alone. She was not a
nature enthusiast; to parody—

A lovely rainbow in [/72 xky
A common rainbow wax to lyer,
And it wax not/Jing more/

So when the winds blew and the coyotes howled and the
cactus annoyed and the snake affrighted and the silence and
loneliness bored deeply, her courage seeped out and was no more.
As soon as possible she took advantage of the provision whereby
$4.00 could be substituted for residence on the land, packed her
trunk and fled for the comfortable city and a good job.There were
other ways of regaining health! The entire contents of her cake
pantry she donated to me because I had stayed with her through
one night of illness that would have been more difficu[...]

67

One day when I was wondering precisely what to do
nextfls it was too early for out—of—door work—to keep the blues
at a distance, it occurred to me that I would make a cake, a very
special kind of cake and dividing it into sizeable portions give it
to several of my homesteading women comrades who at one time
and another had been particularly kind to me in my lonely estate.
In my trunk was a very old and greatly treasured recipe book,
that over a period oflong years and via sailing vessel, steamboat,
train, carriage, w[...]erby, England, even to
lowly Cabin O’Wildwinds. In it was a black fruit cake recipe
that was far mor[...]r ancestors. At home we children
always called it The Cake pronouncing the common words with
a touch of awe. For this was no common cake. It was eaten only
on state and family occasions: the Qleen’s birthday, a christening
day, on New Yea[...]me, always at family
weddings.

I decided to make The Cake in quantity enough to fill my
largest bakepan. I had stores of tissue paper and bright ribbons in
my trunk. And I would compose ajingle setting forth the history
ofthe recipe. It would be, if not a gift[...],
something that would tell my friends my thought of them and
bring a wee note of unusual interest into their humdrum days. I
went to work.

It took me practically all of two days steady work to prepare
the fruit and nuts and compound all the ingredients as I knew they
should be compounded.The morning of the third day I baked it.
The result was perfect save that the aroma stealing out of the oven

gave me as sharp a turn of homesickness as I shall ever experience

in this life! But that didn’t matter. When The Cake was cold I set
it carefully away to ripen fo[...]e cutting it. Then
I came down with a severe cold and when Hedrick, my faithful
Knight of the Water Barrel, came with his customary consignment,
I could not speak aloud. Qliet though he was, the boy had caught
the trick of friendly gossip and, meeting one of the Heathlowe
boys on his trail home, told him of my state and a few hours later,
here came Saint Mary with the one—hoss shay and all the blankets
and quilts off her beds to carry me back with her and be nursed
back to normal. The invitation was most alluring, although I knew
her to be overworked and the home overcrowded.

“But what about the chickens!” I exclaimed. Already my
family of livestock was beginning to impose restraint on my[...]just take them along too. We’ll put a big dish of food
where the cat can get to it—she’ll stick to the house till you come
back—and Lassie can have one final fight with our dogs and settle
business once and for all. You can’t stay here alone and that’s flat—
not while there’s room under[...]ut while I was gathering up my things,

I thought of The Cake. Why not give it as it was to Mary? How
good she had been to me! How little of color there was in her life!
No leisure and practically no pleasure. She could store it away in
her cellar and when her many callers came—being a preacher’s
wife with her house by the side of the road she had a sufficiency of
“company”—she would have something for a re[...]y people for months! So I
wrapped it up carefully in snowy cloths and slipped it into the back
of the shay without her noticing.

her possible treats snatched from her.

That evening we sat fifteen around the crowded table—
twelve of the family, myself, and two men who were out claim
hunting and managed to drop in at meal time. There was the
usual farm—home meal: bread and butter, milk, fried potatoes,
fried eggs, bacon, coffee and—heaped up on two common plates,
The Cake, cut in hunks and chunks. The refined cake—soul of me
shuddered. Said the youngest boy, a starved—looking gangling of
nine, as he crammed the last of his second hunk into his mouth
and with an eye on his mother reached a stealthy paw for a third,
“Say, Maw! Ask her to show you how to make this. It’s lots

nicer’n what you make!”

In the far past, The Cake’s aroma suggested feast days and
memorable occasions, with all accompaniments of formal dress and
behavior. Now, should it greet my nostrils, it would bring back the
never—to—be—forgotten flavor the Great Plains with keen and tender
remembrance of informal but down—to—the—bone hospitality that
meant the shared life, the divided burden, the reinforced courage.
For a week, three hard—working daughters of a harder—working
pioneer mother slept on quilts on the floor so that the mother’s
elderly guest should have a comfortable bed by herself. And there
were hot flatirons and hot drinks and milk toasts and fires kept
up and heart offerings of kindness and cordiality. What matter
sacrosanct cake? What price friendship? After all, I reflected it is
folk that count and character—the little surface mistakes may well
be regarded as the earmarks of noble individualities. Oh, I was
learning! And the lessons were great! But then they had but[...]

thinking and designing that fails to consider the depth and power, a place he did not know, Chatham waited.

value and necessity of place. Failing

to consider place, we not only fail to
consider the qualities of the landscape
and terrestrial environment, but we
also fail to consider people, their social
and cultural influences, and the living
condition of what we make. How do we
come to know place? How do we know
when we know it? Is it because we live
in a place our entire lives, or that we
have learned to observe patterns and
classifiable conditions? Do we know

a place because we can measure the
environment and its changes in weather,
time, and season? At what point do

we stop thinking about the place as an
abstraction identified by its comparison
to other places, and start knowing it
through continuously being the place?
Russell Chatham, one of Montana’s
resident artists who moved from

California in the 1970s says that it took

7Z2 Yell[...]

71

Knowledge of place does not come immediately, or
without efio[...]to us over time, becoming who
we are. We must lie in its shadows and become a part of its day
to day occurrences. Something strange occ[...]r into
continuous experience. No longer conscious of a particular place
it becomes your life. You still sense its changes and continuities—
its wholeness, but you are no longer startled by its unique
characteristics. I believe it is this blurring experience that artists
attend to. They are given the responsibility to make the world
visible and tangible when it is all but blurry for the rest of us. For
both long—time residents and visitors, a place comes present and
distinct through an artist’s writing, drawing, painting, building,
singing, and sculpting.

What if we were to write about architecture, not as an
object, but as part of a place, aware of its influences, its relations
and conditions? Would we not share a greater sense of its place,
its reality? Iwas most fortunate to share a friendship with Samuel
“Sambo”Mockbee. Over the years we had many conversations
about “architecture, sex and death,” as he would call it. I also heard
him speak publicly a number of times. While Sambo wouldn’t
speak directly to the idea of place, he spoke often of his life in
the South and its particularities. Mostly, he lived his life and
practiced architecture through the unique lens of the South and the
impressions of that place upon him. Sambo had this magic about
him, a sense of himself in the world, a clear feeling and sensibility
about the place in which he worked that was the gift given a poet.
His architecture was great not because of the forms, textures, and

materials he assembled, but because of his mythology which came

A mmb/edown barn in Paradixe Viz/lay. Pboz‘ogmpb © Lori Ryker.

to inhabit his buildings. When he spoke about his work, it was
not to explain the plan and sectional organization of particular
buildings but to share the experience of beauty he recognized in
the world. Even in the tragic setting of southern Alabama and
Mississippi he found beauty shining through in the lives of the
people he came to build for. Sambo would talk and write about
the Mother Goddess, explaining her role in our cosmology. Such
preoccupations are often seen as idiosyncrasies, odd conditions of
our personality that others find diflcicult to comprehend. But it is
these preoccupations that bring to life the world, while the brief
idiosyncratic experiential overlaps we shar[...]confirmed my belief that
our over—reliance on the activities of analysis and objectification of

our artifacts is a waste and dishonor to life itself. The best we can

72

ofer others of architecture is the story of why we design and build
the way we do. This is the beginning of my story in Montana, a
place and people I am learning day by day.

@‘1

I sat on the unfinished deck of the house yesterday, balancing
on the bare joists and listening to the quiet. Southwesterly wind
whistled through the dry grasses
across the horse pasture.The hot
sun mixed with the browns and
faded greens of late summer
and I looked into Montana.I
looked into the rotating spray
of irrigation water, the halo of
color created as light passed
through water. Last year’s
remains of the Fridley Forest
fire are visible high on the
distant ridge. The summer air
is calming, clear, and dry—not
crisp and abrupt like winter.

As I sat and thought about

this house we were building in
Paradise Valley,I thought about
the valley floor . . . what will this
place be like in another twenty
years? In my mind I see a valley floor and river edge fillly built

upon with houses making a diHerent kind of suburb from most

Me complex ofouilolings Ryke[...]Montana. Photograph ©Auolrey Hall.

towns.I see the mountainous public land rising above the hills that
are held by absentee landowners who fancy themselves as ranchers.
Despite the bitter taste of their daily absence in our community, I
appreciate their holding onto land that would otherwise be divided
into smaller and smaller parcels for the next wave of development
creeping up the hills to the edge ofwildemess. But I also see a
place filled with the immense beauty of deep forests and glaciers,
blue and bright skies. The beauty found in this place’s immensity
always reminds me of our own
smallness.I feel Suce Creek
trail as it drops down into the
creek bottom and then returns
to an open pasture edge and the
valley beyond. Suce Creek will
always feel a part of me. From
here we made our first hikes as
newcome[...]istmas
tree, tried out new snowshoes,
picked iris in the spring, and
learned the local wildflowers in
summer. From here I learned
that, no matter how close, the
trail could not be reached by
car in the winter after the wind
blew snow drifts across the road.
I close my eyes again and
try to see the valley as I have heard it was ten years ago, quiet, with

just a few ranches holding all of the tens of thousands of acres.

There was a night sky that was black except for the stars above.
While it is not diflcicult to imagine, it is hard to feel. And it is the
feelings we have for places that bind us to them. Today the valley is
full of twinkling lights up the side of the hills and mountain slopes
that mix with the stars in the sky. The lights and stars create my
feeling of this place. Ground and air are blurred. Gravity is erased.I
am floating in the cosmos.

The night sky is transfixing here. It is one of our cultural
obsessions, skiing on the night of a full moon, staying up into the
early morning to watch meteor showers, discussing the “strange
red light in the western sky” with the local ranchers. One of the
most transforming experiences I have had as an adult came a few
years ago on a winter night. The night sky was hazed with red, like
it was on fire. As I drove home in the dark, I realizedI was seeing
the Northern Lights. Thirty minutes later, parked on top of a grassy
hill we looked to the North as the sky shot colors of emerald green,
red, and white up from the horizon, making the dome of the night
sky perceptible. At one point red slid across the sky arcing toward
the rising moon. That night was one of the few times as an adult
that I screamed from some primal center, wh[...]hese. We should be
creating them for each other.

The valley is bright today, white sunlight, bound by the
sinewy Gallatin Mountains and the sharp—peaked Absarokas. The
Absaroka, or Ahxarokee as named by the indigenous Crow tribe,
hold within them part of the Beartooth Wilderness, one of the
largest remaining federally protected wilderness areas south of
Alaska. Within these mountains are the grizzly bear and North

American gray wolf. Their unassuming lives and predator nature
are the source of many heated discussions in bars and community
rooms. Most ranchers would prefer them[...]ational Park, while I find their roaming through the surrounding
mountains a reminder that I am mortal, and definitely part of the
food chain. Montana is raw in that way; it exposes your humility or
arrogance,[...]ows you to remain complacent.

Legend has it that this valley came by its name in the
1950s from a developer who was looking for a catchy name,
Paradise Valley. Just as Big Sky seems a name that you can feel
through your imagination, so do[...]y. It appeals to
our frontier mentality. Paradise is disappearing these days, the
developer’s name serving its purpose. From ranch hands to cult
church, movie star to general working folk, the valley is being
populated by humanity. While local developmental studies
complain that the valley’s beauty is disappearing into houses
and roads, we must remember that the wildness of the valley
disappeared long ago, under the plow and hoof of domesticated
livestock, and our vision of independence and settlement. Its
tameness is studded with farms, ranches, and their structures.
Since the 1860s the valley has been a domesticated landscape.

As Par[...]y envision suburbia as those paved streets ending in cul—de—
sacs, with a selection of five repeating house styles, the patterns
here are difierent. Despite its form, suburbia is a quality of living, a
state of mind. Suburbia is a choice we make to not live in the realm
of urbanism. As James Howard Kunstler says, America has decided
that neither the city nor the wilderness makes an appropriate place

to live.We choose to not live in a densely populated environment

7Z2 kittben/dining area in [be Hall borne. Pboz‘ogmpb ©Audrey Hall.

to gain some “ground” between us and our neighbor. Suburbia also
permits a certain amount of visual and physical independence.
Suburbia has similar characteristics to the disappearing agricultural
and ranch land in the American West, without the necessary
function for the space of fields, pastures, and livestock. Suburbia,
like agriculture, is domesticated wildness. It is the in—between: not
belonging to the wild or urban, holding many of our perceived
qualities of the wild, being tamed by the structures of civility,
freedom within prescribed limits. Such similarity is highly visible
in the surrounding landscape of Livingston, where I live.The
formal disposition of these suburbs is influenced and developed
from the agricultural condition that remains on the other side

of the fence. People move here, to Livingston, to Paradise Valley,
because they are in love with the idea of Montana. They want to
bring to life their imagination.

The lots that form the suburbs of Paradise Valley are not
typical divisions of an acre, but plots of multiple acres found down
dirt roads, along creek[...]and divisions, these plots are
still carved along the Jeffersonian grid, rather than following the
natural condition of the landscape. They are surrounded by pristine
wilderness, mountains, and wildlife. To retain their rural quality
of life, people would rather drive the twenty miles to town, than
support a quick mart along the highwayflt least so far. Paradise
Valley is evolving into a suburban development of large parcels of
individuality. It is a suburbia that dots the landscape with houses,
and small barns, or steroid “cabins” with horse pasture. While I
look with disdain at the anesthetizing suburbs of sprawl outside of

Western towns such as Las Vegas and Phoenix, I do not have the

same clearly drawn opinions of Paradise Valley. As the population
grows and expands as it has across the continent, is it not nostalgic
to say “it is time to preserve. . . .” F This sprawl, the expansion across
the West, is the American way. Yet I believe our vision of a world

that is something otber is American, too.

@‘Z

Our client came to us over[...]with a vision for her
home. Hers was not a vision of a house, but of outbuildings. She
wanted a home that was determined in its landscape and casual in
its disposition. A photographer with a keen sense of the Montana
landscape, she had already recognized the vanishing farm and
rangeland and the fast arrival of the brick veneer ranch style
homes or the log or EIFS sided “larger than life” houses we all
see across America’s West. Our client’s land is a small piece of a
grassland meadow in Paradise Valley surrounded by a community
landholding that, by covenants, is not developable. She recognized
that her buildings could support the vernacular language of
Montana; that they could add to the continuity of the valey
context.

Montana possesses many of the original structures that

were built by the settlers. And in many cases they are stil, in use.
Corn crib and grain sheds stand out as lone sentinels in pastures
and grain fields. They are easily identified by their frame structure
exposed to the outside and smooth horizontal board siding on
the inside. They are lifted OK the ground, floating in an attempt
to keep out the local vermin. They are beautiful container[...]

Swiss, and German. In the valley the
German heritage is prevalent with
the straightforward simplicity of
gable—ended volumes that are added
on to as money is available. Most
original structures are of square log
construction changing to vertical
boards at the second floor. The houses
are simple frame structures or settler
log cabins that most often sit across
from or adjacent to the barn, never
being further away than necessary

to provide protection in the harsh
Montana weather. There is an inherent
relationship between the use and
need and the perceived value of what
was being housed or provided for in
all outbuilding types communicated
through construction methods

and quality of materials. Today

these structures are used as found

or reinterpreted for the changing

functions of land use.

outbuildings around here, to keep the snow from piling up too Exploring the hierarchy of outbuildings in size, construction
high. Galvanized metal covers the roofs of most farm buildings, method, and details, the project comes together, not as mimicry,
becoming a collage of worn gray and rust as the snow sits on but as a new conception of what building in Montana can be.

it year after year. Smaller structures served as feeding sheds for Side—stepping the popular nostalgia of the West, my partner and
sheep, foaling sheds for horses, shoeing stations and weighing I considered the necessity and drive of the utilitarian structure,

facilities. The barns come from many cultures, Norwegian, Dutch, imagining how this ethic could produce a simple set of structures

to live within. We also considered the needs of our client who

is single and enjoys hosting large social gatherings, challenging
many of the assumptions of room enclosures and relationships. We
drew and expanded upon both formal and material characteristics
of outbuildings. Techniques that belong to Montana, to the
language of our national agricultural heritage, to a particular scale
of building, and its narrative of detailing were considered and
reinterpreted. But the results are nothing as cerebral as can now be
explained. The ideas came about more through discussion of the
fabric that surrounds us, an evolving vision of how we understand
place from a distance and how place is something else close up.
Ability to change and evolve is key to the continued value of
cultural artifacts. Multiple interpretations of our creations overlaid
upon original intent are what make our experiences in life rich
and engaged. Discovering or creating new uses for artifacts that
have not outlived their material usefulness is one of the great
tangible qualities of Western heritage. Ranchers and farmers reuse
a grain bin a number of times, changing its function in small ways
over many years, they reuse side walls or old doors as bridges and
skids, they hold onto old hinges and leather harnesses and change
them into strapping and tie downs. Architecture can provide a
similar character of transformation. Doors can be useful as walls
and windows can close to become walls, changing the quality and
use of a space. The project is both marked by the history of barns,
post and beam construction, variations on typical agricultural wall
construction and cladding, tempered by the matter—of—fact—ness
of living 0H of limited means brought into a contemporary telling
of living in the West. It is not only a part of the past but a critical

response to living in these times of resource depletion, recognizing

'ZZe k[...]

that the frontier is closed, that where we live requires our care and
consideration.

Before I came to Montana I imagined its place, its mountains
and rivers, its summers and winters. But I had not considered what
it would be like to build in Montana. It costs more to build here
than most places in the West. The remoteness costs, or at least the
idea of remoteness costs. Less people means less buying p[...]rns toward sustainability must be tenacious.While the rest
of the country is becoming familiar with the LEED (Leadership
in Energy and Environmental Design) system, in Montana
we struggle to have the building industry as a whole understand
the concept of sustainability. For this reason, changing the way
buildings are built in Montana requires research, perseverance, and

imagination. Just as no “certified” lumber is commercialy available

in Texas, Montana lags in such a program. Yet small mils are still a
common business practice here. Despite the lagging public support
for forestry conservation and smart practices for timber harvesting,
some family—owned businesses choose to follow an ethic that
recognizes the limitation of environmental resources and the need
for healthy and sustaining practices in this place. We have forged
long—term relationships with one of these mills. They are relied on
to provide wood that is select—cut, knowing the lumber source for
each milling job and its method of harvesting.

Last September the frame went up, resembling post—and—
beam barns of a hundred years ago. The trees for the timber work
had been harvested by hand, and brought out of the forest by draft
horse, not more than five miles away. From the second floor of
the house we can see Pine Creek where the timbers came from.

It remains rich with w[...]

the light from the windows
beyond graze along the top
edges of the boards as we
spaced them apart, like the
morning light as it moves
above the horizon ofthe
Beartooth Mountains. The
room will be a lantern of
light, inside and out, perched
above the ground floor.

By last winter the
studio and main house was
dried in, and we installed
insulation. Unavailable locally,
the eco—fiber was trucked in
from Phoenix. As I drove
out the valley that early
winter morning, I watched
the outside temperature
drop from about I degree

to negative I4. We hurried

to unload the semi, large
Ryker and Nave} own home, nestled into the landscape (as seen from the north). Photograph ©Audrey Hall. bundles being thrown out
of the trailer’s open doors
bounced across the snow
land to federally protected wilderness. Last weekend we sided the covered ground, wind would pick them up, and they would seem to
interior framing of the master bedroom with rough sawn wood float over the ground for us to catch them. We build in Montana
from the same mill, a reconfiguration of the construction method year round, but if you get of schedule, the winter months are

surrounding hay barns and grain storage buildings. We could see exhilarating to work through. After the truck left, we looked from

the house to the studio, knowing that the sooner we filed the walls

and roofs of one building we could turn the heat on. Al day we
unrolled and smiled, and cut and pulled the insulation. I remember
steam coming 0H of my partner’s back, like the Madison River in
winter. That memory makes the Montana winter tangible. I can
feel its coldness, the steam, the frost, flying geese, and squeak of dry
snow underfoot.

As I sit at the edge of the deck today, grout dries on my
fingers. It is time to return to crawling around on hands and knees,
finishing the tile work in the showers. One shower is built from
flat river rocks I collected from the Yellowstone River. Several
weeks of walking the dogs along the river’s bank resulted in a
shower floor, while its walls are built from the galvanized roof of
a nearby demolished barn. A handrail is built from the driftwood
left at a culvert after the Yellowstone receded this spring. Balancing
on floating logs, I collected the wood for its strength, color, and
shape. Some cottonwood, some lodgepole pine, red[...]her curly willow roots. Collecting materials
from the surrounding landscape extends the place into the
buildings, knitting together a continuous experience and memories,
constructing a context of feelings similar to the words of a poem.

Montana, and possibly most of the West, are described
through their waterways and landscape. To know a street is not
as important as knowing the land and the place names we have
given them. In this way we tie our cultural history to the place.
Architecture can participate in this knowledge, keeping us mindful
of where we are. From the kitchen and bedroom windows Deep
Creek and Pine Creek to the west can be seen. Up Deep Creek is
Russell Chatham’s old studio. He still owns the land and home,

83

but I have never seen

him there. In the 1970s

he, Tom McGuane, and
Jim Harrison would get
together as most friends
do—to bar—b—que and
carry on. In the 1980s Rick
Bass,who lives up in the
Yaak, came down to visit
Chatham and Harrison

here. I know this because

living room the fireplace

is counterpoint and
foreground to Emigrant
Peak. Emigrant was the
home to a small Native
American tribe the settlers
called the Sheep Eaters.
Gold was discovered at
Emigrant in the 1800s and

there was 110 more room

for the Sheep Eaters.They

I ski through Chatham’s are lost to this place now,
land in the winter, and the wiped out by greed. Not
old truck that Bass vividly one descendant left. Out
describes in one of his the double—glass doors
books still lies in a heap to the west flows the

along the drive at the edge Yellowstone River. Though
of Chatham’s property. Ligbz‘ and xbado'w in the bedroom of Ryker and Nave} home. Photograph ©Audrey Hall. infamous, it is a continuous

Pine Creek boasts a small
store and cabins that hold
summer bluegrass concerts on their small lawn. The nights are
cool next to the creek and in the shade of the great fir trees. People
bring blankets and chairs and beef and bufiflo burgers are served,
along with the local beer. It is a time to enjoy each other’s company
and appreciate the green grass, bugs, and summer smells that for so
long are buried under winter snow.

Further south, down the valley is Emigrant Peak, the tallest
peak around here. Emigrant is a marker of place and distance,

while moving down the valley, or up in the mountains. In the

part of our landscape and
life here. From drought
to flood, experienced through fly—fishing, floating, and drinking its
waters, it is a touchstone for the health and heart of the valley. Tall
cottonwoods edge its banks, along with red dogwood and other
species of willow. Rainbow and cut—throat trout find home in its
waters. In the spring large flocks of white pelicans fly over the river,
landing on its water to rest and feed. They look like visible music
in the air, their white feathers shining in a bright blue sky. Not far
from the house is an osprey’s nest. All summer long we watched

the parents raise their young, hunting in both grass and river. The

84

house is almost finished now, and the natural grasses are coming
back. Surrounding the house, the distant landscape is merging with
the immediate, history is meeting the present. Next spring the
grass wi fill in completely, and these buildings will sit on the land

as part of the cultural vernacular, an evolving continuum of what it

means to live in this particular place.

A of these experiences add up to howI know this place.
It is the feelings I have for the night sky, the mountains in white

snow anc green grass, aspens in full fall glow, the deer that
watched me as I watched her. It is the grass that dries to yellow,
and the ranchers that try to hold onto their family’s land. It is the
newcomers who are loud, arrogant, and brazen. It is my friends
and summer on the lawn listening to bluegrass, or summer in the
mountains looking down on all of the fire works on the Fourth
ofJuly. It is the people at the Coffee Crossing who make the best
Chai I have ever had. It is color and words of Russell Chatham,
Tim Cahill, and Tom McGuane who give voice to this place, as it
was twenty years ago and as it is today. It is seeing the twinkling

lights down the valley, and the glow of the sun setting beyond the
mountains’ edge. It is the smell of heavy smoke in the air when the
forests are on fire and the smell of pine when it rains. It is knowing
that when I walk into the wilderness I am smaller and weaker than
the grizzly, moose, and cougar that roam within. It is my client and
friend who is both daring and concerned, who knows this place
and makes the most beautiful and spellbinding photographs.

Our work is a marker of activism and engagement in the
community. It is both an answer and an ongoing question of how
and why we live where we do.The result is an architecture that
can serve as context to the place that passes in front ofwindows
and walls that enter through open doors and become the place
that the next person knows as part of Paradise Valley. It is all
ofthese things and many more that add up to this place, that
I remember when I make architecture. It is these experiences,
people, and places that I honor through form and material, myths

and anticipated rituals I am not quite ready to reveal.

85

The David andAnn Shaner Resident Studio Building, Named for the late David Shaner, the Bray’s former
Archie Bray Foundationfor the CeramicArtx, Helena, resident director (1964—1970), and his wife Ann, who now

Montana
Rick Newby

Note: A slightly different version of this article appeared in

Cemm it; Tetbnim/ 24 (Sydney, Australia, 2007).

serves on the Bray’s board of directors, the new studio building
is arguably one of the finest facilities of its kind in the world.
Its excellence is the result of a rigorous planning process that
involved not only the Mosaic team of architects, but also a
band of seasoned ceramists and technicians, among them
artists Richard Notkin, Dan Anderson, and Robert Harrison,

collector and patron Jim Kolva, Bray clay business manager (and

Archie Bray, Sr, did nut builda manumem‘ ta bimxelf the owner’s rep during construction) Chip Clawson, and Bray

He built a warbbapfarpatten.

resident director Josh DeWeese.

—David Shaner Set in the midst of a historic brickyard and clad in metal

Sometimes a work of architecture is much
more than simple shelter or functional space,
more even than the expression of an architect’s
singular vision. At its best (though architects
might beg to diHer), a structure embodies the
values and character of the person or institution
for which it is designed. The $1.75 million,
12,000—square—foot David and Ann Shaner
Resident Studio Complex, situated on the
grounds of the Archie Bray Foundation for the
Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana, is just such
a structure. Designed by Mosaic Architecture
of Helena, the Shaner Building reflects—in
profound and sometimes surprising ways—the
values, aspirations, and spirit of the foundation

and the ceramic artists it serves.

7% David and/17m Sbaner Sz‘udio next/ed into [be old[...]

VisitingArtist Chris Antemami at work in the ‘Z/fljl central corridor ofthe
Shaner Studio. Photograph © 2006 John Reddy.

and brick, the Shaner Studio mimics the industrial buildings
that surround it, especially the corrugated steel brick factory
immediately to the west. Nestled unobtrusively at the site of a
recently demolished portion of the brickworks, between the brick
factory and the summer studios, the building is intentionally
understated. As architecture, notes Ben Tintinger, Mosaic
Architecture’s lead architect, the Shaner structure is not, with
“its simple warehouse shape,” exceptional—at least at first glance.
What distinguishes it, argues Tintinger, is its “connection to so
much history,” its thoroughly thought—out filncu'onality, and the
way it “so seamlessly fits in”with the surrounding context.

As an aside: Tintinger may have been the ideal architect
for this project. A native of Helena, he grew up with a father who
was a master bricklayer (much of the brick Tintinger’s father laid
came from the former Western Clay Manufacturing Co., today
the Bray), and after considering bricklaying as his own career,
Tintinger turned to architecture, designing for his thesis project
a modern brick factory. Similarly, Rick Casteel, the landscape
designer who created the design for the grounds surrounding the
new studio (not yet fillly implemented), is a native of Helena,
growing up near the Bray. For his thesis project at Harvard, Casteel
designed a comprehensive and visionary landscape plan for the
Bray property.

The Bray’s team of planners brought a long list of desires and
needs to the table, and the resulting building meets nearly all of
them. Artists like Notkin, Anderson, and Harrison had visited, and
often spent significant time at, many of the world’s leading ceramic
institutions, ranging from Greenwich House Pottery in New York
City to Colorado’s Anderson Ranch, the European Ceramic Work

87

Centre in the Netherlands, and Japan’s Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural
Park, and they collected ideas at each. They also looked back to the
Bray’s roots, in search of the best qualifies found in the fledgling
foundation.

In the Bray’s early days, Ann Shaner points out, everything
happened in close proximity in the modest original studio building,
allowing for maximum eflciciency and intimacy. During the
year (June 1963—July 1964.) that Dave Shaner and Ken Ferguson
overlapped, the two potters sat at their wheels directly across from
each other, the kilns were in the next room or immediately outside,
and the glaze room adjoined the studio. But as the Bray grew and
flourished, the residents’ studios migrated to a nearby building;
the organization added more and more kilns, with the wood and
soda kilns in particular far distant from the studios; and everything
became less intimate, making it more challenging (and risky) to
transport pots and sculpture back and forth from studio to kiln.

In Ann’s view, this is one of the marvelous things about
the new building: That it brings the Bray back to its roots, with
everything contained in the same space, or complex of spaces.Josh
DeWeese, who left the Bray at the end of2006 (see sidebar on
Steven Young Lee, the foundation’s new resident director), agrees.
He observes, “The [building’s] basic design, the way it flows, is
proving to be wonderful,” and he goes on to list the features that
make it so: its spacious studios, both communal and private; its
glaze room, plaster room, and vast kiln room; its adjacency to the
new residents’ center (with its meeting space/dining room, full
kitchen, and computer room/oflcice) and to the already—existing
summer studios; the “nice flat floors” that allow works to be easily

carted to the adjoining kiln room; the floor drains that help keep

Entry [0 [be Sba[...]exidem‘ Cem‘er witb “55am!” z‘i/efloor and

xtu/pz‘ure by rexidenz‘ an‘ixt Trey Hill. Pboz‘ogmpb © 200610572 Raddy.

provided by the clerestory
“spectacular,” and the other
resident artists who have
worked in the new space are
similarly laudatory.

Ben Tintinger, who
was joined by Mosaic
architects Gretchen Krumm
and Jet? Downhour for this
project, expresses pleasure
at the collaborative process
but notes that his team
felt a little usurped in their
role, especially in regard
to the interior finish. The
Bray planners did not want
a polished interior, with
warm colors and exposed
woods, but rather insisted
on viewing the decoration
as a work in progress (much

as the Bray grounds have

dust in check; and perhaps most intangibly but pleasingly, the served as an ever—evolving sculpture garden). “We were a bit of
soaring spaces and the clerestory that floods the studios with light. an oddball client,” says Robert Harrison, “becau[...]who has recently enjoyed residencies much control of the aesthetic decisions. But we wanted to keep the
at both the Shaner building and the European Ceramic Work decoration flexible for fu[...]ions, with few limitations.”
Centre, notes that in each place, “natural light acts as a strong To that end, the Bray asked that the walls be painted white
catalyst for the creative process, for the changing natural light is and that the masons leave a dozen recesses in the brickwork,

a transformation in progress.” Josh DeWeese calls the lighting inside and out—as spots for future residents to mou[...]

on the exterior of the resident center. Despite a few decorative
flourishes (especially ornamental bricks produced in the brickyard
and artist—made and custom tiles in the restrooms), the Shaner
complex appears a little austere. Over time, however, it will—in
the planners’ vision—gain an increasingly textured surface, another
layer documenting the rich history and aesthetic diversity of the
place.

Perhaps the most emotionally charged decorative element to
date is the door to Dave Shaner’s studio at Bigfork, Montana, as it
appeared at his death in 2002. With its dense collage of invitations,
photographs, and posters, the door—set behind glass—serves both
as homage to Dave Shaner’s high place in American ceramics
(the Ceramic Research Center, Arizona State University, plans a
major Shaner retrospective for Autumn 2007) and as a salute to the
thriving ceramic subculture he helped to nurture during his years at
the Bray.

The studio building is a continually evolving work in another
way. As Josh DeWeese notes, “The more we inhabit the building,
the stronger feelingl get that we have the rough shell for truly the
best studio I’ve ever had the opportunity to work in.” He then goes
on to enumerate all the elements that still need to be completed.
These include building additional wood kilns andis much to do,
technically and as a home,” to give the place the “feel of a studio.”
DeWeese admits that he must “resist the urge to fill in all the

spaces” and acknowledges that, with regard to both decoration and

v
a
s
a

Resident/{Hist Curtis Stewardson focuses on his work in the open studios.

Photograph © 2006 Lynn Donaldson.

90

replace the current wood—
firing area).

Technology is not
the only thing that draws
artists to the Bray. Intimacy,
a kind of togetherness,
with everyone working
and playing in close
quarters (just as Shaner
and Ferguson did in those
early days), has long been
seen as central to the
Bray experience, and in
the planning process, a
number of resident artists
lobbied for open studios
only, feeling that private
studios were contrary to
this warmly communal

spirit. Others argued that a

David Shoner} studio door (in foreground) mounted in the entry hall ofthe new studio huilding named in honor ofShaner and “one size fits all” approach
hi5 mfg/inn. Photograph © 2006John Raddy.

the studio systems, “new people will bring new ideas and diHerent
sensibilities about how things should work.” Under DeWeese’s

leadership, the Bray has already instaled a new sixteen—cubic—foot

frontloading Frederickson electric ki

kilns and a massive wood—fired train

,n and built two indoor gas
kiln in the extensive new

he Shaner Studio (this will

wood kiln area immediately behind t

ignored the very real
diHerences between artists,
with some having far greater needs for privacy, quiet, and autonomy
than others. Richard Notkin, in particular, led the charge for
private studios, having seen that a mix of private and public spaces
has worked well elsewhere.
After long debate, the planners came to a compromise, and

the new building now boasts both highly flexi[...]

is the Peter Voulkos Visiting Artist Studio,which houses the more crowded field.

Bray’s annual Peter Voulkos Fellow but is also available for use But Ann Shaner sees things[...]s strongly
by other leading ceramists, most often in mid career or later, who that, more than anything else (the fierce competition, the need to
desire a private space.) Recent resident Miranda Howe, one of keep up with the latest technology, the fragmentation and rusticity
those who savors her privacy, appreciates having a choice—and as of the former studios), the launching of the new studio is quite

someone who experienced the
openness of the former Bray
studios, she finds the quiet
and solitude of her current
studio “phenomenal.” At the
same time, she notes, the
strong bond of the Bray spirit,
“almost like family,” has in no
way diminished.

It can be argued that
a major impetus for the
creation of the David and
Ann Shaner Studio Building
is the increasingly competitive

market among ceramic

residency programs worldwide.

And certainly the rise of fine
ceramic facilities elsewhere has
been a goa[...]on
quality. We didn’t build for

Rexialem‘An‘ixz‘ Trey Hill in [be Sbaner Studio} kiln room, witb a view[...]

simply a logical extension of Archie Bray’s original vision: that the Ann Shaner affirms, “The new building is far beyond our wildest
Bray continue to be a fin[...]who are seriously dreamSfl marvelous realization of Archie’s long—held vision.”
interested in any of the Ceramic Arts. . . . that it may always be a

delight to turn to . . . a place of art—of simple things not problems, 1%?

good people, lovely people all tuned to the right spirit.” And

As Josh DeWeese departs

in search of new challenges,

after fourteen remarkable

and productive years as the

Bray’s Resident Director,

the foundation welcomes

Steven Young Lee as its

new director. A former Bray

resident, Lee was born in

Chicago and received his

MFA from the New York

State College of Ceramics

at Alfred University in 2004..

He has taught at Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan,
the Clay Art Center in New York, and the Lill Street Studio
in Chicago. He has also managed a ceramics supply business in
Chicago. Most recently, he has taught at Emily Carr Institute
of Art and Design in Vancouver, British Columbia.

In a recent interview, Lee spoke of his aspirations for
his tenure at the Bray. While cautious about making any
abrupt or radical changes in the Bray’s direction, Lee did speak
glowingly of the foundation’s rich history and his desire to
further develop certain aspects of that legacy. In particular, he

spoke of building on the Bray’s internationalist tendencies,
first seen in early workshops by Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada,
and Marguerite Wildenhain—and most recently underscored
by this past summer’s Archie Bray International gathering,
which brought to Helena ceramic artists from Mali, the former
Soviet Union, Australia, Wales, France, China, Thailand, Korea,
Israel, and Ecuador. In 2004—2005, Lee participated in a one—
year cultural and educational exchange in Jingdezhen,Jianxi
Province, Republic of China, and that experience, together
with several trips to Korea, has fueled his passion for dialogue
with other ceramic traditions, not just those of Asia but also
the rich ceramic heritage(s) of Europe and elsewhere. He
delights in how these encounters can “enrich and challenge
our ways of looking at ceramics.”This urge to further “open
the pathway to other cultures” promises to make Steven Young
Lee’s stay at the Bray a truly dynamic and inclusive time.

“Josh DeWeese has done a marvelous job at the Bray,”
says Lee. “He has set the bar high, and I will try to continue
in his footsteps, always seeking the best artists and oHering
the best possible facilities.” Likewise,Josh speaks highly of his
successor. “I knew from the time Steve was here as a resident
that we would be seeing him again,” he said. “His talent,
vitality, teaching and people skills will be a terrific asset to the

Bray as we move ahead.”

The Archie Bray Foundation Seriesuf Porgfolio
J. M. Cooper

J. M. Cooper has been photographing the western
Montana landscape over the last thirty years, trying
to document areas and structures that are rapidly
disappearing. Between 1992 and 2000, he actively
captured the former brick—making plant on the
grounds of the Archie Bray Foundation for the
Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana (located just west
of town), together with site—specific sculpture created
by the foundation’s resident artists. This was a period
of tremendous change for the foundation’s brick and
wooden structures. The seasonal weather changes have
taken their toll; in Cooper’s words, “There is a kind of
melting down process going on.”

The beauty of the light streaming through the
buildings’ roofs, the sounds inside the giant brick kilns,
and the other—worldly feeling while photographing

thes[...]fascination” for

Cooper, who sometimes held his breath during the

thirty— to forty—five—second exposures. K[...]r, © 1994] M Cooper
Cooper received a grant from the Jerry Metcalf

Foundation to help him produce a thirty—image show

of this work. He is currently working on a similar project with the

help of writer Ellen Baumler to document the old Deer Lodge

prison; this project will result in a book.

High Tea at the Bray, Susannah Israel, artist, © 2004] M Cooper

109

To Turn the Dark Cloud Imide Out
Catharine Calk—MeCarty and American Red Cross Home
Service in Montana, 1917—1925

Joan Bishop

On December 12, 1919, Catharine Calk—McCarty, the American
Red Cross Home Service secretary for the Dawson—Garfield—
McCone County Chapter, wrote a letter to her friend,
Dolly Burgess, in Helena, describing the challenge
of social work. “I get discouraged about the future
of some of these people in eastern Montana.
The stock is dying everywhere—and a
blizzard now, and it has been 13 below all day.
I nearly go crazy some days listening to the
stories; many of which there is no help to

be given. I can always do something for the
boys and it makes you so glad when you can,
but it is the men looking for work, with large
families, mortgaged to the last cent, down

in the depths of despair that make a wreck
out of me.”'Ihe “boys” in this letter were World
War I veterans who had returned[...]service to find their families battling drought

and recession. For reeling homesteaders and others hard hit,

the Red Cross through its Home Service oflcice brought relief, and

it did so through the eHorts of individuals like Catharine Calk—
McCarty.‘
Re[...]e Service, patterned on British programs

started in 1914. after war broke out in Europe, began in America

\. '
X’-

when the nation entered the war on April 6, 1917. It was designed
to provide better communication and social services between
soldiers and their families. Qlickly it became a broad—based,
popular program in chapters throughout the country, due to a
phenomenal fundraising campaign and eHective teamwork between
the government and Red Cross oflcicials. The former provided the
Red Cross with exclusive access to servicemen’s records and
the latter agreed to supplement emergency needs for
veterans not covered by government allowances.
After the unexpected armistice on November
11, 1918, there was still much work for Home
Service sections and workers planned for its
continuation as Civilian Home Service. The
Red Cross also suggested that any chapters
withou[...]heir own.
Some Red Cross leaders even envisioned

the Home Service becoming a permanent

program in rural communities throughout the

country}
Catharine Calk—McCarty’s Home Service

oflcice opened on January 1, 1919, in Glendive,

/

the Dawson County seat with a population of
approximately 3,500, located on the Yellowstone River. Of
the approximately forty county chapters in Montana then, hers

Catbarine Ca/k in 1918,ij before xbe opened [be Red Croxx office in Glendive,
M T; [ammo], pbotogmpber. Courte[...]

110

was the largest, a territory 150 miles east to west and 75 miles from
north to south. It was the only social service organization in the
region, for at this time there were no community welfare councils,
such as Associated Charities, in most Montana towns. After the
war the need for social services increased. This essay is an in—depth
study of how this occurred and of Calk—McCarty’s eHorts to make
Home Service fulfill a much—needed function.

Yet over the long term, this broad—based program was
destined to fail on the Northern Plains. Insurmountable challenges
for veterans and families, coupled with national apathy—return
to normalcy—led to cutbacks in Red Cross support during the
mid—1920s.These doomed the future of this projected peacetime
program. Nevertheless impressive work was done to ameliorate the

situation, and it came close to working in eastern Montana, due

largely to the talents of Calk—McCarty.

Catharine Calk—McCaity’s education, personal and political
connections, experiences as a homesteader, and commitment to
the well—being of the community and returning veterans, made
her uniquely qualified to direct the Home Service program in
eastern Montana. She was born in Mount Sterling, Kentucky, on
December 5, 1883, to Emma and Price Calk. After graduation from
an Episcopal Church school there, she taught at a neighboring
school. In 1914. she traveled west to Bozeman, Montana, to visit
her aunt and uncle, Emma and Fred Culloden. On a May day
she went sightseeing with friends in an open Ford Runabout
and was seriously injured when the car skidded near a washed—
out bridge over the Gallatin River and turned over. Slowly and

painfully she recovered, learned to walk again, and took courses

7Z2 attidem‘ near Bozeman, MT; in wbitb Caibarine Caz/k wax injured.

Courtexy Monmmz I-Iixtorim/ Sotiez‘y, Helena.

in typing, shorthand, and legal correspondence. Her doctor also
suggested that horseback riding would be good exercise, and so
Calk—McCaity decided to go to eastern Montana to visit her
brother Jim, who was homesteading in Dawson County. Catharine
met Albert McCarthy, a World War I veteran and neighboring
homesteader, in 1920 and they married on February 14., 1921.
Impressed by the opportunity for land, Calk—McCarty filed
a homestead claim next to Jim’s near Smoky Butte in 1916. She
stayed and proved up on her land. While Jim was away freight[...]eeks alone with her companions, Tramp, her horse, and
Damme, a bulldog who took care of rattlesnakes. Although she
encountered blizzards, herds of stray cattle and free horses, she

apparently put most challenges, including the loneliness, in some

III

kind of perspective, laced with her sense of humor. She also grew
fond of the environment: “I rode through the sagebrush and into
a wonderful sight just over the butte, a band of antelope bedded
down among dozens of jack rabbits.”3

During the winter of 1917, Calk—McCarty got a job as

assistant enrolling clerk for the 1917 Montana legislature in Helena.

The following summer she accepted a position oHered b[...]ean Mendenhall, to inventory county resources
for the United States War Department, and she moved east to
Glendive. There she met some local community leaders, active

in their newly founded Red Cross chapter, such as banker, M. L.
Hughes, William Lindsay, rancher and former 1905 Republican
gubernatorial candidate, and Mabel and R. L. Beach, chief surgeon
of the Northern Pacific Beneficial Association Hospital. They were

interested in her background and recent homesteading experiences.

In her short reminiscence, Blue Gram, Big Sky, she p[...]gregarious story—teller, also unabashedly proud of her
Kentucky heritage—from kinship to Daniel Boone to proficiency
making beaten biscuits—and so I believe that she made Glendive
friendships at this time. A year—and—a—half later this local Red
Cross group would invite her to return as Home Service secretary.
In the fall of 1918 Calk—McCarty was back in Helena, when
a deadly wave of the influenza “struck Montana like a blast.” She
wa[...]k, were then directing their energies to battling an enemy more
deadly than the military conflict, by training nurses and setting
up hospital units. After the war, when the Red Cross enlarged
its social service programs, its reputation for hard work during

the epidemic gave it credibility in Montana communities toward

.J'fllmo

Caibarine Caz/k in Red Cray; uniform afler [bepamde on [be F[...]

112

support of Civilian Home Service programs.4

That December C[...]eturned to Glendive
to be Home Service Secretary, in charge of helping returning
veterans and their families by providing information about
government provisions and social services. A typical day began
early alone, studying the Red Cross Service Manual and dozens
of directives from Frank Bruno, her supervisor at the Department
of Civilian Relief in the Northern Division (one of thirteen in
the country). Oflcice hours followed. She was usually swamped,
and one senses, from comments in her correspondence, that she
and her co—workers had not anticipated the heavy caseload as
veterans, inducted at the Glendive railway terminus, returned
to their induction point and crowded into her oflcice. This
disproportionately large number was due to both a high Montana
draft (based upon the erroneously inflated state population
estimate of 940,000 instead of the actual figure of548,889) and
on homesteaders’ enlistments. Montana sent almost 40,000 men
to war (with casualties of 4,061). Dawson County was seventh of
forty—four counties in the Montana Adjutant General’s report, with
approximately 7,124 servicemen.5