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The Heavens Cannot Contain You
Emily Dickenson wrote, “You cannot fold a Flood—/ And put it in a Drawer.” As I left Costa Rica behind and became more entrenched in South Dakota, I felt this was my task as I labored to make sense of the impressions and feelings I’d been gathering during our work in the mission field. The church in Greenwood was haunting me a bit because removing the stained glass windows had made me feel as if I had marred its historic beauty.
In her account of the Church of Holy Fellowship in That They May Have Life, Sneve states the little chapel was first built in August 1870 from logs gathered by the Native Americans who wanted a church on their reservation. In 1873, W. Hobart Hare, then Bishop of the newly created Missionary Jurisdiction of Niobrara, arrived at Yankton Mission and chose the church for his cathedral, making his home in a small room built onto its side.
The frame structure as we found it in 1989 was not the original; it wasn’t concecrated until 1886, a little over one hundred and three years prior to my setting foot within its interior. One of the things I enjoyed about the history of the Native Americans I was reading was their embracing of their own brand of mythology, something they seemed to do as naturally as any culture since the ancient Greeks. In fact, they were steeped in their version of it before the wasichu, white perople, came along and tried to snuff it out of them. In Yankton, one of the earliest bits of folklore relating to the Episcopal Church and its entrée into Sioux society was the story of the conversion of Tipi Sapa, then the chief of the Yanktonai whose name in Dakota meant Black Lodge. Once “Christianized,” Tipi Sapa had been given the name Philip Deloria, and was lauded as “the best known of all the native priests.”
Sneve tells the story of the day his interest in the church was first recorded. Tipi Sapa rode by the chapel in full war regalia when he heard the congregation singing “Guide Me Thou Great Jehovah” in Dakota, stopping for a brief time to listen to the words. He didn’t enter the chapel at that time but returned another day to hear the same hymn being sung. It is said the words of the hymn made a great impression on the young chief, a response that eventually led him to approach Bishop Hare about becoming a Christian. When the bishop told him he must give up his chief’s position, cut his hair and become a simple man, he balked, stating he was a powerful chief. He did eventually agree to be baptized, and was sent to Shattuck Military School for the beginning of the inculturation process. After completing the educational and service requirements to enter the priesthood, he was ordained a deacon at St. Stephen’s chapel on the Cheyenne River reservation, then spent forty years on the Standing Rock reservation as a priest, returning to the Yankton reservation in 1925. His story expanded beyond Native American culture when his visage was placed in the reredos of the high altar in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.—one of only three Americans among the 98 “Saints of the Ages.”
My stewing about the abandoned chapel in Greenwood was the counter opposite to how the parishioners were feeling. I could have taken a cue from my grandmother, who loved to say the more you stirred shit, the worse it smelled but I couldn’t let go of my disgust over how the church had treated Native Americans in the past. My viewpoint was not shared by the Wagner congregation whose excitement had reached a fever pitch by the day Bishop Anderson was visiting for the groundbreaking. Just before his closing comments for the ceremony that day, the Bishop read a prayer: “Oh Lord God of Israel, the heavens cannot contain you, yet you are pleased to dwell in the midst of your people, and have moved us to set apart a space on which to build a house of prayer: accept and bless the work which we have now begun, that it may be brought to completion, to the honor and glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
He then remarked how the great spirit had waffled through the framed shell of a building we had been standing within, the studded walls surrounding a rough concrete slab foundation still fully open to the elements. “The heavens cannot contain you,” he said, raising his hands to let the wind stir the papers he held. I thought this was a fitting statement considering how the strong breezes had fluttered our clothing and programs throughout the entire service. The pages of the Bibles the lay readers had been holding danced as if in a ceremony of their own as the men tried to keep their places. Finally, the Bishop ended his closing statements by declaring the wind was indeed the spirit, or breath, of the “word,” because it had joined in the celebration of a new beginning for the Church of the Holy Spirit.
Father Hobbs, who led the congregation, had spoken of miracles during the service, his list including the $55,000 grant from the United Thank Offering, the construction knowledge Jim brought to the project, and the free labor given by all the volunteers who traveled with us from Chattanooga. “The miracle of this spirit of volunteerism will allow the church to be debt free,” he said: “a luxury, yet a necessity in the life of this small parish.”
A feeling of pride that we had brought something of value to a group of people who’d rarely caught breaks in our country was battling it out with my feelings of regret. Would our hymns sung in English have drawn Tipi Sapa in if he’d rode by on horseback today? I questioned. The only answer was the breeze stirring the skirt I’d worn, the fabric whipping into a frenzy as the Bishop walked over to shake Jim’s hand. The silence of the undulant air provided no answer as I smiled and tried to appear gracious while my emotions buffeted my heaving mind. Where would this turmoil lead me? I wondered as the Bishop embraced me in a gentle hug.
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The Depository of Arrogance
We drove the long stretch of road cutting through miles of farmland and ranchland between Wagner and Greenwood, home to Peter Cook who often brought lovely beaded jewelry and barrettes he created to church to sell afterwards. His beadwork was as impressive as his baking abilities, as I had experienced by relishing his incredible apple pies. We were there to remove several stained glass windows from the Church of the Holy Fellowship, one of three abandoned chapels set like unpolished crystals on the ragged banks flanking the Missouri River. I walked along the moist earth wondering how much money had been spent on the reservations trying to bridge a cultural gap that couldn’t possibly be spanned with money.
The Episcopal congregations had been dwindling for a while because the seniors, who made up the bulk of the worshipers, were dying away. Maybe it had always been inevitable that these churches, monuments to a foreign deity, would become empty laboratories of coercion, their experiments doomed to fail. After all, how much clout could a religion sustain when it replaced a spirituality vitally alive each and every day with a building staying locked more often than it remained open?
With the decreased activity caused by so many defections into Wagner, the neighborhood now languished with only an occasional dog's barking to interrupt the quietude. It saddened me to add to the decline of this spot, which once saw the dockage of paddleboats as they stopped on their way along the pre-dammed Missouri during the rowdy days of the westward expansion. The new church in Wagner—soon to be consecrated the Church of the Holy Spirit or Woniya Wakan—would only sentence Holy Fellowship to further decline.
Truth be told, the church had fallen silent long before we came to build a new one. Rather than hold services embraced by the warm patina of the wooden pews and the gentle ambiance of the clapboard chapel, the parishioners of Holy Fellowship had been worshiping in a community center next to the empty lot where Woniya Wakan would stand. The center was an institutional prototype: impersonal, cold and bland. The floor was irrevocably dirty—a fact the swarming flies seemed to appreciate—and the tic-tic-tic of the overhead fan kept the silence company between liturgy, prayer and song.
I loved singing hymns in Dakota. I struggled through the breathy language, appreciating the rhythmical intonations, the nuance of sound, the inflections. But I grew to dread the Bible readings. As soon as I took my seat in one of the rickety metal folding chairs, I’d scan the handouts holding the Collect, the Psalm and the readings to see if what was printed there was disdainful given the events of the past 150 years, as it happened more often than not. We read the Collect in unison: "Remember those who are ill treated, since you also are in the body." How insulting that these Native Americans were being told to remember what we had long ignored. The prayers were no less disturbing to me: "Guide the people of this land, and of all the nations, in the ways of justice and peace, that we may honor one another and serve the common good."
I found it ironic that I had been embracing a religion which professed to bring justice to people when the rights of the Native Americans had been completely disregarded early on. I left these services in a confused daze, wanting to apologize, yet not fully understanding why I was compelled to say I was sorry. Forgive us for we surely knew not what we were doing, I silently begged. But the resigned awareness I sought would not hold. By examining a more honest account of history than the one I had been presented when I was a student in the public school system, I was now learning that those who were in power during the colonization of America did indeed know what they were doing, as cultural annihilation was sanctioned by both the government and the church.
The push to save the "heathen" souls had resulted in an evangelical frenzy which brought both the Catholics and the Episcopalians to Indian Territory. When asked to select the "official" religion on the reservations, the Native Americans chose the Episcopal faith because its priests wore white cassocks. The Catholics wore similar robes; only theirs were black. Good triumphing over evil? Cruelty is cruelty, regardless of the color in which it veils itself, I fumed as I read about the abuses these clergy members brought with them.
The mission schools, irrespective of the denomination, seemed to be the worst offenders. Stories of priests punishing Native American children for speaking their own language at school were plentiful. One man, who was caught speaking Lakota as a boy, remembered when a priest took him out of the lunch line at the mission school where he was forced to board, pulling him to a boiling pot on the stove where he held the boy's hand to the searing metal in order to “teach him a lesson.” How could I feel good about being associated with the Christian faith when stories like this left me horrified? I sat and silently pled with the Native Americans in the church services to stop dutifully listening to liturgy that had been rendered empty by these abominations but I couldn’t know what battles had been fought by them and lost, nor could I understand what comfort might have been gained by this supplication each week.
And wasn't my attitude just as arrogant as the stance of those who had come to conquer rather than to respect? Was I not simply one more white person attempting to impose my will upon them? It was certainly, at the very least, a variation on the same theme, which reared its ugly head when any of us outside their culture asked, How can we solve their problems? This one seemingly meaningful question, I believe, had done irreparable harm. Why add one more ounce of condescension to the depository of arrogance? I asked myself.
Though it was difficult not to question how things could have been righted when witnessing the level of dysfunction resulting from the collision and the haphazard amalgamation of two disparate cultures, I would have to hold myself accountable by remembering I didn’t have the answers to the unruly questions presenting themselves at every turn. I often wondered what change I could have inspired had I been able to turn back time: might I have had a positive influence on history? It was a ridiculous exercise, of course, because those days when consideration could have steered Native Americans to a more powerful position in our society were far in the past. All I could possibly do was to try and make my own peace with how things had been handled. But how?
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And the Book Becomes a Reality!
The Let's Blog Off topic today is "What are you looking forward to in the new year?" Hands down for me, besides adroyt being a smashing success, is a book deal for The Road to Promise. I thought I'd take this opportunity, as this is the first post of 2012, to thank everyone who has stopped or continues to stop in and read my ramble through my past. Happy New Year to all of you, and don't forget to read the other forward-thinking posts by our merry band of revelers. Today's installment follows: happy reading everyone!
Gumption
We had made our way back to Wagner to begin our work on the church, and the quirkiness of the contradictions held within the town’s boundaries were apparent from the start. We had rented a house the color of crème caramel with dark brown shutters and a perfectly manicured yard. The china hutch in the dining room held a carefully arranged collection of plates stamped with Norman Rockwell's nostalgic vignettes. By stepping out the front door, I could find any one of these twenty Rockwellean scenes superimposed on life!
Most mornings, the counter at the Spot Café on Main Street was filled with farmers and ranchers in frayed overalls. Their white tank undershirts shone through the wash-worn fabric of their faded plaid shirts, and their cleanly shaven heads nodded as they discussed unrelenting weather, unyielding land and the day's news.
These hardy men fit the stereotypical image of the American farmer, fixtures at the popular diner every morning, just as Elmo was. It seemed to me that he had been sent to teach me a lesson about stereotypes because he looked nothing like the Native American I had fixed in my mind's eye before traveling to South Dakota. In fact, he was practically indistinguishable from those stalwart men whose backs rose like stout tree trunks above the swivel stools except that his age and elderly leisure had softened his once robust build. He shuffled into the diner our first morning there, swinging his cane, which he used to oblige his rhythmical rolling gate, as he launched into a monologue about Columbus Day a few weeks away.
The fact that he had latched onto the subject proved he had a joke for every occasion. He asked me if I knew why they celebrated the holiday on the reservation. I had actually wondered why they would commemorate an event that had introduced so much turmoil into their culture and I was genuinely interested to hear where the conversation would go. He didn’t disappoint, answering, "Because it's the day the tourist trade opened in America!" I recorded snippets like these in my writers notebook, recording how he laughted heartily at the cleverness of his joke, my legs crossed on the toffee-colored sofa awash in a sea of oatmeal-hued blandness in our temporary living room as I relived my conversations with our new acquaintances. Each time I was treated to Elmo’s boyish humor, I thought about how Vine Deloria, Jr., had been so right about his treatment of even unsavory subjects, a trait Deloria claimed was common among Native Americans.
The author maintained that it’s a great disappointment to them that most experts who wrote about their lives rarely mentioned their propensity for humor. Jokes about Columbus and Custer were especially popular because these men had left indelible marks on their culture, mainly negative ones. The more desperate the subject, Deloria pointed out, the more humor was warranted.
In the southern tradition that had shaped me, we were more likely to grow maudlin when extenuating circumstances left us reeling. Far too many of us had bought into the myth that we were doomed to the inferno of God's Baptist-sized wrath, which was mirrored by our hellishly hot summer climate. How, after all, could the intense heat of purgatory be any worse than that of the deep south in August? went the refrain. Maybe the impudence displayed by the Native Americans who made fun of their oppressors could have taught me something about lightening up! And yet, I wondered whether the humor was merely scabs covering deep festering wounds.
As I was journaling about their ability to be lighthearted, I felt the need to name it and I hit upon the word “gumption.” My mother’s mother had had it, as had my father’s father on his side of the family, but it been beaten out of the next generation to come along so I inherited none of what passed for backbone. I wanted to get my gumption back—and I was trying—but it wasn’t playing very well with my husband who wasn’t accustomed to being contradicted. Elmo was worth watching, I thought to myself as Jim and I walked through the late summer sunlight in the mêlée of Wagner’s centennial celebration. Maybe I could learn how to have a voice while keeping my pluck in check. Piece of cake, right? Hardly!
An insanity had gripped the small town, transforming it from sleepy to frenetic. It was Americana run amok as I had never seen it—an arts and crafts fair had taken over the park; there was a rodeo in the afternoon; an outdoor dance went into full swing on Saturday evening; and the parade, which lasted the good part of an entire day, was a spectacle to behold. The variety of entries traversing Main Street was astonishing, including everything from covered wagons to a veterinarian in a dog suit on his four wheeler onto which he’d fashioned a mechanized dog’s leg raising and lowering as a kid in a fire hydrant costume walked beside it! Hundreds of people crouched on the curb or lounged in lawn chairs as they watched the long line of tractors, trucks and horse-and-buggy rigs move by. Participation by Native Americans was almost non-existent, with Elmo and the other representatives of the all-Indian American Legion being the largest group. Thirteen of them marched in a color guard formation while six preceded them in the bed of Elmo's battered blue truck—too frail to make the trip on foot.
Soon after they made their way past, a National Guard tank lumbered down the street. The small children ran to their parents to hide their faces from the huge, noisy machine while the older kids jumped up and down, shrieking with glee from the adrenaline rush. They supported Uncle Sam with gusto in this town as the proliferation of painted wooden replicas of the gray-haired gent, his finger pointing relentlessly from front lawns, proved. The tractor still represented a symbol of strength and continuity, and they had models from 1920 to the current one rolling down Main Street. But nothing made the kids go crazier than the tank, its articulated metal track grating on the asphalt as it chewed its way along.
I had decided to bring my buddy Sam with me for a taste of life in Wagner, and we walked him to the park to take in the arts and crafts, bumping into Edna, Elmos’s sister, and another parishioner named Rocky once there. Jim went to the bank with Rocky to meet “everyone who’s anyone in town,” as he put it, and then to get a haircut with him. I wandered around for a while, noticing how the tumult of the Midway increased after the sun set. The children’s faces were luminous in the neon-soaked air, their screams ricocheting from the buildings surrounding the square as bodies were jostled about—slung one way forcefully only to be quickly jolted in the other direction. It was difficult to walk because the kids were so excited to make their way from one ride to the next, they didn’t care whether anyone was in their way. Arms stretched forward, they simply plowed through the adults milling around without a thought to manners.
A group of Menonite girls stood in front of me as I watched the beauty contest. The uniformity of their outfits—made alike from a variety of conservatively-patterned materials—brought them stares from everyone else gathered around the stage. The black scarves covering their long curls were held in place with clips so that the wind didn’t expose them. I wondered how they felt watching the girls on stage, their bare shoulders gleaming with the lights trained on them and their high heels clicking on the planks of wood. Did it rankle them to see those teens being celebrated for their physical beauty, their prettily coifed hair blowing free in the breeze? Was there an ounce of feeling in them that life wasn’t fair? I couldn’t help but wonder. Or were they relieved to be free from the burden of adornment?
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Incurable Untimeliness
The hawk was keening in the distance, likely as displeased with the steamy air it slogged through as my writer’s notebook, its pages rippling as the hot moisture seeped into the fibers. I had not been exploring myself there for a while and a fear had been building in me. What if, once I was able to get back to the blue lines and black ink, I would not like what my handwriting would record? Even worse, I thought, what if nothing would flow from my pen at all? It was a sad thing I had been becoming and I wanted to rewrite the script but I was having the toughest time with the beginning. Truth be told, it was so difficult to start because the ending scared me to death. Once begun, somehow I knew there would be no turning away from that trajectory.
I had taken a break from reading about Native American culture knowing we’d be back in that world soon enough. I had turned to some kinder, gentler authors—Robert Frost and Henry David Thoreau among them—as I researched an article I was writing. Being so steeped in nature through their words brought me great pleasure and I thought about how influences like that could seep into a writer’s work without him or her realizing it. I had seen this happen in my narratives: as I read these “mentors” my writing seemed to naturally deepen to a point that everyday subjects, especially where nature was concerned, were infused with significance through a personification I was somehow driven to achieve.
I was carrying a book of Frost’s poems to the screened porch when I caught sight of a spider web spun tightly to the railing on the deck. It caught my eye because the dew had collected in spots and the droplets were tiny prisms as the morning light flashed into being. I was always in awe of these webs—so beautiful in their artfulness while being deathtraps for winged things. How could the murderous snare look so pristine in the freshness of the dawn? I wondered, thinking of Frost’s poem “To a Moth Seen in Winter.”
Just as a spider web could be considered in a deeper context, this poem held reverberations for me. A moth, destined to die from the cold, lights on the poet’s hand, inspiring a reverie that has great emotional depth. The spider web I continued to examine from the shade of the screened porch and the unfortunate insects who ended up being the arachnid’s meal held echoes for me, as I felt caught in the web of a life that kept me from having the peace I dreamed was possible. If only, was the refrain that pressed itself into my mind over and over. It was as if Frost’s last three lines were as much a caveat for me as they were for that moth: no one could touch my life, much less save it, if I couldn’t figure out what it would take to solve my own dilemma. If only…
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- Posted from East Hampton, NY
Land of the Free
Once we had exited the Rockies, driving from Steamboat Springs to Wagner, South Dakota, was a lesson in monotony, the Plains stretching into oblivion as we struck a straight coarse on the shaft of asphault that ran right up to the horizon. We passed over so many dried creek beds, I wondered how anything could survive on the sun-scoured expanse of brittle grasses. Old Woman Creek had packed up and gone, leaving behind a scattering of brittle bones and the splintered scaps of cottonwood limbs begging for rain while the sky refrained.
The first elevation relief came as we neared the border between Wyoming and South Dakota in the form of the Black Hills. They were being pounded by a scowling storm, visible from as far away as Newcastle—its cloud-choked head feathering heavenward and its dark heart bearing down on the outer edge of the hills. The closer we drew, the angrier it seemed, I thought, and I was right: once we reached its proximity, we were pounded with hail so thick we could hardly see to drive. At one point, we were barely advancing as quarter-inch-sized balls of ice blanketed the ground an inch and a half deep.
I was thankful we were in such a macho vehicle—the old Bronco had seen much worse having been through four college-age boys in succession as Jim passed it from one son to another and had weathered a decade of being kicked around by the partying set that took over Steamboat each winter. Though it never shrugged, the sound of ice striking the thin metal of its hood and roof was deafening at times. I’d had kinder welcomes but in spite of the weather’s tantrum, I decided I wanted to return to the Black Hills someday because it was where the Native Americans believed nature had the most amplified spiritual voice. She had certainly been exercising it that day as we drove past tourist traps and tacky intrusions on a gorgeous backdrop of jagged peaks covered in the verdant thickness of pines reaching high into the sky.
Once past the Hills, the flatness of the land returned until we reached the Badlands, an incredibly bleak and frightening landscape if there ever was one. It was as if the earth was eating itself, and the bleached-out, bone-dry colors were the counter opposites to the Black Hills’ lush infusion of blue-greens and deep grays. I wondered how quickly it took the Badlands to change as plateaus and buttes melted away, then formed again as the edge of the grasslands caved in on itself. Is anything ever constant here or is this a treacherous world of continual dissolving? I wondered.
We skirted the Buffalo Gap Grasslands to see its buxom namesakes grazing—some in pairs and others wandering the expanses in small groups. The first prairie dogs came into view as we dipped a bit further into the park, their “Prairie Dog Town” a field of dirt mounds, some of which had the straight-backed homeowners themselves popping up from within as they haughtily surveyed us from their tunneled residences.
It felt as if it had taken weeks for us to make our way to Wagner, though it had been only a day and a half. When we arrived, we were greeted by the stalwart parishioners of the tiny town, and it wasn’t long before one stood out. We parked the Bronco at the house Jim had rented and made our way to the community center where we were being honored with a dinner, and I knew immediately who was going to be Jim’s favorite among our new friends. The minute we entered the open room, Elmo’s booming voice and thin cackling laugh, which shook his large girth, welcomed us, not once letting up during the entire evening.
He reminded me of an overstuffed teddy bear with its ears torn off because his head was shaved and his jowls were so pronounced, his tiny ears seemed tucked away behind the protruding cheeks. He wore baggy pants that had never been “in fashion,” the thick suspenders holding them up smudged where he would fiddle with them as he pontificated about one subject or another. His smile was so endearing to me because it reminded me of my grandmother’s when she was soaking her false teeth at night—the indented oblong of his big grin hiding his lips as if for safekeeping.
His eyes were perpetually twinkling because he was always thinking of his next joke or a riff he could interject into any conversation, whether it was actually fitting or not. That night, he pulled a leather pouch from his pocket. It was darkened and worn smooth from being handled innumerable times. He held it in front of him and paused for effect, finally saying with a drawl, “Well, lookie here!” As he said it, he slowly pulled a fly from its interior, which prompted Jim to ask, “Do you fish?”
Elmo answered, “Not anymore; but if I got stranded on the river somewhere I could catch my dinner!” He broke into a hearty laugh at his own joke, the only thing making it funny besides the fact he’d not likely been on a river in decades. As evidenced by his portliness, he did like to eat. “My Grandpa told me to always get a look at the cook before I eat at a restaurant,” he said that night. “He told me, ‘If the cook is skinny, don’t eat there; fat, jolly cooks mean a good meal because they constantly sample their own cooking!’” He referred to himself as a Siouxwegian because his ancestry was a mix of Sioux and Norwegian. When he explained this to me, he slapped his knee and shook his head as he sniggered, seeming so particularly amused he must have been hearing the fact for the first time, though that was not the case.
I couldn’t help but giggle myself as I scribbled my impressions of Elmo into my writer’s notebook on the flight home—a 12-hour journey that left me feeling exhausted but happy to see Sam after nine days away from him. I had picked up a number of books in South Dakota, among them Custer Died For Your Sins by Vine Deloria, Jr. It was a scathing book aimed at white culture but the chapter about the Native American sense of humor gave me extra insight into Elmo’s personality. I was working my way through the tough material during mornings on the screened porch—feeling my skin burn with shame that a people’s civil rights were still being breached in our country, especially since we were so fond of proclaiming we were the land of the free. I was receiving a painful education as to the ways of the world, the ways of our government and the ways of ugly racism.
I found myself wondering time and again why these weren’t the stories we were taught in school: why did our lessons stop after the Pilgrims and the Indians shared that supposed meal on that first Thanksgiving? Should it still be looked upon as such a thankful day? I questioned, closing Deloria’s book and wondering what other inconsistencies were about to come to the fore. According to the history books, the Native Americans gave their best to the Pilgrims who’d made their entrée into their world during that lauded celebratory meal, and I had just experienced the same level of generosity during a dinner in Wagner when a group of Native Americans who had so little to give provided us with a delicious and heartfelt experience.
I had been told that many Sioux took the rations they received from the government—cheese, sugar, flour and butter, for instance—to the dump and tossed them into the trash to make a point. Peter Cook was not one of those. He brought several of the most magnificent apple pies I’d ever seen or tasted to that dinner. As I watched his face gleam with pride when Jim relished his first bite, I thought about how very different history could have been. If only I could rewrite it, I’d include a great deal more true “thanks giving” and a lot less fanfare.
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God is Wakantanka
I had learned a painful lesson (once again), one that I need not have repeated—a writer’s conference has never been a good environment for me and that remained “my truth.” I was simply not at all comfortable talking about myself or my work to strangers who had the same terrified look in their eyes invading my own when my work was the subject of scrutiny. It was rather pathetic, really—I could say this only because I felt I was pitiful when I used the side trips from life as a search for acceptance from others who had the same insecurities as mine. The simple truth was that I needed to be the one accepting myself because until I did, anyone else attempting to validate me was a lost cause.
Hoping to quiet the storm the conference had awakened within my head, I retreated to our friend’s house tucked into the lush spruce-speckled hills with a book I had been given during our first trip to South Dakota—Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve’s That They May Have Life: The Episcopal Church in South Dakota 1859-1976. The boys—Jim and his friend—took fly fishing trips to area lakes and went into town to play while I devoured the recount of the church’s history with South Dakota tribes. It had become an important piece of literature documenting the actions of the Episcopalians working among the Native Americans, and Sneve wasted no time in getting to the crux of the matter, beginning her first chapter “God is Wakantanka” with this paragraph:
“When the missionaries brought Christianity to the Dakota or Sioux Indians, there was a great change in the native value system. Some Indians were able to retain old values and integrated them into Christian beliefs, so that the old was combined with the new and conversion to a new religion was an easy extension of the old. For others the conflicts were insurmountable and there was hostility and resistance to the missionaries and to Christianity.”
As I lumbered deeper into the past through her words, I felt a great ache for people who had been duped time and again by church and state, and I realized I had gleaned something that made my one day at the writer’s conference worthwhile. The evening speaker the night before had said, “Effort is the key: know your subject and work at it.” I used that as my battle cry, the only thing that made plowing through the material showing how the past had spiraled around the Native Americans like a snare tolerable. I was intellectualizing it all, of course; I knew better than to think such trauma could be emotionally understood by someone like myself who hadn’t experienced it. I was okay with that, as I felt I could at least be a witness to a subject no longer brought to the fore in our culture’s consciousness; and I just might instigate change at the very most.
“…in times of crisis and disorder,” Sneve wrote, “many Dakota slipped back to the old traditions and religions. Christianity among the Indians became very much like Christianity among the whites. Those who remained faithful Christians and accepted the new order realized that the old Dakota way of life was doomed: it could not stand against the stronger white civilization. They knew if they were to survive, they must adopt Christian standards and behavior.”
Sneve regresses in time, telling the stories of the missionaries’ interactions with the Sioux, noting the first convocation which took place in Santee on October 5th and 6th 1870, well over a century before I had attended one. With her description of the reservations reverberating in my head, we drove out of Steamboat heading toward South Dakota in an ornery Ford Bronco Jim had left at his friend’s since selling his half of another Steamboat retreat several years before. We would be using the brute of a vehicle for our transportation in South Dakota and it felt like the perfect workhorse as it thrust through the thin high-mountain air in the crispness of a late summer morning.
With the first touch of light coming into the sky, we drove the winding road as the brightness turned magnificently blue against the stark relief of the peaks looming black and bold. Along the road, the tips of wheatgrass sparked like paintbrushes dipped in a radiant sheen, and the racks of the antelope grazing in the fields glowed as the sun illuminated the summer’s velvet covering their horns. I juxtaposed this predawn beauty that enveloped us as we drove out of the Rocky Mountains with the words of Issac Heard, who wrote the History of the Sioux War and Massacres of 1862 and 1863. Sneve quotes him in her book, his descriptions of the Great Plains as the earliest reservation dwellers found them terrifying:
“It was a horrible region, filled with the petrified remains of the huge lizards and creeping things of the first days of time. The soil is miserable; rain rarely ever visits it. The game is scarce, and the alkaline waters of the streams and springs are almost certain death.”
With these images floating in my mind, we descended into the high plains and the land known as Wyoming, its resolute flatness stretching as far as the eye could see. It would have been ominous to traverse the dry and dusty high-valley floor on foot as many of the Native Americans did in the early days. We drove through the color of gold-kissed beige for so long that my eyes began playing tricks on me, making me believe everything around me was radiating like the scene was being filtered through heat. It was as if there was no other color existing anywhere in the entire world, as parched grass was interrupted only by the occasional tumbleweed clinging to the grid upon grid of barbed-wire fences.
The Bishop had certainly been right about the proliferation of land being cordoned off, an ironic fact given that one of America’s greatest mottos had always been “Don’t fence me in.” I had already convinced myself that if we had only had the good graces to have remembered this caveat when first interacting with the natives of our country, history could have been vastly different. What were we thinking? I wondered as we moved through the flatlands that comprised the middle of a country I had assumed I’d understood, only to come to realize I didn’t recognize it or its politics at all.
As the light harshened into late afternoon, I found myself missing home terribly, knowing the soothing surroundings of the world I had created for myself were farther away than ever before. Was I meant to be continually jerked away from anything closely resembling a haven so that I could serve as a testament to what was transpiring in the world around me? It seemed this continued to be my fate while all I wanted was my own bed, my own pillow and a room of my own in which to unravel all of the angst that the world brought tumbling into my life. Home, I thought; what a breathy word when spoken, what an emotional one when contemplated. I had had the opportunity to choose where to make my home. According to the books I was reading, the Sioux had been denied that privilege, and I was having a difficult time reconciling the fact in my heart and in my head.
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
It just happens to be Let's Blog Off (on Twitter as #LetsBlogOff) and #TravelTuesday again. See how my pals are answering the question, "What is home?" here.
Primal Decorum
As we winged our way west toward Steamboat Springs, I was reading an article in Harper’s by Paul West titled “My Body, Myself.” In it he wrote, “I had always had a sense of being intimately linked with stuff that I was not—if indeed I knew where I began and stuff left off.” He deemed his sense of connection a “primitive hunch,” adding, “…I began to think of myself in the third person but I was too blurred even to maintain the consistency of that primal decorum…”
I felt I knew what he meant when he said, “I hovered,” as I sat in a high-backed seat, floating through the sky on my way to yet one more destination with which I had no permanent relationship. I was thrilled that the particular spot I would be visiting was at least one of my favorites. I had never been to Colorado in the summer so I was eager to see the difference warmth brought to the town I’d only known when its bowl of a valley ringed with jagged peaks was filled with white powder.
Our first morning there, I opened the curtains to find a black cat with glowing golden eyes watching the thickets that bristled at the hem of the woods. As I pulled the curtains back further, its eyes swung my way, focusing on me as its body tensed, its crouch deepening as if it were readying to spring away. When I didn’t move, the feline turned its gaze toward the half-empty birdfeeder and studied it with intense interest. I wasn’t in the mood to see a bird or a chipmunk mauled on that particular morning so I slid the door open a bit, causing the cat to bolt into the bush, its tail swinging into the thickets as it disappeared.
As soon as it was gone, a chipmunk roused itself from the woodpile in which it had been hiding and unleashed a round of chirping chatter that berated the cool, clean air for its collaboration with the monster that had been stalking it. The louder he chirped, the more frantic his tail flipped behind him—like a conductor’s wand during a particularly stirring segment of a symphony, though his tail’s movement was a delusional testament to his prowess at having warded off the cat! After a final crescendo, he inched his way toward the scattered seeds beneath the bird feeder, keeping one eye on the tree-line just in case, and helped himself to a mouthful of breakfast.
The next brave beings to return were the Stellar’s Jays, and they were closely followed by the magpies—cautious but bossy as they sparred for domination over the birdfeeder. The chipmunk made the mistake of commencing a series of squeals and one of the magpies hopped over to it to give it a piece of its mind. As the bird squawked a refrain, cocking its head sideways to see if its point was being made, the chipmunk backed up a few paces but was far from ready to acquiesce. Its chirping intensified and the Stellar’s Jay scooping feed with its enormous beak rotated its head so its closest eye could see what the ruckus was about. So much drama everywhere in life! I thought as I closed the door on the cacophony.
The bold landscape touched me as much in its summer gentleness as it had in its wintry hush. The rising breath of the breezes stirred the wildflowers and rustled the silvered leaves of the aspens, the bright colors of the flowers superimposed against the pale spotted trunks of the trees seeming to testify that the earth was indeed good. The storms at such a high altitude were no different than they were at home or even at sea level in Panama City Beach, as they swooped in and rubbed out every inch of light in the same manner they behaved in any other landscape. The flat tops of the distant peaks still held drifts of dull snow, as if a great white hope belonged only to their loftiness. The matchstick trunks of the long-dead pines pointed at the heavens as if to accuse the mountains of not seizing the day, their bare bodies—ravaged by borers during the 1940’s—serving as a reminder that death was always just one step behind.
The wilderness threatened to consume me as I rested my head on a burned-out tree trunk and sank into the foliage that softly licked at my skin as the breeze dictated. I listened intently but couldn’t tell whether the rushing stream was involved in a dialogue with the steep hillsides or whether it was simply a soliloquy understood only by its own rippling currents. The babble sang its message to whatever party happened along and I was glad it was performing for me in this idyllic moment in time. The sun came and went, ambivalent toward my desire for warmth, and I celebrated my last lazy day for a while, as I would be attending the Steamboat Springs Writer’s Conference the next day.
I was nervous about meeting other writers and having my work critiqued. My skin had always been so thin when it came to my strung-together sentences, and I turned out the bedside light that night wondering whether I might have grown out of the shyness that had always kept me from connecting with others who might have something to teach me.
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This post is a #LetsBlogOff contribution, the question of the moment being “What do you look for in a Blog Off; or what motivates you to participate or not?” I would like to tell the esteemed leaders of our fearless tribe that I’d prefer less specific topics, ones with broader philosophical implications because these ask me to dig deeper. And, hey: thanks for asking—such a rare show of respect in our fast-paced, communication-rampant world! To see the other posts of the day, click here for the list.
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
The Rich Coast
The airport coffee shop—a long, thin room with a garishly bright red tile floor and beige, nondescript wallpaper rising above the wood paneling—was separated from the bar by a rounded wooden partition of staggered boards. I was studying the random patterns of the roughhewn slats when Jim brought me a cup of strong coffee and toast grilled in butter. As we waited to board what would be my last flight from Costa Rica to the U.S., a constant flow of camaraderie enveloped us—the travelers awaiting their chance to wander out of the country with a nonchalance bordering on disdain in spite of the fact that they were obviously determined to go elsewhere.
Rick and Christy were still kidding Jim about an episode that had taken place at the San Jose McDonald’s drive-through the evening before, causing his face to go as red as the floor and a nervous chuckle to slide from his throat. We had wanted French Fries after weeks of rice and beans, and since Jim was in the driver’s seat, he was the one who had to place the order. He stared at the menu board with its sunken speaker and no matter how many times we coached him, he couldn’t wrap his tongue around a large order of French Fries in Spanish. After a very pregnant silence, we resorted to shouting papas fritas grande in unison in the hopes that the person receiving the order would hear us. When it became obvious that it wasn’t working, Jim held his hand up for us to be quiet and shouted with great bravado papas fritas Gandhi. This sent us into throes of laughter as we thought of skinny little fries with bald heads. It’s one of the stories that would be repeated often as our volunteers came together to talk about their times in Costa Rica.
It seemed an excruciatingly long wait before we were ready to board the plane and take off. Once TACA Airlines finally whisked us away, we climbed above misty mountains, the clouds resting peacefully as they clung to the volcano Irazu’s textured slopes. I thought about how we’d made so many memories in the lush country, one of the funniest of which was our first day of the trip that our flight home was bringing to a close. Jim and I had been walking around San Jose when we noticed a man following us for an alarmingly long time. Jim had finally worked up the nerve to ask him why and he answered, in broken English, that he wanted his autograph. “Why?” Jim asked. “You Sean Connery!” the man had replied, grinning from ear to ear. “No,” Jim said, “I’m not.” The fellow simply wouldn’t believe him no matter how many times he said it wasn’t true and he continued to doggedly follow us until I convinced Jim to acquiesce because the guy was giving me the creeps. The piece of paper the man had been waving in our direction every time we had looked his way was finally signed with Jim’s own signature but that hadn’t mattered to the sincerely excited man, who held the scrap of paper in the air as if he had just received a priceless treasure as he walked away from us!
The silliest things had always come about because the people were so genuine, I thought as I took a long last look at the fading peaks below. I said goodbye to the rich coast that had held such a paradoxical mix of experiences for me, thinking to myself, “Emma, how could I forget you or anyone else here?” I realized I’d mouthed her name aloud when my warm breath fogged the portal-shaped window, which had grown frigid as we climbed higher, and we sliced into a cloud that further obscured the land below. I leaned back in my seat, wrestling with a mixture of relief and grief, as I wondered, Was this all there would be of my relationship with Costa Rica and its gentle people?
The question faded only slightly once I was back at home, a two-week respite before traveling west to South Dakota. During the rare down-time we visited a development called Dunaway, a getaway for the area’s elite with wooded lots large enough that cabins could be tucked into the middle of lush foliage for privacy. It was in its early stages of being carved from the Tennessee hills and Jim was purchasing a sequestered parcel of land on which we would build a cabin. The seclusion was a must for the wealthy determined to have safe havens when they attempted to escape from their “lives”—a fact that I found ironic because “they” always took their lives with them (I suppose this is where I should own it and say “we” because I was among them at this point in my life)! There was a beautiful lake on the property and I sat in a canoe one afternoon, filling myself with the comforting silence broken only by the intermittent buzzing of cicadas and the occasional click of dragonfly wings.
I was so steeped in the deep dampness of the abundant setting that I was able to quiet my mind for the first time in months. As my eyes followed the shoreline hemmed in cattails, a thought took hold of me so forcefully that it was as if some unseen force had grabbed me and shook me hard. My own voice, buried deep inside me, whispered, “You don’t have to wrestle with your spirituality; you don’t have to worry that you are at odds with religion—there is room for your way of being. Yes, there is much to know for certain, but you have begun your search for your meaning and that is all you need to know for now.”
This is a participating #LetsBlogOff post; to see my fellow bloggers taking up the subject of privacy today, click here. For a writing exercise that I have used to push myself to my highest quality of description for this post, visit adroyt, and if you are so inclined take up the cause of quality in writing yourself, I’d love to know what you create from it. If you are new to this blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
Drowsy Weather
I had imagined that I would spend my hours during our final trip putting thoughts like this on paper, but I was unable to translate anything into a coherent narrative because Jim had put me to work making stained glass windows for the church and the chaos of being worried that I wouldn’t finish them—anxiety that had me up at 4:30 a.m. and on the site straight through until 7p.m. each day for over a week—had sapped my concentration. I’d finally taken a day off and was sitting in Restaurante Carucy in the center of Siquirres—a welcome relief after days of being on my feet as I bent over a makeshift table cutting glass and soldering lead. Feeling unfettered for the moment, I let my vision sift through the untold number of faded colors and shrunken patterns of worn cotton clothing parading around town on the backs, thighs, buttocks and chests of its boisterous residents. Disco Evan, across the street, was empty after a weekend of the flashing pin lights and blaring music it employed to draw night owls away from the sticky inky air into the more claustrophobic moisture of sweat dripping from bodies that writhed in unison.
I retreated to our rented house in the hopes that I could find some relief from the furnace of midday but there was not one inch of the interiors that offered anything resembling a respite. I sat and watched the movement of the heat radiating from the tin roof of the house next door, a frenzied swirling haze that danced its way toward me, not in the least threatened by the snippet of breeze brushing across my face. I felt the swelter approach and it unapologetically took my shoulders in its grasp as I willed myself to remain still and let it surround me—any movement, after all, would simply have made its embrace far more intense. It passed and I began to breathe again while silently awaiting the next onslaught. What a way to spend an afternoon! I thought, sweat dripping from the tip of my nose onto the book I was trying to read.
I finally gave up as salty moisture seeped into my eyes and blurred my vision. I let my mind wander over the events of the day before when the church we’d built had been dedicated. Jim and I had been given a plaque with our names on it—the misspelling of our last name somewhat comical, and representative of the lack of detail that made Costa Rica so endearing at times and maddening at others. Jim’s emotions got the best of him when he tried to speak, and he’d told me afterwards that he was embarrassed because big, strong guys weren’t supposed to cry. Before all was said and done, he had almost everyone in the Chattanooga contingent in tears. Emma King had asked us to sign her prayer book when the service had come to a close and as I handed it back to her, she patted my hand as she said, “Please don’t forget me.”
As tough as moments like those had been for me, they had been especially emotional for Jim, as he felt he was closing a chapter of his life, one that had represented the beginnings of a dream he’d held since he’d been a little boy. The group of volunteers we had hosted had become completely enamored with the people in the small town, and it was always interesting to me to see how some groups bonded with the locals while others did not. It often depended upon the women who were with us. One of our volunteers, Prestine, had drawn the children in and welcomed their overwhelming affection with joy—Estevan, Manuel, Carol, Jessica, and the others we’d come to know so well were seemingly starved for her attention and not at all shy about demanding it. Her hands were full the entire time she was on the job site each day, and it was obvious that she was thrilled about it.
I had managed to complete the stained glass windows but we had not been able to install them because the government had decided to shut off the electricity in Pocora during our last day there. Jim said he wouldn’t likely make it back to put them in place until the end of the year so we would have to store them in the Diocesan office in San Jose. This meant that Rick and Christy—two of our volunteers—and I ferried them on our laps while Jim drove the undulant roads to the capital. We had to hold the colorful panels upright because the truck bounced so forcefully they would have shattered had they been placed flat in the bed. Balancing them was a tedious task given the amount of movement the curves threw at the small truck as we made our way through the monster mountain range between the Caribbean Coast and San Jose. I paid close attention to the terrain as we slid along, knowing it would likely be my last time to experience the dusky wetness that birthed such lushness along the familiar ribbon of pavement.
It was near twilight when we reached the highest altitude of our journey, the atmosphere made uncommonly bleak by the rainy weather. Trees sprouting orchids dangled them like jewels they were wearing to the opera or like tiny escape ropes lowered from toy helicopters, the blooms deciding they had had enough of their woody perches for the time being. Having made the trip so many times, I recognized the progression from lower elevation foliage to high mountain vegetation, the density of varied hues of green growing from lush to cloying. As we reached the abdomen of the range, giant bulges jutted from towering peaks and one particular type of tree that had always fascinated me came into view. It seemed fragile like a giant maidenhair fern, its limbs covered in clusters of delicate leaves that fanned out like ostrich plumes arranged symmetrically in a vase. They arced skyward then dipped their tips back toward the ground, making me wonder if I’d ever see foliage as abundant again.
We drove through clouds for miles—the soupiness of the air bathing the sleep-filled world in dankness. Drowsy weather, I thought, which made the mountains yawn into their caverns and nestle into their deep valleys for a good night’s sleep. Dark was wrapped fully around us as we drove away from the last tall slope and the city of San Jose came into view, its lights strung like sparkling dewdrops along the maze of a spider’s web that had been spun throughout the valley and up the opposite hillsides.
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. If you’ve been following along for a while, you may have noticed I’m not posting as regularly as I have in the past. I’ve launched a new social media consultancy, adroyt, so the mainstay of my energy is going toward building the business as beautifully as we can. I will still be posting here but not likely with great regularity and I would like to express my deepest gratitude for your continued interest in this blog, which has meant and still means a great deal to me.
Lying to Tell the Truth: A #LetsBlogOff Reverie
Jim was racing around with only a week to prepare for his final trip to Costa Rica because he was determined to cram three week’s worth of activities into the seven days he had in town. His meetings with his cronies segued to long lunches at the Mountain City Club; and his determination to taste the best of summer filled our evening and weekend calendar with barbecues, al fresco cocktail parties and boating on Lake Chickamauga.
He would spend a week in Central America before I joined him with six volunteers, and I was up early the morning I took him to the airport, watching as his sunburned head—all that was left of the leisure time he had known—bobbed in and out of view as he heaved the heavy LL Bean duffle bags out the door. I stood at the window admiring the bluff trees, which I knew would envelope me in coolness once I was back from dropping him off because I was determined to park myself on the screened porch for as much of my week of freedom as was possible. I settled myself there the minute I returned, sitting quietly for a few seconds in order to attune myself to the waterfall smattering against the gully of rocks into which it spilled. It seemed that the staccato notes mimicked my lack of output at the typewriter—the tap, tap, tap echoing the stilted rhythm of my creativity gone bone dry, the keys sticking in mid-strike so that the words came out of me in a halting trickle.
I was waiting for an imaginative storm to blow through and leave the ideas cascading from my brain in a torrent but that had not happened in far too long. This made me fear the long summer months ahead, knowing the heat would diminish the waterfall’s voice to a dribble. Would mine be sentenced to the same fate? I wondered. What would it take to get my writing back on track? It was then I realized the sound of that splattering was identical to the noise that falling water made as it splashed into a deep, boxy concrete sink. I closed my eyes and let the sensory memories wash over me as they brought Costa Rica, where I would soon return for the last time, flooding over my senses.
I was still trying to process what I had experienced in South Dakota—a time of controversy, conflicts and extremes. During the convocation, I had felt the need to hang back and remain aloof. I had never met such shy, closed people and I felt there was prejudice against me, though I hardly blamed them because I was just another wasichu. I could only imagine how much deep-seated mistrust had built up in them and I felt sad that there was no unity among tribes because it kept them from moving forward in a way that might have enabled them to assuage some of the despair I had witnessed.
I moved through the days of Jim’s absence with this fretfulness jangling around in me even during the delicious mornings I spent soaking in the beautiful mountain backdrop. The surroundings calmed me as always, but I found that I was so weary it was all I could do to put two sentences together. I kept at it, making false starts as my annoyance at the sound of the heavy equipment cutting the road far below, which sounded downright evil juxtaposed against the soft spraying of the waterfall, edged out the faint momentum that offered itself to me. This must have been the same sound the people who lived near the strip mining operations heard when the ruination of certain parts of the Appalachian Mountains came to pass, I thought. Oh, why do I care? I am a peace here, and I wish I could sit like this for the rest of my days!
I had seen the play “Steel Magnolias” with friends and found myself wishing I could capture the eccentricities of the southern character as brilliantly as Robert Harling had. The only other time I had been as enamored with the authentic rendering of the eccentric southern personality was when I had seen Beth Henley’s “Crimes of the Heart.” Would I ever get my act together so that I could leave something as forceful to the world?
The Fourth of July dawned and the weather was a deluge. I realized that most people must have been angered by the weather but I was reveling in the fact that I had peace, quiet and every excuse to hole up. The tropical-like downpours had created a snarling waterfall that ravaged slick rocks lit by a queer fog-filtered light—to the point that they glowed, alien-like. Within that odd radiance, hammered silver contrasted shiny green leaves so brilliant they appeared to be made of patent leather.
I’d been reading an article in Harper’s titled “In Deepest Gringolandia.” In it Bob Shacochis declared Mexico was being used as a third-world tourist theme park by North Americans. He wrote, “North Americans, boarding their planes, take North America with them—in varying degrees, yes, ugly or beautiful, but North America nevertheless.” I thought about how uncomfortable some of the places we’d stayed in Costa Rica had been and how I had succumbed to this myself. Being overwhelmed by roaches had certainly thrown me, and living at the mercy of the elements had challenged me to no end. If I was a snob by admitting that being in a clean environment soothed me enormously, then I was guilty as charged.
Since my writing voice was firmly on strike, I found myself reading voraciously while Jim was away—making my way through a stack of books and magazines I had been intending to read for months. I’d thought that focusing on fiction would help me to escape the lack of momentum in my own writing so novels held high priority, but the tactic was having little effect. I awoke on the fourth morning of my solitude, my knee bumping the books tossed haphazardly onto the opposite side of the bed, and looked out into the dull sky. Where the clouds hung thicker, there were puffy lines of deepest gray—a scowl to interrupt the endless monotony of graphite. I felt restless and edgy so I laced up my running shoes to take advantage of the misty umbrella nature had sent before the sun burned it off and brought on the sizzling heat.
It felt good to let the warm moisture move through my hair as the sweat poured from my body. I felt my breath enter and leave my lungs, marveling that flesh and bone had the fortitude to endure when my emotional self felt so beaten down. As I made my way past the familiar vantage points I always saw on my runs, I wondered how my life would look in twenty years; thought about Picasso’s premise that the artist lies in order to reach another kind of truth. What lies could I tell in order to create a life with a truth I could tolerate? I wondered as I turned the corner toward home, accelerating my speed to match they pace of my disconcerting thoughts.
This is a participating post in a bi-monthly exercise known as Let's Blog Off. I don't know what it is about the choices LBO leaders make for topics, but somehow my ramble through the past 20 years seems to always be on point. The material for this post and the photo of me on Lake Chickamauga were created, oddly enough, 20 years ago almost to the day. I can't wait to see how much headway I make as a writer in the next 20 years! To see posts by the other #LetsBlogOff participants du jour, click here.
If you are new to my blog and you'd like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the first post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar on the homepage gives you the earliest information. Thanks for stopping in!
