Dear Kathy

 

I have as much desire to see you as you do me.  I can only sympathisize [sic] with your feelings.  In spite of more than two years that has passed, with such correspondence that we try to keep, a meeting time/place can be postponed to a time of personal and economic convenience.  How long that will be I have no notion of, but sooner it will be with respect to our lives, long lives at that.  Patience is a virtue, someone taught us!  (Sanibel, 12/28/75)

Dear Kathy,

Do you remember that time we took that crazy trip down the Upper Missouri River?  I know time has passed, flowed by like the river itself.  But that is our story, is it not?  Why, at the time we determined we had known each other for 50 years, based upon that packet of old letters from me you brought along.  Our memories fade in our old age, but the letters, like this one you now read, rekindle them.

Perhaps, my good friend, the twain of us shall meet, and pardon the passing of time to have delayed it so long, and perhaps we shall not, as fate will deliberate on that score. (July 28, 1974)

I met you in Fort Benton, awaited you and our motel room.  The place was a bit strange – a re-purposed 100 year old mercantile building with no windows to the outside so we could witness the ever changing weather situation, yet large enough to sort the hodge-podge of gear for the trip.  The hostess was a bit sassy and somewhat ornery – I had to wait on her and you in the deepening cold.  When you arrived, we walked the river front and the old bridge to pass the time, and then called upon our guide Nicolle who at first asked if we wanted to cancel due to the pending weather.  

I guess we thought ourselves made of solid stock for we said no.  Oh! Perchance it was me that said no, and you followed. Having both travelled so far for this long-planned event, how could we cancel at this time?  Instead, maybe some prayer for better weather was in order, and an adjustment in our itinerary to cut two days off the duration for when the weather might improve, to shorten the days to hunker in our tent if weather turned worse enroute.

Like just about every soul on this globe, I have been blessed with a mind to think, and like just about every soul, I have tinkered with its machinations, grinding the gears to grind out thoughts.  That’s a lot to say about thinking, but regardless, I’ve been thinking.  The past seems, other than past, very distant, and between then and now there is a big void!  Why? It matters little the past is a memory, the future unknown, the present, happening!  (Hendersonville, NC July 15, 1974)

And then there was the matter of Andy.  Remember how this was to be the third ‘every five year” adventure – at this cold moment, realizing we had the powdery remnants of our long departed friend safely tucked in a small envelope?  Hard to believe it had already been six years since he passed, and 16 years (COVID adjusted) since we three first met in the Oregon forest and agreed to do this.

I haven’t heard much from those we grew up with.  Perchance you and Andy are the last standoffs. Though there is no telling how long that will continue, all persons follow the path time leads them to.  Different ways, thoughts and actions (Atlanta Oct 25, 1975 to KS UC Santa Cruz)

No, we were bound and determined to go!  A nice dinner at the local “fine hotel” – the empty Grand Union - yielded a bountiful harvest of Brussel Sprouts, not all of which was consumable and was tucked away in our gear to add to our future camp meals – two more memorable meals, as I recall.  A fine evening to reconnect as old, dear friends, and to work out the anxiety of the adventure ahead.  I think the beverage helped with that!

As I write this, I still know that there is a person to whom this is directed. Not a ghost or government official, but to someone whom has interested me from the outset.  So don’t puzzle yourself with how I changed.  There still exists the need to correspond, out of some reaction to the past.  Let yourself be convinced that this is the same person, displaced to another part of the country, that you knew of long ago; the same old soul that is carried to old age!  (Atlanta Oct 25, 1975 to KS UC Santa Cruz)

We loaded your car and headed north to Coal Bank to put-in on the river.  It was cold though not raining when we left Fort Benton, but do you remember turning onto the gravel road toward Coal Bank and parking the car?  The setting was surreal – an expanse of wide open treeless prairie, the muddy gravel road stretching ahead of us, and snowy rain splattering the windshield. 

Oh, this was classic – seemed like a Fargo moment. “Do you think we should do this?”  I could sense your heightened anxiety, yet you thought me ready to bluster on and be brave, and so you too would soldier on.  I simply needed another opinion.  While still in cell range, we called Nicolle and asked what she would do. “Postpone departure a couple of days and go see Don Sorenson at the Virgelle Mercantile – he will have a cabin. That is what I would do. You can still make Judith Landing in three days.”

We mustered ahead a few miles to Virgelle – an old town of 1912 vintage when the railroad came through, with only his Mercantile, a Bank and a few outbuildings remaining in this idyllic spot each filled with antiques.  Yet he had crafted this antique emporium with a bed and breakfast using relocated Settler’s cabins. Oh, they were cozy, were they not?  Wood stove, and outhouse nearby- a double-wide no less!  Yet still the creature comforts of a shower room available elsewhere on the compound, and the miracle that was Don’s breakfasts. Two nights stay is what we sought in this mounting snow, now just to watch and wait.  And talk. About our parents, children, families, old school mates.  About life and relationships.

So we hunkered.  I recall that most favorite picture of you – I still have it – sitting at the table, looking out the window, watching the evolving snowstorm from the warmth of the room, a warm glow upon your features.  Do you remember that day, reading my old letters from as far back as 1973?  Oh, there were laughs and tears reading these.  You gave them to me – the hard copies, aged and yellowed, a glimpse long forgotten into the details of my youth, revealing a genuine love and friendship for you that has never really left, you know. It continues to this day, in this letter, my friend.

I was unduly amazed at your reaction to my letters.  I was happy that you liked my prose-like letters!  But one secret!  Writing is one of my better means of communication.   (Sanibel, Aug 9, 1973)

But after two days, with a brightening yet cloudy and damp prospect, we embarked on our journey downstream.  We had to go, growing restless in the cabin, a safe space.  We waited for this moment, and the cabin, though a wonderful respite, was not the journey, though a bit of Andy did ceremoniously contribute to the “gemütlichkeit” of the place.

Glad you like the photograph, as I produce, more may come in the next decade (I have confidence that we will know each other that long!)  (Atlanta Jan 19, 1976 to KS at UC Santa Cruz)

As I recall the weather was not so kind as we would have hoped, but did manage to scare all the others that had considered this voyage, for we found ourselves alone on the river and every camping spot. That may have been a bit unnerving for you, but it was blissful. Just us, and the grand scene nature carved for us.

What a fantastic land I have come to. Like a shipboard sailor seeing nothing of life except the perpetual castings of the restless sea, land seems like a strange and different experience.  Why should it be so different for me? From land to land is perhaps no great change.  But that is an idiots reaction!  This land is . . . as words can’t rightly express.  Perhaps you can grasp the feeling.  The mountains are as ageless as the sea, perhaps as unique, perhaps as dull to some, but to me they are pinnacles on which I can come to grip with changing patterns of nature, places for rest, inspiration, contemplation and peace.  And for certain other lands possess some stultifying reactions, but my life is slowly awakening to the new life ahead, which inspires this soul. (Hendersonville, NC July 15, 1974)

I remember with particular fondness the following events:

·       Paddling alongside the sheer white cliff descending directly into the river, and all the carved mountains, walls and cliffs; many a person could we imagine sculpted in this stone edifice.

 

·       Hiking up the slot canyon, getting narrower and narrower, though you were quite tired.

 

·       Watching the wildlife – birds and beasts – beaver slapping its tail, engaging with a clutch of river otters at sunset along our campsite embankment, and worried about the reported sightings of a grizzly bear in our midst.

·       The old stone settler’s cabin – a ruin as I recall – set in a pristine valley descending to the river, where we found Andy would have told many a story of this place, the story teller as he was.  He can do so now.

·       That amazing sunset squeezed between a rain burst and our dinner, suddenly evolving into this amazing experience.  We were giddy with excitement seeing the changing colors on the distant rock cathedrals, cliffs and pinnacles.  And then it was gone.

·      

That final day!  How could we forget starting the morning with a river of glass, and around a bend the tail wind picked up with a vengeance, sending cross currents and whitecaps across the entire river.  You didn’t need to paddle, and for me only to steer like Huck Finn riding the currents.  We missed our campsite and suddenly found ourselves at the bridge – at Judith landing, I think it was called – the paddling was over!  We had “paddled” 20 miles with that tailwind, more like a whitewater rapid for most of the distance.

Perhaps you have seen a rose bloom, one by one the petals unfurl, gracefully unfolding until full flower appears.  Such is my feelings.  In a sense, I have unfolded, or rather, my surroundings  unfolded me. I have learned so much.  All that I sensed, smelled, felt, saw, all converged on me in a motion of absolute peace and genuine harmony.  Though peace and harmony is so hard to define on the whole, it is easily felt individually (Hendersonville, Sept 4, 1974 – to KS in ML)

Oh, Kat.  Do you remember?  I do hope so, for it was a remarkable journey to reconnect our lives separated by time, distance and the life we have each lived. I choked up a bit as you drove away from the hotel in Lewistown, thinking to the next time (five years hence?) but resolved to quit being so sentimental and get on my bike.  And so I rode off on my journey, and you on yours, to whatever lay ahead.

The beauty and natural splendor intoxicate me as cheap wine, the absolute “silence, like a cancer grows,” possesses me in a peaceful clutch, never letting up until, encamped by a road, is returned to the wood.  The grasses sing their song, brushing with but a faint shimmer against my weary bones, swaying artistically over the vines atop a mountain.  A web, laden with drops of moisture, attempts vainly to strap, successfully entrapping my glance with awe! Never has any journey been so rewarding, so pronouncing of its joy, and never have I been so much at peace.  You, of course, over the many miles of contemplative silence, fill my thoughts. Half the trip now memory, 150 miles, I sign off.  I love you.  Peter   (The woods of Tennessee,  August 13, 1974)

I sometimes get the impression that I nauseate people with my letters, however sparse, though you once mentioned you enjoyed it.   I can lash out the best messages with the written word, this is my medium, this the message.”  (Hendersonville, NC July 15, 1974)