The Wilderness Between

9/27/2009 5:30 pm

Today, it is wet. The exposed soil and bark are still black from the rain over the past few days. I find it interesting that I was so drawn to this spot for class. I find so much peace here among the trees and the undergrowth where it is always dark even when the sun is out. The forest does hold a special place for me, but I still think that I will always prefer the plains.

The open prairies of Montana and Wyoming are the most beautiful places in the world. The great vastness of the sky against the endlessness of the sea of grass; it’s the closest one can get to being in the middle of an ocean with both feet on solid ground. I can’t help but think of Rita Dove’s “Ars Poetica” now, when I remember my time the prairies:

Ars Poetica by Rita Dove

Thirty miles to the only decent restaurant

was nothing, a blink

in the long dull stare of Wyoming.


Halfway there the unknown but terribly


important essayist yelled Stop!


I wanna be in this; and walked


fifteen yards onto the land


before sky bore down and he came running,


crying Jesus—there's nothing out there!

I once met an Australian novelist


who told me he never learned to cook


because it robbed creative energy.


What he wanted most was

to be mute; he stacked up pages;


he entered each day with an ax.

What I want is this poem to be small,

a ghost town

on the larger map of wills.


Then you can pencil me in as a hawk:

a traveling x-marks-the-spot.

See, I want to be in this, but I have yet to run from it. I don’t find the exposure of the expanse to be frightening. Oddly, I find it familiar and peaceful where the great blue sky tries to swallow the yellow-brown of the half-scorched prairies.

One of the most influential times of my life was spent on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana. I spent only two weeks there, doing service for the community and sleeping in a teepee the men had set up for us outside of the prayer lodge where we “officially” stayed. Three other girls and I spent all of our time together, and when our service was finished each afternoon, we would wander the prairies around the lodge we were staying outside of.

There was a cattle ranch next to our plot of land, though we never saw any cattle, only horses. Some times the women who lived at the prayer lodge would show us certain landmarks, hidden by the subtle hills under the long grass. One afternoon, we traveled a few miles away to Mother Rock, a sacred landmark of the tribe. We were led in prayer with sage and given time to sit with Mother Rock and reflect with the wind swishing about, playfully batting at our hair.

When we were all finished, we made our way back to the prayer lodge. Suddenly, something caught my eye. At first, I thought it was a big, white rock, but when I drew closer, I saw the empty eye sockets and the cavernous nostrils. They were bones, bleached a creamy white, resting quietly below the grass. The remains of six or seven whole cattle lay there, mostly intact.

My friends and I examined the skulls, the long elegant femurs, the whole rib bones that stuck into the earth and out of the grass like ornamental hair combs. It looked to us like the cattle had simply laid down and died, but what did we know. We each dealt with it in different ways. I looked closely, but couldn’t bring myself to touch the bones. Another girl took pictures. One, lifted a skull to her shoulders by the horns and pranced around like it was a bacchanal, while the other just laughed.

But that night, when we lay in our teepee, listening to the coyotes call in the distance, all of us heard something that we hadn’t heard before in their cries. It was something more sinister, something more wild, and as the calls grew closer, we brought our sleeping bags together so that we could feel each other’s warmth as we waited for sleep.