Journals

Today I checked a new book out of the Bismarck library: The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates. It caught my eye since I’ve done some journaling, and, indeed, this web log is essentially a journal, best described by Ms. Oates herself as "... a place for stray impressions and thoughts of the kind that sift through our heads constantly, like maple leaves giddily blown in the wind..." While this web log was never intended to be a literary masterpiece, I’ve always welcomed any reader who chooses to look at it. Since beginning it over a year ago, I have found it to be a satisfying venture and have received a bit of positive feedback from readers. My writing skills had become very rusty, but these weekly musings give me the forum to improve. At any rate, I went back to some old journal entries I had made to see what ran through my mind at that time.

Today in Mandan it is very cold and windy, and my eye fastened on this entry from January 2, 1973. I was heading back to Dunseith after spending Christmas break at home and got caught in a snowstorm and ran in the ditch south of Alice: "I stepped from the car and was struck by the fierce gale which drove the snow like so many hundred needles searching out the pin cushion that was my exposed face."

I remember being pretty upset at the time I wrote this on September 21, 1982: "Today I dropped Clinton off at the daycare center for the last time. We walked in hand in hand and weren’t received by anybody. A dozen or so kids sat in the television room staring at a black and white picture of some x@&?! and three adults in the room working there had not the time to look or say howdy-do or anything else. So it will be the last time he needs suffer through that torment and intellectual wasteland. At his regular baby-sitter, he bounds up the stairs as carefree and happy as can be, and sometimes doesn’t even bother to say good-bye to me as I depart."

I worked at custom combining in Kansas and Nebraska in 1965 and still retain strong memories of the following entry: "His son had committed suicide. The plan was for him to take over the farm operation from his parents, but burdens too heavy for him to bear had led him to take his own life. Mr. Lake lost his future along with his son’s. His zest for living died there in the ditch with the gunshot. He just went through the motions of putting in a crop and harvesting it. Now the lackluster look in his eyes could be explained. He suffered despair. Another factor compounded his problem. His wife had lost her mind. On one occasion we drove into his yard and saw a once magnificent home needing paint and carpentry repair. The lawn was unkempt and scraggly trees needed trimming. The interior of the house showed some neglect. I felt very sorry for him and what his life had come to."

In a letter dated November 24, 1969 to my folks which Ma saved and gave back to me I have this memory preserved much like a journal entry: "Got the package of lefse today and already ate a couple of pieces — really enjoyed it. The past three weekends I’ve been hunting in these mts. — really enjoyed going out but haven’t gotten anything yet. The 1st weekend we went up north of Dubois. I didn’t see any deer that day but got stuck packing out a quarter of elk that my hunting partner shot the day before. It was really tough going climbing up and down the mt. sides with it on my back but I’m going to get an elk supper out of it tomorrow night for my work. He had a donkey that we were using to pack out the elk with, but she went so slow & could only carry ½ elk at a time. There were 2 elk to carry out so 3 of us each took a quarter."

Well, I’ve gotten interested in my old journals again and guess I’ll revisit more of them in the future. Thanks to Joyce Carol Oates for revving up my curiosity.

A Memory

Sunday we drove down to brother-in-law Mike’s place, something we hadn’t done for awhile, with the pretense of seeing the 200 foot wireless tower that had been erected on a high hill in Mike’s pasture. After the visiting and a good meal, we drove to the tower site. By the time we hiked to the top of that hill I was really sucking air but recovered quickly in the cool, brisk wind and was able to stand enjoying the view of the rugged terrain that spread out below that hill. The whole countryside down there emits a beauty that I am fond of. One of the prominent features of the area carries the name of the Dogtooth Hills. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see the jawbone of a dog filled with teeth drooling out along the horizon. Many of the topographical features of the area carry appealing place names. When you first drive out of Mandan you cross the Heart River, pass by Little Heart Butte, come to a sign indicating Whiskey Butte, see the aforementioned Dogtooth Hills, cross Cannonball River, and then Cedar River.

It is near the place where these Cedar and Cannonball Rivers join that my thoughts took me today. I recently hung on the wall of my study a picture of a man standing in a suspended wool sack who is packing fleeces into it. The man is a relative of Mary’s who lived close to the confluence of these two rivers. I was attracted to the picture because I don’t think I’ve ever seen one depicting this scene which I remember well. Indeed, the only picture I’ve possessed was the one in my mind where I was the one who stood packing wool in the sack. I’ve forgotten some of the particulars, but the wool sacks were 8-10 feet long and held 18-20 fleeces, that is, only if someone climbed in the sack that hung mouth-open on a scaffold and jumped up and down to pack them solidly. I’ve never forgotten how soaked with lanolin my shoes and pant legs got from the natural oil in the wool. Memories of sheep shearing time because of that picture were triggered by Sunday’s drive and remain strong in my mind, and I’ve written this poem to mark those springtime events.

Sheep Shearing Time

A man holding a clattering shears,
straddles an upended ewe,
and bends to strip away
the thick robe of wool
she wore through the cold.

Lambs separated from penned mothers
bleat hungry, lonesome tunes.
Clouds of dust hang
above the milling flock
where a helper
enters to catch and drag
another animal to her clipping.

"Good sheep shearers can do
a hundred head a day,"
goes the dinner table talk,
and this flock of 60
will be shorn by mid-afternoon.

The boy feels drawn to enter
this grown man’s world
and wants to tie and throw fleeces
into the hanging wool sack
and climb in to pack the bundles
so that by the end of the day the boots
he wears, soaked lanolin soft
from the wool’s drenching oil,
bring him another step closer.

The Road Ends

"But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think..."
by Lord Byron in Don Juan, Canto III, Stanza 88
. . . . .

The above quote from Lord Byron's poetry sets my own mind to dropping words on thoughts which, in turn, caused me to write the following verses. I've long been fascinated with the limits a mind runs up against when vocabulary, thought processes, experiences, etc. do not give a person the tools to understand something. A huge number of words flows through my mind each day, but many of them don't arrange themselves meaningfully into anything that amounts to much. If the words that Byron speaks of do not fall within the listener's ability to understand them, little relevant thought develops. At any rate, here is my way to express the limits and ends that I run up against.

The Road Ends

Just as the road concluded
when I drove to Alaska,

Just as harvesting ended
in Kansas and Nebraska,

Just as the pleasures of youth
abate and erode with age,

So, too, I have always come
to the limit that language
sets keeping alien deeds, feats,
and phenomenon unknown,
unexplored, or unfathomed.

The smooth, paved highway becomes
graveled road which reduces
to a rutted prairie trail
and ends at fenced enclosure,
blocking passage. No Trespassing
signs hang nailed to wooden posts.

For some the road stretches on,
letting them travel regions
where this pilgrim's map sprawls blank.