I will get back to me. Honest. And it's not that it's that painful some of it is. But that's not all there is to my life and I refuse to let it BE my life to the exclusion of everything else.
Anyway, picked up a battered replacement for a wonderful little novel that came out in the seventies. Author's name was Margaret Craven. The title? I Heard the Owl Call My Name. It's set in British Columbia. The point of view is that of a young vicar sent out as a sort of circuit rider. Only instead of a horse he has a boat. His church is in a first nations village, but his parish takes in a much larger area of sea, inlets and rivers (if you haven't heard of first nations it's the Canadian term for the folks that were living in this part of the world when they were "discovered'').
Over the months he learns to make his way in a culture that is as alien to the average white as say China was to Marco Polo. There is a Kingcome river. There is a village that is called Kingcome. It's native name is a tongue twister and there's more than one version of the tribal name. The version easiest on the tongue and throat is Kwakiutl.
Find the novel if you can or at least read the plot line in Wickipedia.
I love reading one star reviews on Amazon. The "this is boring." The "I just couldn't get into it.""I had to read it for lit class and I hated it." I especially love the "I bailed after the first ten pages." Geez, the vicar hasn't even qualified to run the boat himself, much less discovered his wreck of a parsonage. It's been awhile since there has been a minister in the area.
I'm not first nations. I don't live near the ocean. I don't have to depend on the tide to come and go. But I did grow up in a small valley in the Cascade foothills. We did depend on what we could grow, preserve, freeze, and make ourselves to get by. And no matter what folks think about the dams there were a few times when we couldn't get out of town because a flood had taken out the bridge at Deception Creek just northwest of Oakridge.
We watched the seasons. We depended on the seasons to live. All the years my dad was a logger he never worked a full year. It was too hot and dry. Or too wet and muddy. Or too much snow. And mom met him in the laundry room more than once with clean clothes. Sometimes she had to hang his clothes on the line and hose them down before she could wash them. At least that old wringer washer drained from the bottom so she could get the mud out of the machine. And the list of injuries would take a blog entry all by itself.
It was our life. It just was. And I will get back to this a lot faster than the other thing. Promise. Funny thing about writing. I start out and find out I''m going along for the ride. As usual this will resemble a batch of bread dough. It takes time. Has to be worked on and probably will end up coming out of the bowl and taking over the story. LOL
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