Crossing to Safety 
by 

Wallace Stegner, 

 

Terry Tempest Williams (Introduction), 

 

T.H. Watkins (Afterword)

 

A Lost World

Once upon a time there was an American Republican President named Eisenhower. Ike wasn’t a very smart man but he was not an evil man. He didn’t like the way the world was run, not even in his own country. But he remained calm in his politics and civil to his political opponents. He set an example. People felt safe around other people.

At that time there was a place called Vermont. It contained a smaller place called the Northeast Kingdom. There were no motorways then and this place wasn’t on the way to anywhere else. So if you were there, you meant to be there. It had quiet roads for children to walk along, forested hills that the same children could get lost among, and general stores that these children could count on for shady coolness when they found their way home. These smelled of smoke and sweet tobacco.

It is of course the smells that are most memorable but the least describable. Outside the general store, the repair crew works reeking tar into the cracks of the roadbed. The scent of the maples is only noticeable as you enter the stand of spruce, and theirs, only while coming back into the maples. The lake water smells of the rotting leaves on the bottom. I’m sure it’s possible to smell the ozone on the mountains if the wind isn’t blowing. Smell is the quickest sense to accept its environment as normal but also the one that makes the most dramatic effect when re-encountered.

It was a good time even if not the best of times. There was this disease called polio. Anyone could catch it, almost anywhere. Many did; everyone knew someone who knew someone who had it. Polio didn’t kill everyone it found, but it did a heck of a job killing their nervous system. Remember President Roosevelt? A bit smarter than Eisenhower but he could only stand up straight with steel braces on his legs. He caught polio in Canada, just over the border. Summertime wasn’t all fun and games. Sometimes it was dangerous. But it was never unexpected.

Of course the good old days for us were the new unpredictable days of the mid-twentieth century for most of the country folk roundabout. We, especially we children, were a problem. We made senseless noise; we had no predictable routines; we did nothing productive; we had no skills useful in the countryside; and we spoke out of turn. We lacked any hint of Methodist discipline or deference. We were therefore dealt with most harshly by the natives - with a stern scowl. Nevertheless “There it was, there it is, the place where during the best time of our lives friendship had its home and happiness its headquarters.”

Re-visiting that time and place is dangerous, not because it’s an idealised past which doesn’t measure up to scrutiny, but because it’s a forgotten past which suddenly re-emerges with the emotional force of death. This time is not 60 or 70 years ago; it is yesterday. And the chasm between yesterday and today is an entire life which has been expended. For good or ill, this life has dissipated and dispersed down that hole. The chasm demands to be filled with meaning. The content doesn’t matter that much. Tragedy, fulfilment, success, sacrifice, regret are really equivalent rubble. But only when the gap is filled can a crossing be made safely.

It is always surprising what the best fiction-writing raises from the psychic depths. Connections to others, and to oneself, abound in the most unlikely places during the most unlikely times.