A View from the Inland Northwest; Everyday Life in America

by Stephen J. Lyons

• ISBN13: 9780762730520
• ISBN10: 0762730528
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2004-09-01
• Publisher: Globe Pequot

Summary

With sensitivity, compassion, and grace, author Stephen J. Lyons brings us into the lives of the loggers, chaplains, artists, migrant workers, and others who live their lives in the wide open spaces west of the Continental Divide.

Author Biography

Stephen J. Lyons writes articles, reviews, essays, and poems for a variety of national magazines, newspapers, journals, and anthologies, and has authored the book Landscape of the Heart. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, his work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Since 1997, he has been a contributor to High Country News' Writers on The Range syndication service, sent to 80 newspapers across the western United States.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	v
Introduction	vii
Dining Out, Cafe Style	1	(4)
Cranes over Othello	5	(4)
What Is a Life Well Lived?	9	(14)
Looking for Mr. Goodbug	23	(6)
Teaching the Way of the Wolf	29	(8)
Commuting with Daughter	37	(16)
Why I Ride the Bus	53	(4)
Fear of Flying, Western Style	57	(4)
Lunchtime In Idaho	61	(6)
Relocation Revisited	67	(4)
A Vernacular of Faith and Loss	71	(40)
Saving Scablands	111	(6)
Rivers Never Die	117	(8)
A Community of Books	125	(4)
Across the Checkerboard with Dwight	129	(18)
Recommitment	147	(8)
Leaving the West	155	(22)
Halfway Home	177	(9)
About the Author	186

Excerpts

Etta's farm is in a state of reclamation: rusted equipment and leaning outbuildings sink into the decay; a tangled orchard needs pruning; and an indoor swimming pool has filled with leafy humus and colonies of mice. Someday the land will also swallow Etta who will probably be drawing in her studio or watching out the kitchen window for her favorite bird, the California quail.

Inside Etta's house is order: Colonial furniture, an upright piano, her own framed artwork, photos of Harry and her two sons, and an immaculate kitchen, where she graciously prepares coffee, dripped Melitta-style into china tea cups with saucers. We head to the back of the house to her studio, surrounded on three sides by windows that keep watch over a bird kingdom vibrating with quick movements.

Etta asks me to sit down. Like most men and women of her generation, she is embarrassed to talk about herself. "I'm nothing special," her body language tells me. But I describe for her what the owl drawing means to me, and the note cards that feature chukars, wild turkeys, Hungarian partridge, grouse, pheasants, herons, and a favorite card simply called "Coyote and Canola." I'm gushing with praise, but instead Etta's thinking about the possibility of a dry winter.

She looks out at her yard, says "I will miss it if we don't have snow, but no snow will be good for the animals and birds."

I back off, but still have so many questions. Etta knows the natural history of this area long before the concrete was poured to submerge thousands of acres of habitat. A bridge from the past, she knows how little of that wild world remains. And her tenacious quest over a century to answer simple questions about her surroundings seems an answer to the owlet's question: What is a life well lived?

A thousand people from Etta's generation die each day in this country. With them goes the knowledge of birds and animals now extinct, the history of farm and soil, the ability to mend fences and keep knives sharp. When the last of this generation passes, who will tell us our stories?

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Excerpted from A View from the Inland Northwest: Everyday Life in America by Stephen J. Lyons
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.