I recently
read something called a bridge story, a story designed to tie together two
larger, more dynamic pieces of writing.
After that reading, the writer challenged me to write a bridge story—a
challenge I have considered every day since I finished reading his story,
unashamedly letting tears trace my cheeks and fall on his dining room table in
response to his memory woven one well-chosen word at a time into a story that
made my soul ache to read more.
Not many
writers have the gift, the talent, or whatever it is that allows them to reveal
life’s truths while telling what seems like an entirely different story. It is only when the tale is over that the
reader sorts through feelings that have rearranged themselves somewhere deep
inside him or herself and discovers that he or she sees life a bit differently.
Writers like Karen Blixen, Norman Maclean, and John Steinbeck generate these
cosmic shifts in which shadows beneath trees appear a shade darker or lighter
than they were before the story. The
trill of a bird or the humming of insects resonates at a different pitch than
one noticed before.
Everything is
different, yet everything is the same.
This writer that talked to me of bridge stories, that let me range about
among his memories for a few short days, this writer left a partially
constructed bridge that I am still figuring how to cross.
We, my
husband and I, went, we thought, to help with summer haying along a Montana river, at the
foot of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. The
company we joined, the cooler climate, and the locale was enough to justify the
long drive from western Kansas . But as we drove from the busy highway to
through a barely visible gate into an old growth forest of towering ponderosa
pines, I knew I had crossed a bridge from one world into another.
When I
stepped out the car to stretch travel weary bones, I noted the knee-high
timothy and orchard grasses ticking at my calves. Directly under the ancient trees, the grass
barely grew, but everywhere that sunlight could snake and worm its way to
earth, the grasses grew lush. I noted
five buildings, five log buildings dotting the meadow where we parked. A large log two-story log cabin nudged itself
into the base of a hill that would have gently melded into the meadow without
the cabin’s presence. A huge pole barn
and ancient corral leaned and tilted to the south and west of the big
cabin. Directly west of the larger
building stood three good-sized log structures, one with an inviting front
porch.
Through the
next few days, I learned that not only could the writer write, he could build
log cabins, barns, and corrals, including hand cut shake shingles. Examining his handiwork, I saw love in every
notched corner. He had built this world
in a place he loved for a woman he loved.
The south exposure front porch flanked by a sturdy lilac bush and huge
pine was a gift to a woman who needed a tangible hope of the coming spring and
summer in the meadow outside her big windows.
Even though she’s been gone a while, I sensed her presence as I gazed
out at her and his spread, at her lilac bush, at bird feeders filled with
hummers and chickadees and intrusive squirrels, at his corral where she watched
him return after packing into the Bob Marshall.
Though the
guns, photos, and books belonging to the old man line the walls of the house,
her presence lingers, a bridge to a happier past. Old tunes from the war years reverberate
morning through night from a tape player sitting incongruously atop an old wood
stove, a stove you know still burns hot on a winter morning. A stove you know
the old man could teach you to stoke and bake a loaf of crusty bread in. A stove that would warm a belly as well as a
room. Now sultry lounge singers croon
love songs across the years, bridging past to present in an old cabin in an
ancient meadow far from civilization and fancy dance halls.
The old man
never misses a beat of the music and notes the intricacies of the music and the
voices themselves, marking that the singers used their voices as a well-trained
musician would play an instrument. I
imagine cold nights by the wood stove with the two of them serenaded by voices
from the past. It is a cozy and
comfortable imagining. I wonder if they
danced as they watched the snow falling and filling their meadow with a winter
that seemed like it would never end.
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