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NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
August 10, 2000
This is about as good as it gets, I was thinking. The place was Eastend, Saskatchewan, the town called Whitemud by Wallace Stegner in his classic memoir, Wolf Willow. Eastend not only was the boyhood home of Stegner, the greatest of all western writers (that's my opinion), but also is the home today of Sharon Butala, the best current writer on the Canadian prairies (again, my opinion).
Sharon was reading from her new book, Wild Stone Heart (which I'll tell you about in a subsequent column). We were outdoors, in the Stegner back yard. Peering over Sharon's left shoulder as she read, I could see the muddy old swimming hole in the Frenchman River where Wally and his chums once dove. Boughs of wolf willow peeked over the bank and waved. It was sunny but not hot, as the dry northwest breeze kept things pleasant.
Present were ten companions from my summer seminar, "The Great Plains from Texas to Saskatchewan" – teachers from across the United States who were spending five weeks with me studying life and literature on the Great Plains of North America. This was the day when they and our sponsor – the National Endowment for the Humanities – got full value for their time and money.
Arriving in Eastend we met Sharon for supper at Jack's, which I would like to nominate as the finest small-town café on the plains. Proprietors George and Angela Doulias put us in the "fancy room," but we all drifted over to have a look also at the main dining room, where Angela has covered the walls all around with historical murals. We learned that the next day was an all-year reunion for the Eastend schools, offering us a slate of prairie town events to observe. Next morning we lined up in the hockey aren for good pancakes and bad sausage, the meal punctuated by questions like, "When did you graduate?" and "You're not from here, are you?" Following a visit to the Stegnerboyhood home, we got into position for the parade, led by a Mountie from the local post. Sure enough, here came Sharon in a pickup pulling the Wallace Stegner float assembled by the local arts council, a once-in-a-lifetime photo opp if there ever was one. I snapped a great picture as the float passed the old Cypress Hotel.
Following Sharon's reading at the Stegner house and lunch back at Jack's, I led a walking tour of literary sites across town, including the red-brick school attended by young Wallace. This was the school where, as Stegner recalls, he was drilled in British history but given nothing to equip him for life on the prairie. Because it was a reunion day the school was open, and so I got in for the first time. Kind ladies gave us cookies and reminded us to sign the guest book. Some of these people went to school with the Stegner boys in the years just after the Great War.
The best was yet to come. Sharon's new book is a reflective memoir that recounts her walks and discoveries in a particular hundred-acre pasture that she and husband Peter retired from grazing. We followed her home from town, and she led us into the field. Here and there we paused to examine prairie plants and talk about them. We paused respectfully, some of us prayerfully, beside ancient burial cairns.
We climbed a slope-shouldered hill and stood silent around a turtle effigy of white stone, innocent of its meaning but transfixed nevertheless. The edge of a passing storm brushed us, stealing a cap and depositing it in the center of the effigy.
It's a great country, isn't it?
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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 231-8339
Editor: Gary Moran, (701) 231-7865
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