Epistolary Journeys
Writing materials for recording and sharing journeys.
When does a lifetime of letter writing begin? For me, it first happened in the mid 1950s when I attended Camp Bonnie Brae in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts—now the oldest continuously operating Girl Scout camp in the United States. The collective experiences of living away from home for the first time in my life, sharing a cabin with a tribe of five other ten-year old scouts, tasting campfire cooking, swimming in a cold mountain lake, and studying the woodland plant and animal life filled letters that I wrote by lantern-light each night and mailed to my parents at the camp store’s post office.
Northern Thailand late 1960s with fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Jim Lehman.
Fast forward a decade to Bangkok, Thailand where I was a Peace Corps Volunteer from 1967-70. In that era before laptop computers, iPads or cell phones, my epistolary communications with my family were filled with as much detail as was humanly possible to pen onto a blue, fold-and-seal aerogram. Mother saved them all and returned them to me later as a chronicle of the extraordinary events during that chapter of my life.
I love the paraphernalia and process of writing letters—the stationery, fountain pens and nibs, glass bottles of ink, sheets of colorful stamps, and the flow of black squiggles and swirls that line up to form letters that become words. Whenever Kit and I travel, there are daily stops at café tables—the perfect place to pen a message to family and friends on a postcard from the places we are experiencing. Like personal journals, penned postcards and letters capture moments that last a lifetime and beyond. Emails, while immediate, soon evaporate into the ether.
Several years ago after reading Ted Kooser’s quiet treasure of a book, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (2002), I wrote a letter to the former U.S. Poet Laureate (2004-2006). Not knowing his home address, I mailed my letter of introduction to “Iris”—Postmistress of the small town near Kooser’s home in the hilly region north of Lincoln, Nebraska. Iris forwarded the letter, and our epistolary correspondence took off from there.
Visit at the Nebraska home of U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.
Occasionally, Ted mails a linen postcard on which he has painted a miniature watercolor of a landscape viewed from the front seat of his pickup truck. The date and time of day are always noted along the edges. Our letters speak of books we are reading and contain observations on the gardens and critters (orb weaver spiders in particular) that inhabit our country lives. Recently he sent pictures of a stand of bearded irises from tubers that I dug and shared one spring from our garden back in Missouri.
One summer after a road trip to Wyoming, Kit and I visited Ted on our way back to Missouri. When we arrived, the poet and his snow-white Labrador Retriever Howard were waiting for us on the porch. “It’s National Ice Cream Month,” Kooser said after greeting us. “Would you like ice cream, or can I offer you iced tea and cookies?”
That afternoon, we talked about books, writing, poetry, and the nature of country life. It was as if we’d known each other for ages. I delivered a copy of Gone West—a book of poetry our friend Walter Bargen, Missouri’s first poet laureate. In return, Kooser presented me with two books from his personal library—Nature a Day at a Time: An Uncommon Look at Common Wildlife by Cathie Katz, and Little Things in a Big Country by artist-writer-naturalist Hannah Hinchman. Ted’s letters, postcards, prose, and poetry traveled with us on our recent move to Nevada City and are in my studio where pens and stationery are always at the ready.
This past week, my sister Kim from San Antonio flew in for a week’s visit just as smoke and ash made their way from the active Dixie and River fires in the region. It was Kit’s birthday, and it was also the weekend we’d invited 30 local neighbors and new friends to our house for a Saturday morning coffee and book talk with local author Shirley DicKard.
Her first novel Heart Wood was published a year ago just as the pandemic shut down public events and travel. After meeting her, we were eager to create a venue for her to speak about her writing experience and the fascinating characters—four women connected across time—who are at the heart of her novel. But because of the unhealthy air quality, we’ve postponed the outdoor gathering until August 21 (9:30-11:00 a.m.).
For Kit’s birthday dinner the next day, our daughter Heidi joined the three of us for an incredibly delicious indoor dinner at Lefty’s Restaurant in Nevada City’s historic district. And per Kit’s wishes, we were back downtown the next morning for brunch at the Classic Café where the French/American menu includes everything from crepes to biscuits and gravy.
My parents strolling downtown San Antonio in 1945.
Over coffee the next morning, Kim told me about a box of letters she and our sister Kelly discovered a year ago on a shelf in Mom’s walk-in bedroom closet. Written by our father to our mother, these letters chronicle their romance that began at a dance at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio and was followed soon thereafter by brunch at the St. Anthony Hotel on December 7, 1941—a date in history remembered as Pearl Harbor Day. Dad’s letters continued over the months in 1945 when he was stationed in Guam and piloting a B-29 on nighttime missions over Japan near the end of WWII.
My sisters are now meticulously scanning and transferring Dad’s letters onto a thumb drive. Eventually, the original letters will be housed in an archive in the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, TX.
Havasu Falls described on my first postcard to Kit in 1977.
My romance with Kit began with a postcard that I mailed to him while hiking to Havasu Falls through the Havasupi Indian Reservation in the Grand Canyon. He had directed a six-week summer geography institute at UCLA in 1977 that I’d attended and loved. The small postcard that I mailed to his office was filled with descriptions of the landscape I was experiencing while he was in Asia traveling with the first group of American geographers invited to visit China since Nixon’s historic détente trip in 1972. When he returned, he found the postcard postmarked “the last mule train mail in America.”
Post card to Kit from our last trip to Rome.
We have now been together over forty years. We still mail postcards to each other when we travel and I have them all, tucked into journals that I love revisiting. Our epistolary journey and romance continues. Always has. Always will.