Recently I went to my fiction shelf and resurrected my copy of Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety, a book I remember liking much when I first ran across it c. 1989 when my life was changing. Today, in the process of writing my own non-fiction book, I was hoping Stegner might provide some kind of energy I could use in my own original work. I am here to tell you, the reread was quite lovely.
I assume most gentle readers here are aware that I was married once before. That 18 year marathon, which brought me both of my beautiful daughters, began to unwind in 1989. It was a difficult time when much of my life seemed to turn on its head. About that time, too, I lost life-long friend John Lauer to a mortal brain injury. Needless to say, it was a time of great turbulence in my own personal ‘force.’
Perhaps it was Stegner’s title that I hoped I could make my own. I mean, crossing to safety is really all I hoped for at the time for myself, my girls, my ex-wife, and my new girlfriend, Cindy Lou. It was a hard time for all of us and I needed some spiritual bolstering to find my way through it all.
Part of my affection for Crossing to Safety, too, grew out of my university experience at Wright State. When I enrolled there in fall 1968, the place was brand new, composed of only four classroom buildings, a student union, and a soccer field. The English department staff was almost all young PhDs who had caught on at this newly independent facility of higher learning. The protagonist of Stegner’s book, Larry Morgan, was himself fresh out of grad school beginning his own gig as writer and teacher. It was easy for me to imagine him as one of my own instructors twenty-some years prior.
I was drawn to read Wallace Stegner in the first place because his name always came up as an important contemporary American Western writer with an affinity for Nature. As a self proclaimed liberal arts environmentalist, I felt him a kindred spirit. I so much liked the idea of Wallace Stegner that I put meeting him on my bucket list. At the time, that list included just two writers, Wendell Berry and Stegner. Unfortunately, I missed Stegner, who died in 1993, though I did get to shake Berry’s hand once in 1999.
I am drawn to Crossing to Safety mostly because of Stegner’s skillful writing, but also for his believable, grounded characterization of the four major players. There is no murder, no assault, no robbery; though there was a near drowning of them all. I am drawn to Larry, Sid, Sally, and Charity because of their simple goodness and the dynamic friendship they developed over years of service to academia and their efforts for family contributions to the written canon of literature and criticism.
But perhaps even deeper than that, it was Hog Island. Again. For them, it was Battell Pond, a modest summer community in Vermont where Charity’s mother, Aunt Emily, shepherded the family through seasons of swimming, reading, picnics, and star gazing. When Larry and Sally became fast friends, it was inevitable that they would be invited and would come to be part of Aunt Emily’s extended family.
As Sid and Larry hiked the New England forest, I wondered how David Todd and Walter Bingham saw the island wilderness of Camp Mavooshen a century ago. Both places had buildings affectionately called The Big House. I fantasized how Mabel Loomis Todd organized everyone’s day, like Aunt Emily, into play and learning periods while demanding everyone be on time for meals. Classical music would waft out over the water after dinner.
Everyone at Battell Pond and Camp Mavooshen learned the common names of plants and recognized birds by their songs. All had tasks to accomplish, some including the writing of books energized by the solitude of northern forests and the stirring of restless waters.
Next for me is Stegner’s Angle of Repose, a book most critics think is his best. My hope is he will continue to inform my prose as I try to contribute my own piece to the canon of the Todd Binghams and Emily Dickinson.
***
In 1990 I assembled my own Crossing to Safety, an unpublished volume of original verse commemorating that time of deep personal conflict and change. Here’s the title poem written for my lovely Cindy Lou:
Crossing To Safety
Frightening, we have been --
even to ourselves --
seeking passage across this
uncharted water.
I thought wisdom was to be
found differently:
more comfortable -- more deliberate.
More glacial-like, perhaps.
But I suspect it is here --
buried within the tumult --
among the lessons -- of this attempted
crossing to safety.
Today’s elder idea: "My God," Sid said. "Can there be such a place?"
from Wallace Stegner's Crossing to Safety
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