by Sylvia Plath
Love to all –
Sivvy & Ted
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 12 July 1959
TLS with envelope, Indiana University
Near Sault Saint Marie, Michigan
Brimley State Park
July 12: Sunday
Dear mother,
It was so good to hear your voice today and get the news. I am especially happy to hear that my poem “The Thin People”---a long one---was accepted, and delighted about the acceptance from the Times Literary Supplement*---my first from there, and a very good paper. I also like the poems they chose. It has just begun to rain---our first rain while actually with our tent up, but we had a wonderful morning here, heating big pots of water & giving ourselves thorough sponge baths and I managed to get a hand laundry hung up on my line (clothesline stretching from our porch tent poles to a tree) and am now sitting snug in the shelter of the porch flap out in front of the tent, facing directly out to Whitefish Bay, not 50 yards from my seat on the comfortable picnic-table-bench combination supplied by the Park. Ted is inside the tent curled up on the airmattresses (actually the very most comfortable bed we have ever slept in!) reading and writing.
Already we feel we have been put to several tests and passed them all. Today I feel really rested and we are staying here tonight and Monday night in preparation for the long drives to Yellowstone which we hope to reach Friday or Saturday. We find it better to drive long stretches---yesterday’s was the longest, I hope---about 400 miles from Algonquin Park up route 60 & 11 to North Bay and from there to Sault Ste. Marie, by ferry across the St. Mary River to Michigan’s Sault St. Marie and out along dirt roads by the light of the moon to Brimley, which looks right across to Canada and the Bay which opens up into Lake Superior: I can’t see the other shore! And it feels like the ocean. Freight boats passing through the Soo Locks (which we hope to visit tomorrow) hoo and whoo companionably out on the horizon line. We thought nothing could beat our setup at Algonquin Park, but this is even more scenic: it’s so exciting to cook & do dishes right in the open with a wonderful view. Tonight I have promised Ted some Aunt Jemima pancakes and bacon, blueberry pancakes, with what we have left over in the way of berries from what the deer ate yesterday. Today seagulls cry directly overhead, resting on various tent poles. The camp was full last night when we drove in late---something we will never do again on a Saturday! so we found a rather makeshift spot down the road, and drove in at 9 to find lots of empty space, and maneuvered for what I feel like the best view among the 100 or so odd sites. It is really pouring now, and I am warm in my navy sweater & Ted’s khaki jacket. I feel sorry for those people who are just trying to set up camp now. I had ample time to air out all our bedding and towels. We are as happy as we have ever been. We drive alternating 2 hour stretches at the beginning of the day, and 1 hour stretches at the end, having tea, coffee, and snacks to break the intervals, and this is marvelously reviving. So far we have had three long drives: the one to Whetstone Gulf, New York (between Boonville and Lowville), then to Rock Lake, Algonquin Park, Canada, and then from there to Brimley, Michigan. We have roughly outlined a trip now from here to Iron River, Abercrombie (south of Fargo), and the Theodore Roosevelt Park to Yellowstone, all involving long drives, then to Salt Lake City with a stop between there and San Francisco. We plan to drive long laps, and then rest for a few whole days, wash, write, boat, fish, sun, swim and see sights, every 5 or 7 days or so. This is much better than driving 6 hours every day (and camping sites don’t come up so often) and having only two hours everywhere. Yesterday we left our campsite in Canada at 8, having a lovely breakfast there, went on a 2-mile nature hike in the park, fed the deer, and really started driving about 10. We went through unbelievable stretches of country, unpeopled, green, with lakes and rivers everywhere. I am amazed at the terrible shoddiness of Canadian towns. They are literally all gas stations---a straight, flat pitted road down the center, with 10 to twenty gas stations, tar-paper shacks (I saw no real houses except in North Bay and Sault Ste. Marie, and those were ugly, if solid) and an amazing number of trailer camps. Ted and I counted 100 big aluminum trailers on the road in less than an hour. The only virtue of the place seems the country: the amazing three-dimensional skies with masses of sculptured cloud stretching away on all sides, mountains of conifers, fields of cows. And at every turn vistas of forest and water. The roads in a few places were under repair and a bit rough: the repaired ones were good: narrow but smooth, and often very straight, telephone poles diminishing toward the horizon. We felt the country was being invented before our eyes: a thin ribbon of gas stations and trailer camps and shacks flung up hastily in an immense and uncivilizable wilderness. I have never seen such masses of untouched land. An interesting thing was that everybody we spoke to in Algonquin Park had thick European accents: Germans, Dutch, Chinese too, all becoming “New Canadians”. The country certainly does need men to develop it. Off the main ribbon of road all roads were dirt! I would like to drive up into eastern Canada someday: Quebec and Montreal must have a kind of culture of their own. The peculiar mindlessness of the Canadian scene impressed me: no books, no theaters, no libraries to be seen.
We crossed with our car on the little ferry operating between the two Sault Ste. Maries, at sunset, a spectacular view, and crossed the timebelt. Luckily for us we gained an hour: now we are on Central Time.
What amazes me most is our perfect satisfaction with all our equipment: for people who never camped, and so extensively, we have everything we need right to hand: our labeled foodboxes are like drawers. We can stop by a roadside in midafternoon and have tea and biscuits and cheese in ten minutes on our excellent stove, a real jewel. We change ice every day & all keeps cool in our refrigerator. Our tent is sturdy, Ted puts it up in ten minutes, and the raindrops just roll off it. As I said, our mattresses are like great featherbeds, and our sleeping bags wonderfully warm and light. For some reason, every time we pack the car we have more room, and it is like a house on wheels. Both of us are in excellent health, eating well (we treated ourselves to a steak dinner on completion of our long trek to Sault Saint Marie at a dimly lit diner). Except for a few insect bites around the ankles and neck we got when blueberrying (which stop itching immediately when we apply Caladryl) we are unscathed by chiggers, snakes or vampires. My first aid kit has everything we need, all in my small grey traveling case. The wash ’n dris are a blessing enroute.* Hot tea, a devilled egg and a face wash at 11 am or 4 pm can make one feel altogether freshened up. And the people who come to these camps are very quiet, keep to themselves, so even though there are tents to be seen in every direction, one is perfectly private. And the small children go to bed at sundown, so it is peaceful early.
Now we shall arrive in Yellowstone on either the 17th (Friday) or the 18th (Saturday) and I am going to see if we can pick up mail there. Tentatively we shall leave Wednesday morning July 22 for California and should be at Aunt Frieda’s (also tentatively) about Saturday July 25th, or a day or two later, as we plan to spend some time in California, seeing San Francisco, camping on the coast, visiting friends in Los Angeles overnight, and Disneyland, before we go on to the Grand Canyon.
It has stopped raining & the sun is shining, all fresh and cool. California looks so lovely, with so many parks, I hardly can choose between them. Maybe we’ll stay there and send the car back on it’s own!
Aunt Frieda’s address* is the one you better send all our mail to, we’ll arrive there on the 25th or 26th as I said. Our next address will probably be Sewanee, Tennesee. Sundays I’ll call about 6 or 7 in the evening.
Do make a chart of all poems accepted, etc. & send a carbon of it to Frieda as far as you’ve got it done in about 10 days.
Much love to you & Warren,
and thanks so much for your
wonderful help in getting off on
our trip,
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 14 July 1959*
ALS (postcard), Indi
ana University
Tuesday: July 14th
Dear mother . . .
It is 5:30 pm & I am sitting in bright sun on a hayfield hilltop before our newly pitched tent looking through the branches of birch & appletrees into the glittering blue waters of Lake Superior which stretch to the horizon like a great sea. We decided to be adventurous & try asking for a tentsite at a farmhouse & chose the most beautiful we have seen – just north of Cornucopia, Wis. We got up at 4:30 am & left Brimley by 5 driving through farms & woods. We saw, at 7:40 am our first BEAR! standing up right at the roadside before a wooded area, ears pointed alertly, big & black – no park bear! It made our day. A deer bounded out at us a little later. We have fallen in love with Wisconsin – it is so uncommercialized – unlike Michigan – all bluegreen woods & lovely farms – We have driven all day and not left Lake Superior! Cornucopia is on a peninsula just above Rte 2 at Iron River & we took it as a side route hoping to be lucky & find just such a place as this, by the lake. We had the car oil changed yesterday & a new muffler installed. Do send any gas credit cards that you may get to Aunt Frieda’s. Could you send a carbon of our publishing acceptances & rejections (with titles of poems rejected to the Central Post Office, (To Be Held: on it) at Yellowstone to reach there by July 22? Three more laps to Yellowstone!
xx
Siv
TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath
Thursday 16 July 1959*
ALS (picture postcard), Indiana University
IN THE APOSTLE ISLAND GROUP LAKE SUPERIOR.>
Thursday: July 16 – en route through North Dakota:
Fargo to Bismarck
Dear mother & Warren
With regrets we left our friendly family* at dawn in Cornucopia. I had spent a morning drawing boats* in the lovely harbor: our tent (we camped free for 2 nights) overlooked a point like this. We spent the afternoon fishing with Marcia, the Nozals 12-year old daughter – the family – including dog, cat, & ducklings – sat out in the apple orchard talking in the moonlight – Mr. Nozal, a commercial fisherman, is a wonderful storyteller – We ate blueberries, wild strawberries, perch I caught for supper – saw two red foxes on the road today. N. Dakota is amazingly flat, straight & yellow-green.
xxx
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 17 July 1959*
ALS (picture postcard), Indiana University
National Memorial Park.>
Friday: July 17: Medora, North Dakota –
We camped overnight in a grove of trees in a minute town just west of Jamestown, N. Dakota & rose at dawn to drive under spectacular skies – half blue & clear & half black lit by sheet lightening – through marvelous endless prairies, rich with cows & unpeopled to this beautiful spot – the ‘Badlands’ literally lept at us out of the prairies – we have a tent site in a grove of cottonwoods looking over the Little Missouri River at a scene much like this one – have seen two antelope & a prairie dog – shall search for buffalo this pm. In fine health & spirits
xx
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Saturday 18 July 1959*
ALS (picture postcard), Indiana University
in their natural habitat.>
Custer, Montana – Saturday, 7/18
Dear mother:
I am writing this from a ‘café’ in a tiny town just an hour or so short of Billings – they served us a magnificent T-bone steak dinner for $2.50 & the lightest flakiest homemade boysenberry pie I have ever imagined. After a few mistakes, we are learning how to enter a strange town, sniff out its best piemaker & get a free campsite – tonight’s will be on the grounds of the Congregational Church – ‘they haven’t got it grassed yet,’ our waitress says. Saw wild deer like this grazing at dawn this morning & an eagle at Roosevelt Park. Ted typed his essay under the cottonwoods & we drove through Montanas yellow wheat & black earth fields stretching in alternate ebony & gold bands to the purple mesas on the horizon. Tomorrow: Yellowstone!
xxx
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 20 July 1959*
ALS (postcard), Indiana University
YELLOWSTONE PARK: July 20
Dear mother –
It was good to hear your voice yesterday – We were weary from our long 2-stage drive from the N. Dakota badlands up here – Montana being the most beautiful state yet, cool, dry, sunny, with gold wheat fields, alternating with black plowed earth fields, stretching literally in wide bands to the horizon of purple mesas. We ate steak & delicious homemade boysenberry pie in Custer & slept in the churchyard! Now we are camped in a tentsite on Yellowstone Lake – lucky as ever – moved in after a trailer-family that left early this am. Slept late – we look right across at snowcapped mountains. Off the road 300 yards is Wilderness. A herd of antelope crossed our path at the entrance. We counted 19 bears & cubs & saw two big moose. Almost caught a big pink trout in the river rapids last night. Just finished cooking a good breakfast – grapefruit & honey, bacon & eggs & fried potatoes & coffee – in our cool sunny pine grove. Neither of us have seen such wonderful country anywhere in the world. Flowers everywhere, & animals & snow – Will call Monday night the 27th
xx
S.
TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath
Friday 24 July 1959*
ALS (picture postcard), Indiana University
On the road: after Kemmerer, Wyoming
Friday July 24
Dear mother & Warren –
A bear this size woke us by smashing the locked rear window of the car to smithereens at 3 am Wednesday & spent the night within a few feet of us knocking cans open, devouring cookies & oranges. There is no way to escape bears as against-the-rules feeding makes them bold & they live on the trash cans. We wet the window hole with kerosene the next 2 nights & were left at peace – having thought cars bearproof. Fished from a rowboat in Yellowstone Lake for 2 days & caught our limit (6) of big lake trout each time & are still eating them. Saw all the wonderful geysers – left Yellowstone at dawn & hope to reach Salt Lake City today
xx
Sivvy
This card has a real bear print on it!
TO Joseph, Dorothy, Robert, & Nancy Benotti & Frank Schober
Friday 24 July 1959*
ALS (picture postcard), Indiana University
En route to Salt Lake City –
Friday July 24
Dear Dotty & Joe & Bobby & Nancy & Grampy
We drove along past this lovely mountain range at dawn today – leaving Yellowstone after 5 exciting days camping on Yellowstone Lake, seeing the geysers & boiling pools & fighting off bears – we saw moose, elk, & 67 bears. Our ice chest is crammed full of bright pink fillets of 1½-2 lb. lake trout we caught in 2 days from our rented rowboat – Just drove over the state line into Utah. Can’t wait to see California –
Love –
Sivvy & Ted
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Saturday 25 July 1959*
ALS (picture postcard),* Indiana University
Salt Lake City – July 25
Dear Mother –
Here we are having an oil change – please send the ms. from Knopf* (not the Yale ms.* as it is different) after checking page order etc. to:
Editor,
HARCOURT BRACE & CO
750 Third Avenue
New York 1
7, New York
With a stamped, Self-addressed brown envelope enclosed, no letter – both big manila envelopes marked EDUCATIONAL MATTER each with a 9 cent stamp which is the right rate. Tell me the date you send it.
Love,
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 26 July 1959*
ALS (picture postcard), Indiana University
Sunday 6:30 pm – Lake Tahoe California
July 26
Drove through arid Nevada gladly today from a night sleeping under the shooting stars among Sagebrush & grazing bulls. Cooked our last Yellowstone trout for lunch in the shade of the one roadside tree in all Nevada. Salt Lake desert at sunset spectacular! Heard the free noon organ concert in this Mormon Tabernacle & had great fun swimming in Salt Lake. Passed thru’ Reno without knowing it – thought it was Sparks – awfully ugly place. Nevada our least favorite state. Detoured to a Camp on Lake Tahoe – to ’Frisco tomorrow –
Love,
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath
Tuesday 28 July 1959
TLS, Indiana University
Tuesday, July 28, 1959
Dear mother & Warren:
It was so good to hear your voices last night. We were on a nonstop combination of highway and toll bridges about the time I had planned to call, so that’s why we were late. We had come on from Yellowstone, leaving early Friday morning. After the Bear Incident, that Tuesday night, we moved to a site a little higher up the camp, on a rise in the open sun, at a place where there were no garbage cans within 20 yards or so. We had been at the edge of the wood between the camp and Yellowstone lake and right at one of the very frequent garbage cans. The attitude towards bears at Yellowstone is a strange one. There are danger warnings everywhere about feeding bears---this is strictly prohibited by the rangers. Over 100 people are wounded by bears every summer. Yet all along the roads, bears are being fed by hand, coaxed to approach little Jimmy and stand up and smile so daddy can get the snapshot of the year, and so on. They do indeed look harmless and Teddyish, mooching along. Only to those who have encountered bears without bothering the bears does the great furry animal look ominous. We had left bears alone when we came back late from a drive around the Grand Loop seeing the geysers and pools to see the large shadow of a black bear almost up to its waist in the garbage can by our tent area. Although the garbage cans are like ours at home---in the ground and with metal lids---the bears are expert lid-flippers and make several visits along the can-circuit each night. The bear lumbered off through the camp at our headlights, and we cooked supper and went peacefully to bed, taking care to lock all our food up in the car and the trunk of the car and wash down the table and benches. At the blue moonlit hour of quarter of three I was wakened from a dream where the car blew to pieces with a great rending crash by an exactly (or at least very) similar crash and falling jangle. My immediate thought was that a bear had with one cuff demolished the car and was eating the engine out. I woke Ted and we lay for a few moments listening to the unique sounds of a bear rooting through our belongings. Grunts, snuffles, clattering can lids. We thought he might have somehow broken off the trunk door and got into our tinned supplies, divining food by a seventh sense. Then there was a bumpity rolling noise as the bear bowled a tin past our tent and I sat up quaking to peer out the tent screen. There in the blue wierd light of the moon not ten feet away a huge dark bear-shape hunched, guzzling at a tin. I found in the morning that it was the black-and-gilt figured cookie tin we took the date-nut bars in: it had been in the back seat of the car in my red bag, shut, full of ritz crackers and Hydrox cookies, and some postcards. The bear must have lifted out the bag after smashing the window, rolled the can about till the lid came off, undone the wax paper and eaten every last crumb. I found the postcards the next day, lying among the rubble, the top card of moose antlers turned down and face-up the card of a large bear with an actual bear paw-print on it. We lay there for what seemed years, wondering if the bear would eat us since it found our crackers so interesting. Just as we were relaxing and felt the dawn starting to lighten, we heard a heavy shuffling tread.
