by Sylvia Plath
The bear, back from its rounds, had returned to the car. Ted stood up to look out the back window---it was all I could do to keep him from going out before to check on the damage---and reported that the bear was at the back of the car, halfway in the left rear window. It had discovered our oranges. From then until sunup we lay listening to the bear squeeze the oranges open and slurp up the juice---it was interrupted only by a car which drove by and scared it to run toward the front door of our tent. It tripped on the guy ropes anchoring our porch and for a moment the whole tent shook so we thought it had decided to come in. Then there was a long silence. Then more orange-squeezing. We got up rather shaken. The car window had been shattered down to the root, and wiry brown bear hairs stuck all along the edge of it. Amazingly, the story got around camp. An old regular came up to advise us that bears hated kerosene and to smear all our window frames with that. Another said bears hated red pepper. Well, we felt we had the daylight hours to build a fortress against our enemy who would indubitably return. So we moved some sites up, which cheered us. Then we packed everything of value and all food in the trunk. We reported the accident to the ranger, who recorded it, so it’s there if the insurance people need it, and he was very noncommittal. I mentioned the incident to a woman up early in the lavatory, and she seemed very disquieted by my report of the broken window. It turned out she had just moved from West Thumb, another camp, where a woman had been killed by a bear Sunday, the night we came. The woman, hearing the bear at her food at night, had gone out with a flashlight to shoo it away and it turned on her and downed her with one vicious cuff. Naturally the story was hushed up by the rangers, but this woman who had been “sleeping under the stars” with her husband, felt concerned; especially since a bear growled them into flight when they hesitated about sharing their breakfast with it. Well, this story put proper concern into us too. By twilight we had the car kerosened, flung red pepper everywhere, sprayed Fly-Ded all about, drank ovaltine and took a tranquilizer each---which I had been saving for the Donner Pass, and went to bed at 9 pm to the usual shouts: “There it is”, “Up there, a bear!” That night everybody banged the bear away with pans, for they run at noise; our story had got around. We slept the sleep of the blessed and the bear did not touch our kerosene-soaked poncho sealing the broken window. The next night the population of the camp had changed with movings in and out, and there was the old casualness, people photographing the bear, etc. We stayed an extra day, Thursday, and fished from a rowboat, catching our limit of 6 fine trout in 5 hours, throwing all the little ones away that we would have been excited about in Canada. This rested us fine, and we left Yellowstone Friday, driving through the beautiful Teton range, stopping to take a few pictures. We drove through rolling prairies and open ranges, and at about 5 the scenery suddenly changed (this amazes us---the queer immediate way each state asserts its own individuality) and was green and fertile, and we were in Utah. We crossed the Wasatch range, coasted downhill 10 straight miles, and Salt Lake City lay under us like a dream, all one story, green-lawned little homes. Unluckily for our repair of the window we arrived on Pioneer Day, a holiday, when Brigham Young first entered the valley. So we took a long winding road up one of the canyons, Big Cottonwood Canyon, and camped at the last site left at “Spruces”. By then it was dark. Making sure from the ranger there were no bears about, (“Just some thieves”) we rearranged our car in order again after our emergency crowding of the trunk. A white kitten walked across to us, with orange and black splotches, as if it owned us. So we fed it milk and tuna, and it stayed with us until we left. Evidently someone had lost it there. We have got to be experts on camp facilities. Prefer places with a view, near water, out in the open, with good lavatories. This place was rather dank and had not been cleaned out over the holidays. Yellowstone, in our loop at Fishing Bridge Camp Ground, right on the lake, was most sumptuous: mirrors, flush toilets, and hot water: all washed out every day. We reveled in this, washed clothes, etc., and did a load at the laundromat. Hope to do the same in San Francisco.
We slept late after our long drive from Yellowstone, treated ourselves to the best Kentucky fried chicken, rolls & honey, potatoes and gravy, I have ever eaten. Then drove out to the Salt Lake, a great molten silver body of water 14 miles from city limits, with a blue horizon line. Although it was a Saturday, very few people were at the two beach “resorts”---piers perched close together with fresh water showers and beer and hotdog stands. We walked over the ill-smelling grey-crusted salt flats into the water which rolled in, but never crested to a whitecap. The water tasted fantastically salt, and stung badly if splashed in the eyes. We started to swim, and burst out laughing. Our feet flew into the air, our heads bobbed up. We lay on the water, half in, half out, and dozed. Sat up comfortably as in an armchair, holding our knees. Then we showered, had a cold beer---it was very hot. And started on. We drove into the sunset---saw it set twice---over the luminous white barrens of the Great Salt Lake desert. Lightning slashed out of the purple clouds to our left. The sun set behind a red grid of clouds at the right. We passed over the border of Nevada, ate a steak, drove on an hour to a stop called “Oasis”, a collection of gas tanks and a Cafe in the middle of nowhere. We got permission from the gas station attendant to sleep out on the prairies in back of his place, and woke once to see bulls grazing within feet of us. Up at dawn and on through the hottest barrenest scenery yet. We drank lots of water, got ice everywhere we could. Stopped just short of Lovelock by the roadside in the one tree we saw by the road in all Nevada. I cooked the last big orange fillets of our Yellowstone trout and had them with corn niblets, a tomato and lettuce salad and milk. This renewed us, and we drove through the brown, desolate slot-machine country, meeting our first real traffic since NYork at Reno, which we didn’t know was Reno till we’d come into California. Another immediate change. Rivers, green-conifered hills, lushness and grandeur. We camped near Lake Tahoe---much too resorty for us, but clear and blue and very lovely in the more residential parts. Drove easily over the equivalent of the Donner Pass which I thus cleverly avoided, and stopped in the lovely palm-tree shaded Capitol Park of Sacramento in heat of 114 degrees to make tomato, ham & lettuce sandwiches which we ate with relish in the dark green shade. Then the fertile valley of golden hills opened up: vineyards, orchards. We stopped at a “Giant Orange”* for fresh-squeezed orange juice on cracked ice. Drove on over a network of bridges to San Francisco, all white buildings glittering like an alabaster island surrounded by blue water. We drove 24 miles straight on, hot and weary, to what was listed in our camp ground guide as the nearest campground, Stinson Beach State Park. The road wound along a cliff in hairpin turns into the sunset for most most of those miles, with spectacular views of the Pacific, and only cows in sight. It turned out when we arrived at the “camp” that the Guide was “out-of-date”, and the place had been converted to a parking lot. I was almost in tears, but Ted cheered me up, and we decided to try our luck in town. We had cold beer and wonderful fried chicken again, and the Cafe owner suggested we park behind his place and sleep on the beach down from the houses. Which we did, under the stars, and it was just wonderful. We entered the Park when it opened at 8 and took a lovely picnic table in a secluded grove where we had bacon and eggs and toast, and heated pots of water to wash in. We plan to stay here till sunset, sleep on the beach again, and go to San Francisco first thing tomorrow, get the window repaired, and see as much as we can of the city.
Then a beach camp half way to Los Angeles, then Aunt Frieda and our friends the Steins,* and then Grand Canyon. We’ll probably get the AAA* to shortcircuit our trip, avoiding Mexico and using those days around here.
When we come home we look most forward to hot tubs and home baking. The bread across america is awful. We’re going to try bakeries in San Francisco. I just don’t understand when meat etc. is so good why there can’t be more solid good bread on the market.
Well, we are fine, and both of us tanned, and having the experience of our lives. We hope to try some
deep-sea fishing if we can here.
Love to you both, and Sappho –
Sivvy & Ted*
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 2 August 1959
TLS, Indiana University
Sunday
August 2
Dear mother . . .
It was good to talk to you this morning. We had a lovely big breakfast here at the hotel and have moved to a cool quiet room with its own bath for $11 for tonight to renew ourselves for the trip back. Mail up to August 17th should be sent c/o Meyers, Bairnwick, Sewanee, Tennessee, where Luke’s mother* (about 11 children in that family---ballet dancers, writers, etc) has written to extend us a warm welcome: we also shall probably meet the editor* of the Sewanee review there, who has published poems by both of us. So we shall enjoy having them introduce us to the South.
PLEASE don’t worry about my poetry book but send it off. I know about summer editors, but want to send it to as many places as I can. I also have gone over it very carefully and am not going to try to change it to fit some vague abstract criticism. If an editor wants to accept it and make a few changes then, all right. You need to develop a little of our callousness and brazenness to be a proper sender-out of mss. I have a good list of publishers and haven’t begun to eat into it. The biggest places are often best because they can afford to publish a few new people each year.
Here are our checks. All to be sent by mail to the Boston 5 cent savings bank, with the deposit slip & bankbook & our 26 Elmwood address: Except Roland’s check, to be deposited in our Wellesley Savings account. Ask for interest to be recorded, too, in both places (no, the Boston one doesn’t come due till fall).
1-23
210
$15
1-1
210
200
5-20
110
10.50
5-20
110
10.
1-8
210
13.75
85-465
614
44.
$293.25
To Boston Bank
Do save the Monitor clippings of my poems as they come out.*
Aunt Frieda had a wonderful cold chicken lunch, string beans, potato salad, tomato and lettuce salad, hot rolls, fresh pineapple, coffee cake and tea ready for us yesterday when we came. Both she and Uncle Walter are handsome, fun, and so young in spirit. They have a little green eden of a house, surrounded by pink and red and white oleander bushes, with two avocado trees loaded down with (alas) not yet ripe fruit, a peach tree, a guava tree, a persimmon tree, a fig tree and others.
Aunt Frieda has had some wonderful adventures, and is a great story teller. Ted gets on magnificently with Walter. We simply love them both. It is amazing how Frieda resembles daddy---the same clear piercing intelligent bright eyes and face shape. Ted & I plan to be home about the 28th or maybe even before, if we have no setbacks.
Love to you, Warren, and Sappho,
Sivvy
enc
The $18.07 bill for the window & 7 checks, all signed
Record of bear damage on file at Yellowstone (Fishing Bridge was our camp) – company can write them for it.
TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath
Monday 3 August 1959*
ALS (picture postcard), Indiana University
August 3 – Monday – Leaving California
Dear mother & Warren –
We’re driving in the cool of the afternoon out of Pasadena – more rested than ever yet from our luxurious 2 nights at a Pasadena Hotel – just wept to leave Aunt Frieda & Uncle Walter who are both so handsome – young-spirited. We love them both dearly. Frieda looks like a feminine version of Daddy. Tomorrow dawn – early – we’ll cross the desert to Grand Canyon – then through Alberquerque & Dallas to New Orleans. Had car tuned up, lubricated, & 3rd oil change & it’s running like velvet. Chevy man said it had been well cared for & in fine shape. Hope to be at Tennessee address by Aug. 15th –
xxx
Sivvy
TO Edith & William Hughes
Monday 3 August 1959*
ALS (picture postcard), Family owned
August 3 – Monday
Dear Ted’s mother & dad –
We’re just leaving Los Angeles & had a wonderful stay with my Aunt Frieda & Uncle Walter (Frieda is my father’s sister – I’d never seen any Plath relatives before her) eating lots of strange fruits – they have their own avocado, peach, guava & persimmon trees. We loved San Francisco – a beautiful pastel-colored city on 7 hills surrounded by blue Pacific. We rode the old-fashioned cable cars up the very steep hills, explored the biggest Chinatown outside the Orient & ate at the fish pier – watched them unload huge salmon from the sailboats – On our way to the grand Canyon – Ted looks the best I’ve ever seen him!
Lots of love –
SYLVIA
TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath
Thursday 6 August 1959*
ALS (picture postcard), Indiana University
Thursday – August 6 – en route thru Arizona
Greetings! I’m wearing with pleasure the trim, cool shorts & blouse you sent & Ted loves his shirt. This card commemorates the place just short of Needles where we sweltered among hordes of huge rubber-eating crickets. Ted has patched up all their holes, however. Grand Canyon was amazing – but we didn’t work up energy enough to hike down & up. We’re on our way to El Paso via Phoenix & Tuscon. Plan to park car there & walk across border for a visit of a few hours to Juarez – an easy & safe way of “seeing Mexico.” Then on to New Orleans via the Carlsbad Caverns –
xxx
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath
Saturday 8 August 1959*
ALS (picture postcard), Indiana University
August 8 – Saturday
en route to Carlsbad Caverns
We left El Paso after a morning exploring the tourist-trap streets of Juarez – bought nothing but two cold beers & left with no reluctance. Hope to arrive at Carlsbad in time to see the millions of bats leave their cave at dusk. Saw a wolf at the roadside in an Arizona wood. Have succumbed on occasion to $5 a night motels – after our tent blew in where we had camped among gigantic cactus outside Tuscon in a hot wind & electrical storm for example. We’re in the best of health, & so is the car
xxx
SIVVY & TED
Should be home by Friday, August 21 (!) if we keep to present schedule
xxx
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath & Warren Plath
Sunday 9 August 1959*
ALS (picture postcard), Indiana University
Sun. Aug. 9 – en route through Texas
Dear mother & Warren –
Ted & I had a fine afternoon in the cavern’s yesterday – managed to see half of them in the afternoon & sat among the cactus gardens to watch the millions of bats pour out of Bat Cave at dusk – lucky timing – for it started to pour after they all were out & they all dove back in again – a sight not usually seen till 4 am. Cooked steak, new potatoes & corn-niblets for supper. On our way through huge Texas to New Orleans
