Claiming Ground

by Laura Bell

  I find a rock to sit on in the sun next to the fence beside the kill. Grace quits her nosing around to come and sit by me, looking to my eyes as if to ask what it is, exactly, that we’re searching for. We sit there watching for something to show a face. From atop the hoodoo ridges, crows caw. A golden eagle dips a wing in a slow glide above them. There must be eyes watching us from the pockmarks in the volcanic cliffs, but I can’t see them. The sun’s warm, all is quiet, and we simply sit there listening to the birds.

  I’m aware that standing up and leaving means going back to the tangle of my life, giving up the spacious silence of these days. When a cloud passes over and it grows cold, I pull my coat around my neck and look one last time at the scattered bones and bloodstains on the hillside, thinking we all have our time of reckoning. If we’re lucky, there’s something left of us to persist. And if we’re supple of heart, we get to gather our bones together and walk on in the world with our noses to the wind, bright eyed for the days ahead.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I extend my love and deepest appreciation to the following people, whose lives appear along with mine in these pages: Virginia and Wayne Bell, Amy Little Bey, Joe Ed Little, Ken Little, Nadyne Little, Stan and Mary Flitner, Tim Flitner, Carol Flitner Bell, Sonia Jensen, Gretel Ehrlich, Lila Steed, Paul Schmidt, John McGough, Press Stephens, and my siblings, Kendall Bell, David Bell, Marsha Uselton and Brenda Bell. You have made my life and story rich.

  My thanks go to Page and Pearre’ Williams for the months I spent upstream in their Breteche Creek cabin and to Anne Young for timely seclusion in her cabin at Moss Creek. For encouragement and logistical support, I want to thank my family, my wide scatter of friends, the Louises, David Beckett, Harriet Corbett, Emily Milder and the staff at Knopf, the Ucross Foundation, Neltje and the Blanchan/ Doubleday Literary Awards, the Wyoming Arts Council and my colleagues at the Wyoming Chapter of the Nature Conservancy.

  I thank Joe Little for giving his blessing to the manuscript, an act of love and courage.

  I am grateful to Mark Spragg for his generous support for my voice, to Virginia Spragg for her dedicated, insightful, and unflagging reads of this manuscript, and to my agent, Nancy Stauffer, for her patience and care.

  With a handful of sentences, my editor, Gary Fisketjon, turned me toward a steeper path, and I am forever in his debt.

  I raise a toast to Jenny Little, Linda Ramfjord Little, John Lewis Hopkin, Grady Steed, Fred Murdi and my dogs, Louise, Lady and Grace. May they all rest in peace together on the big mountain.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Laura Bell’s work has been published in several collections, and from the Wyoming Arts Council, she has received two literature fellowships as well as the Neltje Blanchan Memorial Award and the Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. She lives in Cody and since 2000 has worked for the Nature Conservancy there.

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2010 by Laura Bell

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

  Ahsahta Press: Excerpt from “Probably She Is a River” from

  To Touch the Water by Gretel Ehrlich (Boise, ID: Ahsahta Press, 1981).

  Reprinted by permission of Ahsahta Press.

  The Estate of Robert W. Service: Excerpt from “The Cremation of Sam McGee”

  from The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses by Robert W. Service

  (New York: Barse & Hopkins, 1907). Reprinted by permission of William

  Krasilovsky on behalf of the Estate of Robert W. Service.

  Hal Leonard Corporation: Excerpt from “Remember Me (When the Candle

  Lights Are Gleaming),” words and music by Scott Wiseman, copyright © 1946

  by Universal—Songs of Polygram International, Inc. Copyright renewed.

  All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bell, Laura, 1954–

  Claiming ground / by Laura Bell.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-59289-7

  1. Bell, Laura, 1954– 2. Ranch life—Wyoming. 3. Wyoming—Social life and

  customs. 4. Sheepherding—Wyoming. 5. Ranching—Wyoming.

  6. Ranches—Wyoming. 7. Wyoming—History, Local. 8. Young women—

  Wyoming—Biography. 9. Wyoming—Biography. I. Title.

  F765.22.B45A3 2010

  978.7′–dc22

  [B] 2009029644

  v3.0