Gilda Trillim

by Steven L. Peck

  This entry also gives a sense of the depth of Gilda’s Mormonism and its central tenet on the importance of embodiment (see for example, Faulconer’s treatise2 on the subject). Here she reflects on the centrality of the body for spirituality. A recurring theme for Trillim in much of her work. This is the most explicit treatment of that idea among all her writings.

  The aspens are shimmering in the morning air, their pale green underside, the dark emerald top flipping back and forth creating a jitterbug that enlivens the already delightful sunlight streaming into our little valley. The carefree stream that falls from the western La Sals into Buckeye makes a lovely splashing sound and drowns out any other noise. I’m following the little rivulet up to a beaver dam that I like to watch.

  I come to the dam, then skirt it and approach from the side, trying to creep closer to the pond where I take a position from which I can survey the giant rodents’ work below me. I sit on a fallen aspen that they (I’m sure) have provided for my comfort by falling it and not dragging it away for their construction projects. Delightfully kind of them. I take out my sketchpad and try to draw the scene below me. It’s a small pond, maybe an acre, and roundish, surrounded by aspens on one side and Ponderosa pine and scrub oak on the other.

  I have two friends here. One is a strange otherworldly creation of my mind. The other is real. The fantasy apparition has appeared twice, both near sundown. The first time, I’d been relaxing by the pond drawing. I had just finished a sketch and set back to enjoy the magic that falls upon the place when the sun gets low, the shadows lengthen, and the stark lemon sun starts to sneak behind the La Sals. I fell into a late afternoon drowsy slumber; I awoke to find a small young woman standing on the other side of the water looking at me. By ‘small’ I mean strangely so, perhaps three and a half feet tall, but proportioned like an adult, not a child or a dwarf. She was a wild thing. Her hair was fierce and untamed, not long or short. She was dressed in a soft leather kirtle, but with a fey, otherworldly, shimmering purple shift beneath. A deerskin was draped across her shoulders like a cloak. On her feet were loose, well-fitting leather moccasins. Most strange of all she wore a silver tiara with a gorgeous star sapphire centered over her forehead. It was in that bit of detail that gave away that she was the creation of my own mind. I looked at her for a second and she looked at me and flipped me off; raising her middle finger with a look on her face that sent a chill down my spine. I rubbed my eyes with my fists and opened my eyes again and sure enough she was gone. I’d heard of this effect occurring when people awake suddenly and the mind continues in a dream state. I went to the other side of the pond and looked for a sign that she had been real, but it had been unusually dry that season and there were no tracks of any kind.

  However, I saw her again. Or I think I did. This time she was buck-naked with a small bow in her hand. I came upon her while I was hiking up near Taylor Flats in late summer. I saw her down a sheer embankment following a small stream through some thick dark aspens. I had taken a small cattle trail off of the main road and as I rounded a corner I looked down the draw and saw her as clear as anything. She looked up at me and leapt away, her white butt flashing as she fled. Babs thinks it was a mule deer with its white bottom doing the same. It’s true the mind can play tricks, but it seemed so real to me! I suppose that scores of Bigfoot sightings are bears or elk in which people are sure they saw the monster instead3.

  Today I see my other friend. My real one. Or rather her manifestation flying below the water creating a moving chevron traced out in the tiny waves that mark her passing. It surfaces, its brown back and flat black tail exposed. It’s the female. I’ve named her Beth because I’m unimaginative and have decided to give them all names that start with ‘B.’ I watch her gliding along the surface. She dives again, and heads directly for the lodge in the center of the pond—a large dome of piled sticks that serve as a nursery and sleeping berth.

  She has a wondrous beaver body. What would that be like? To swim, to have teeth that can gnaw through the trunk of an aspen, to have the strength to pull a felled tree a hundred yards and then swim it into place for a dam of one’s own construction and design—and to be driven so to do? To feel compelled to cut another tree, to pull it to just the right place in the dam? What would having such a body be like? One that could swim in icy winter water? One with webbed feet that would give purchase to those motions that propelled it through the pond like a proper water dweller. Like a fish. Bodies are such remarkable things. We need them. They define us and our place in the universe. They allow us to be who we are. I love my body. Do beavers love theirs?

  The bodies of my rats were essential to their singing. Their claws grasped minute protuberances, each chosen by their relationship to how it allowed them to position their bodies on the wall. Their angle, given in relation to Earth’s gravity, was facilitated by tiny imperfections in the surface of the wall that determined, for example, how spread out their legs were, how hunched they had to hold their back to keep from losing balance and tumbling to the floor. The little holds fixed just how akimbo each limb had to be positioned in relation to the others—sometimes their front legs were pulled far forward and perhaps one back leg was pulled in close to the body while another was held at a distance at an odd unnatural angle (where ‘odd’ here is in reference to their normal gait while scurrying through a field or up a tree). These body positions, held in reference to multiple forces, (e.g., the topology of the wall, gravitational fields, frictional forces determined by the humidity, or the growth of some odd mold, algae, or lichen, or the pattern of air flow or circulation, or what sorts of things adhered to their claws like slimes or muds, etc.) must have affected their song. Perhaps their bodies being stretched too far, in some cases, their lungs held less capacity and influenced how long they could hold a note, or by being contorted in some strange way it conditioned the timbre or quality of their musical expression. As such, each concert was a unique moment in the universe’s existence. Never to be repeated. All because they, like us, are embodied. All their muscles, neurology, the keratin mesh molding their claws, their whiskers sending messages to their brains adding nuance to its position and place in the universe, their tails providing the balance their body needs to move properly, all combine to create the music.

  And their bodies do not just exist in relation to the physical world as given, but stand apropos of other bodies that add another layer of positioning with which they must engage. A given rat finds itself not just in physical fields of force, but social ones as well—how far must I arrange myself from my enemies? How close to my friends? Does a rat notice the quality of their song in the context of another’s? Does this influence how they want to place themselves on the wall? As in, ‘I sound so much better above so and so, and to the right and below of that person?’ Who’s to say rats, highly social creatures indeed, are not placing themselves to their best advantage in creating beauty in concert with their neighbors?

  It is in the bodies of rats that all this music is integrated, and defined, and this rarified materialized manifest bubbles into the world as something new and wondrous. Bodies. What wondrous things they are and what a poorer world this would be if we were but some kind of ghost or spirit. It seems to me that this is where the freedom of expression found so abundantly in the universe flowers and fruits. For it is only in such a feeling thing, integrating across myriad fields, that the interest in placing oneself in relation to other existences emanates and springs new into the universe, creating novelty. Or so I believe.

  Babs is ringing the lunch bell. My mother has promised to make toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch, which I often make when it is my turn to craft our noontime repast, but somehow my mother’s are superior in every way. A work of art. My mother, cheddar cheese, butter, bread, and a searing skillet, are without question one of the universe’s most pleasing creations.

  Vignette 20: Fragment from Travel Magazine Article: “Dreams of an Ancient Kingdom: Remembering Old Siam” by Rose Butler. Published
Jan 15, 1989

  ..After leaving Wat Pa Udom Somphon, where we spent three days meditating with one of Somdet Phra Maha Ghosanandaays’s students, we traveled to Wat Phra That Choeng Chum. This is a seventeenth-century temple built on the site of an eleventh-century Khmer ruin. Built over the footprints of four previous incarnations of the Buddha. We came to see the praying rats. According to our local guide about a year ago the rats arrived and began to gather, once a day, on the walls of the temple and offer prayers by chirping wildly for several hours before departing into the forest.

  We arrived just as the rats began to crawl into the temple. The rodents were massive beasts of a Southeast Asian variety that put our black and brown American city rats to shame. It took verve and strong resolve to stay in a room filling with such loathsome creatures, but we kept our courage and waited with them as they formed small groups on the walls. As if on cue, they begin to squeak out their outlandish mousy prayers. Gathered in packs each cluster seemed to be taking turns offering what blessings were being pronounced in their peculiar high-pitched rat language. We listened to these for almost an hour and when we finally left they showed no sign of giving up. Our guide explained that the monks believe that they are announcing a new incarnation of the Enlightened One. Who can say they are wrong? It was an eerie and otherworldly experience. And I wondered what they were really doing (please forgive my doubting the monk’s interpretation). Have they been trained by the monks to draw in the tourists and other pilgrims? It is hard to say, but I can offer without hesitation that it was decidedly worth the detour to hear these marvelous creatures shout their barbaric yawp to the world.

  After that we returned to Sakon Nakhon for a fabulous meal at Apha, then back to our hotel for a sound night sleep before flying back to Chiang Mai.

  Vignette 21: Gilda’s Write-Up for Her Mother’s Funeral. It Was Not Used there for Unknown Reasons. July 13, 1989

  The impact of Gilda’s thought, writing, and life are best understood in light of her relationship with her family and especially her mother. Her sense of spirituality was deeply conditioned by the way she was raised and how it influenced her view of the world and her place in it. It is well understood that the other western writer with whom she is often compared and contrasted, Wallace Stegner, was deeply influenced by his relationship with his father. Richard W. Italian writes, “Perhaps as much as any major writer of the West, Stegner drew heavily on his own family history to represent the spiritual values he was beginning to hold. He employed the divergent and conflicting attitudes of his parents to illustrate tentative conclusions about his own journey. Pen portraits of George and Hilda Stegner appeared in his novels, stories, essays, and autobiographical works.”1

  This could as easily be said about Trillim, and I think research on understanding Gilda’s work and her relationship to her family is an area where future study needs to focus.

  This piece though makes explicit this connection. This write up was to be read at her mother’s funeral, but for unknown reasons was not. It may have been that her largely Mormon extended family was uncomfortable with the idea of a woman giving blessings, even though the practice was well established in the early centuries of the church.2

  Just a week before she died my mother blessed me.

  Her sister had given her a box of letters, notebooks, and other odds and ends that her own mother had secreted in several old cigar boxes. One was a small diary about the size of a deck of playing cards. It had a blue cover and the pages inside were ruled with delicate lines of the same color. Its entries listed people her mother had laid hands on and given a blessing with the date of the blessings, the person administered to, and a small sentence or two on what the blessing contained. Like this:

  July 15, 1901. Agnes Blomquist. That her knee’s swelling would go down that she might continue to serve the Lord.

  August 25, 1901. Sister Calamine, Pres. Davison’s wife. That her breasts would flow with milk that her baby might be healthy and strong. **

  September 11, 1902. Mathilda Linford. That the fever might abate and she might rise up to care for her husband and tend her children. **

  September 20, 1902. Bertha Tanner. That her back may knit itself back together from her fall from her horse’s saddle.

  December 15, 1911. Dotty Franklin. That the unease of her mind abate and she find calm and joy in her current troubles.

  March 8, 1919. Alissa Blick. That the polio not take her life and she find the strength to recover from this afflicting disease and should her legs remain ever bent that she might learn to love her affliction and serve others so affected. **

  The entries were all for women and a few young children. Stars seemed to indicate that the blessing had been efficacious. All in all, there were 213 blessings from 1898–1919. My mother had forgotten, and I never knew, that women within the Church had once given blessings. She remembered her own mother giving her blessings when she was a little girl, but the practice had somehow disappeared from the Church.

  This book deeply affected my mother. She often carried the book with her into the woods and she would read it over and over sitting on a log near the lake. A few days before she died, she decided to write a book of poetry based on each entry, somewhat in the spirit of Spoon River, a book she adored. She only wrote two.

  She laid on hands without a drop of guile,

  On Katie Tidwell’s burning braid.

  The girl lay in fever wild,

  Beyond the doctor’s clever aid.

  But lo, through power deep and mild,

  The destroyer was at last unmade.

  When she showed it to me, I was in a sour mood and suffering severe cramps and just said, “I’ve seen you do better.” Although it was true, it was unkind and unnecessary. She looked at me disapprovingly and walked away. A few days later she brought this to me saying, “This is likely no better, but want your opinion.”

  There is little doubt that she

  associated with the stars—

  my grandmother’s grandmother

  one of the Lord’s humble beggars.

  Who crossed over cold Wyoming

  dust, an act of faith,

  she, like the heavens knew well

  her course and pace.

  Considering now the same starry

  orbs that she once knew

  I wonder how the texture of

  the trail affected the view—

  the smell of the campfire;

  the rain on the sage;

  small mice rustling through

  unguarded forage;

  the graceful pop of a

  slow burning fire, sending

  reluctant sparks skyward

  to the stars appending;

  the shake and whinny

  of a nervous horse,

  the quieting whisper

  of calming support.

  And when sorrow troubled

  this earthly frame?

  To the fevered sickbed

  the gifted women came,

  to ease the burning of a

  chilled, fevered child;

  by giving a blessing

  calming and mild.

  With graceful hands

  they laid hands on head;

  A mother in Zion’s

  command “rise from your bed.”

  The landscape has changed

  I, just a sixteenth her genes,

  look also to the sky—where light

  from the city now intervenes

  only the brightest stars I see—

  recalling the hand that holds them,

  in majesty and power, was not as baffling

  to root as it now seems to stem.

  I burst out crying. I hugged her and told her it was beautiful. She was pleased and I was blubbering away like a sentimental mush.

  “Mom. There are no city lights out here,” I said, taking her by the hands and kissing her.

  “Artistic license,” she said, tears mounting in her eyes. And now I find myself d
oing so again as I write these words because this was the last thing she would ever write. I now find it beautiful beyond description.

  Two days later I was feeling upset because of something I read in a travel magazine. I was anxious and visited by old ghosts that stripped sleep away and reunited me with fears I thought slain and buried. My mother noticed and asked if anything was wrong. I spoke my worries and she asked if I would like a blessing. Something about this touched me more deeply than I thought possible; I stared at her for a long time trying to understand what this meant. It was such a rewrite of the way I knew my mother had been in the past when in everything she had bowed to priesthood authority. To offer to give me a blessing? I could not imagine what she was saying. Finally I nodded.

  She was nervous. I was nervous. A chair was pulled from the kitchen table and placed in the center of the meager living space of our cabin. It sat there alone, waiting while we stood staring at it. Uncertain how to proceed. How many times as a child had a seat been placed thus and my father stood behind it? We would sit down, back straight. Anticipating. Then in silence we would feel his rugged hands stationed on our head and blessings rich and powerful spoken from sources as deep as the universe.

  My mother looked at me and indicated the chair with her eyes. I gave a slight nod and bravely mounted the seat. My mother stood behind the chair and like my father used to in times of need and placed her hands upon my head. She spoke, and I felt that same rich spirit that used to attend such blessings. The words flowed from her dulcet and luscious voice with that same cadence I knew from a childhood of priesthood blessings: