Letters on an Elk Hunt by Elinore Pruitt Stewart

 

This is the 1915 follow-up to her first compendium of letters home Letters of a Woman Homesteader [1914.] [Reviewed in-depth here.]

This non-fiction volume is, again, what the title states—Mrs. Stewart writing of an extended hunting trip in the mountains of Wyoming.

The first volume was full of charm, wisdom, grit and good cheer—this volume shows Mrs. Stewart had lost none of her comely character.

Let’s dip into a few passages that struck this reader.

At last we are off. I am powerfully glad. I shall have to enjoy this trip for us both. You see how greedy I am for new experiences! I have never been on a prolonged hunt before, so I am looking forward to a heap of fun.

·        “Greedy for new experiences.”

·        How often do we hear that sentiment outside an expression for a new show to binge-watch.

·        Most of us seem to eat the same foods, drive the same routes, thumb the same phone traceries with no seeming desire to be real-world experience-greedy.

·        We might be better for giving up the routine and we might have a “heap of fun” while we’re at it.

[In a rare show of discord we have the following exchange. Allow me to set the context.

·        They have spent time with a family having a hard go of it in a desert homestead.

·        They encounter two versions of events—the hard luck tale from the two adults.

·        And separately the two children, “suffering” under the same hardships have proudly been showing them what they have made and adapted in the harsh land.

After supper the men took their guns and went out to shoot sage-hens. Johnny went with Mr. Haynes and Mr. Struble. Miss Hull walked back with Ella, and we sent Mrs. Sanders a few cans of fruit. Mrs. O’ Shaughnessy and I washed the dishes. We were talking of the Sanders family. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy was disgusted with me because I wept.

“You think it is a soft heart you have, but it is only your head that is soft. Of course they are having a hard time. What of it? The very root of independence is hard times. That’s the way America was founded; that is why it stands so firmly. Hard times is what makes sound characters. And them kids are getting a new hold on character that was very near run to seed in the parents. Johnny will be tax-assessor yet, I’ll bet you, and you just watch that Eller. It won’t surprise me a bit to see her county superintendent of schools. The parents most likely never would make anything; but having just only a pa and a ma and getting the very hard licks them kids are getting now, is what is going to make them something more than a pa and a ma.”

Mrs. O’Shaughnessy is very wise, but sometimes she seems absolutely heartless.

·        Contrasting opinions.

·        Who is, right?

·        It seems disposition/mental attitude may tell the tale.

[The hunting party encounters a homesteader woman in the midst of a hard labored birth.]

They were powerfully glad to see us, and the young father left at once to get Grandma Mortimer, a neighborhood godsend such as most Western communities have one of. We busied ourselves relieving the young mother as much as we could. She wouldn’t leave the baby and lie down. The child is teething and had convulsions. We put it into a hot bath and held the convulsions in check until Mrs. Mortimer came. She bustled in and took hold in a way to insure confidence. She had not been there long before she had both parents in bed, “saving themselves for to-morrow,” and was gently rubbing the hot little body of the baby. She kept giving it warm tea she had made of herbs, until soon the threatening jerks were over, the peevish whining ceased, and the child slept peacefully on Grandma’s lap. I watched her, fascinated. There was never a bit of faltering, no indecision; everything she did seemed exactly what she ought to do. “How did you learn it all?” I asked her. “How can you know just what to do, and then have the courage to do it? I should be afraid of doing the wrong thing.” “Why,” she said, “that is easy. Just do the very best you can and trust God for the rest. After all, it is God who saves the baby, not us and not our efforts; but we can help. He lets us do that. Lots of times the good we do goes beyond any medicine. Never be afraid to help your best. I have been doing that for forty years and I am going to keep it up till I die.”

·        I call attention to the gorgeous phrase: Never be afraid to help your best.

·        How many of us do not step in, do not step up for fear of “Not knowing the exact right thing to do?

·        At those times refer to Grandma Mortimer and Never be afraid to help your best.

[Upon a scene witnessed while staying with another family.]

“As big Dave rode through the gate, our boy caught him by the leg and said, ‘I just love you, daddy.’ Big Dave bent down and kissed him, and said, ‘You’re a man, son.’ How proud that made the little fellow! Parents should praise their children more; the little things work hard for a few words of praise, and many of them never get their pay.

·        We are often scarce with our praise for young and old-- that makes us stingy.

·        Why die Misers of Love, Compassion and Good Cheer?

·        What are we saving it up for?

·        It costs us nothing and is often worth more than gold to the recipients.

·        Spread your gold coin around, Hombres!

[The morning after Grandma Mortimer having delivered the child. In the wee hours she told the tale of how she had lost her own child years ago and rather than wallowing in grief, thereafter, devoted her energy to helping wherever she could.]

Just then a sleepy little bird twittered outside, and the baby stirred a little. The first faint light of dawn was just creeping up the valley. I rose and said I must get back to camp. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy and I had both wept with Mrs. Mortimer over little Dave. We have all given up our first-born little man-child; so we felt near each other. We told Mrs. Mortimer that we had passed under the rod also. I kissed her toilworn old hands, and Mrs. O’Shaughnessy dropped a kiss on her old gray head as we passed out into the rose-and-gold morning. We felt that we were leaving a sanctified presence, and we are both of us better and humbler women because we met a woman who has buried her sorrow beneath faith and endeavor.

[The next day.]

There were a great many little lakes along the valley, and thousands of duck. Mr. Stewart was driving, but as he wanted to shoot ducks, I took the lines and drove along. There is so much that is beautiful, and I was trying so hard to see it all, that I took the wrong road; but none of us noticed it at first, and then we didn’t think it worth while to turn back.

·        One: So much to see. This is slow wagon pace. There are no earbuds. This is a woman alive to surroundings.

·        I see many who can’t survive a drive to the convenience store without assumed “needed” distraction devices.

·        Two: She’s not alone in this absorption in “What is.” I took the wrong road; but none of us noticed it at first, and then we didn’t think it worth while to turn back.

·        No one noticed the “wrong turn.”

·        Then once noticed, no one cared. Where they were was good enough.

·        Hell, maybe it was better.

·        A Zen Sage could do no better to describe this Serenity of Now.

[On facing a dilemma.]

I hardly knew what to do, but acting from force of habit, I reckon, I began cleaning. A powerfully good way to reason out things sometimes is to work; and just then I had to work.

·        This wisdom is almost General Patton-esque in its gorgeous utility.

·        A powerfully good way to reason out things sometimes is to work.

·        How many “problems” could we solve by skipping the whining, the worrying the bitchin’, the moanin’ and set ourselves to some task, any task and more often than not we “burn off that worry” and often surprise ourselves with a possible solution popping into our minds while we aren’t even dwelling on the “problem.”

·        A powerfully good way to reason out things sometimes is to work.

[Upon visiting a Game warden’s secluded cabin.]

The cabin walls are covered with pen-and-ink drawings, the work of the warden’s gifted children,— Vina, the pretty eighteen-year-old daughter, and Laurence, the sixteen-year-old son. They never had a lesson in drawing in their lives, but their pictures portray Western life exactly.

·        Precision drawing.

·        No lessons.

·        No YouTube tutorial.

·        Just…pick up the pen, dab it in ink and go!

·        We often hold back because we want someone else to tell us what to do.

·        How much of anything that surrounds us, anything at all would be here if we had to wait for an “instructor” a “leader” a “boss” to explain the ways of the world to us.

·        A powerfully good way to reason out things sometimes is to work.

[Upon returning home and her “Memory Bed.” A bed of flowers that provide living resonance to…well, read it in her own words, t’is beautiful.]

Can you guess how happy I am? Be it ever so humble there is no place like home. It is so good to sit in my creaky old rocker, to hold Junior, to feel his dear weight; to look at my brave little mother. I do not like the “in-law.” She is mother to me. Under the east window of our dining-room we have a flower-bed. We call it our memory-bed because Clyde’s first wife had it made and kept pansies growing there. We poured the water of my little lost boy’s last bath onto the memory-bed. I keep pansies growing in one side of the bed in memory of her who loved them. In the other end I plant sweet alyssum in memory of my baby. A few pansies and a tuft of sweet alyssum smiled a welcome, though all the rest of my flowers were dead. We have a hop-vine at the window and it has protected the flowers in the memory-bed. How happy I have been, looking over the place!

·        We can create places of heartfelt immortality and deeply moored memory or…

·        We can fill the house up with Trademarked items and souvenirs, artifacts of the work of others.

[The concluding lines of the last letter.]

I have had a fine trip; I have experienced about all the human emotions. I had not expected to encounter so many people or to get the little inside glimpses that I’ve had, but wherever there are human beings there are the little histories. I have come home realizing anew how happy I am, how much I have been spared, and how many of life’s blessings are mine.

·        Three sentences. So much wisdom.

·        Sentence One: I have had a fine trip; I have experienced about all the human emotions.

·        She does not insist on simply the fine of emotions of a “good vacation.” She faced grieving folk, happy folk, struggling folk, generous folk.

·        She faced humanity in all its spectrum.

·        This is a mature philosophy that does not insist that Life always be storybook—but that it be what it is and You bring what You can to it.

·        Sentence Two: I had not expected to encounter so many people or to get the little inside glimpses that I’ve had, but wherever there are human beings there are the little histories.

·        I emphasize: wherever there are human beings there are the little histories.

·        I have found this true in my own experience.

·        I am at my worst when I am oblivious to those around me.

·        I am at my worst when I give those around me the small change of small talk.

·        I’m at my best when I see each human as an alternate center of an entire Universe who has something to say, things they have seen, have experienced that I never have as there is only so much I can see from my own Center.

·        Each true glimpsed interaction expands the view from my Center.

·        Sentence Three: I have come home realizing anew how happy I am, how much I have been spared, and how many of life’s blessings are mine.

·        Needs no expansion from me. Gorgeous on its face.

I repeat what I said regarding her first volume…

·        Her lessons, her zest for life, her grit suits me just fine.

·        She goes into my Pantheon of Heroes of Real Life Warriors.

I love These Hosses of Yore!

I wanna be Elinore when I grow up.