Bird Cloud: A Memoir of Place

by Annie Proulx

  But first I needed a surveyor to run the lines. I was surprised to discover that the southeast property corner was actually in the river. If you buy coast or river property, as many people have discovered, you win some and you lose some. The county clerk recommended a fencer, call him Penn, a homesick refugee from Pennsylvania farm country whose father had come to Wyoming twenty years earlier, had seen a need for a fence business (ranchers and cowboys dislike this job) and stayed on. The Penns partially fenced the 520 acres at the top of the property, including the difficult steep run down the west end of the cliff. The fence was barbed wire with a bottom smooth wire and a sixteen-inch gap to allow pronghorn to get through. Pronghorn, unlike deer, prefer to crawl under a fence rather than leap over it. It was difficult for Mr. Penn to stay on the job. Always shorthanded, always struggling with broken equipment, always juggling other, more lucrative jobs, Mr. Penn had things on his mind. He told me one time that he had been in places on ranches where the owners had never set foot, and that once, pulling out a rotten old post, he had found a nineteenth-century Fort Collins whorehouse token, good for one night. Some long-gone cowboy had been disappointed when he got to town.

  Near the house I preferred buck-and-pole fence to barbed wire and Mr. Penn put in a good-looking run along the river frontage. It was a little too close to the river and the next year, when the river rose higher than usual, it folded about six pole lengths of fence back upon itself. We didn’t lose it, because my son Gillis made a web of ropes tying the folded fence sections to a stout cottonwood tree growing ten feet back from the river edge.

  It got harder and harder to get Mr. Penn to continue fencing. After a year or so I tracked down another fencer, Charley, a big rangy guy from Nebraska who was strong and fast. He finished the barbed-wire fence on the south property line, replaced four hundred feet of bad old fence west of the house with new buck-and-pole, completely fenced the island with buck fence, fenced the far side of the river with more buck fence, repaired breaks, put panel curtains—sections of metal strips or large mesh that can be raised or lowered with turnbuckles according to the stream flow—across Jack Creek to prevent neighbor bulls from trespassing. In one long run along the east line at the top of the cliff acreage, he removed the flimsy electric-wire-topped fence and put in five strands of barbed wire after we saw the neighbor cows jumping high, wide and handsome over the electric. In all we put in six miles of fence because in addition to the perimeter of the property the riverbanks had to be protected. Neighbor ranchers’ cows commonly left their own gnawed acres and used the shallow North Platte as the highway to better grass.

  Another task that could be done early was putting in a new well. The original well was hundreds of yards distant from the house site and the water in it was powerfully alkaline, a local problem. Alkaline water tastes dreadful and was the scourge of covered wagon parties crossing Wyoming for neither men nor beasts could drink it for fear of blistering their tonsils and suffering agonizing stomach cramps. The Stolns were the expert local well-drilling team, a sibling group with a small farm in the middle of town—pond, cattails and ducks. In rural Wyoming family partners run many of the small businesses. At the Stolns’ home place there was an acre or two of spare parts for every kind of machinery invented since the industrial revolution. Ms. Stolns kept chickens and sold eggs. The brothers drilled quickly and struck water almost at once. Of course, near the river the water table is not far away. The water was alkaline and just barely drinkable. We would have to find a water purification outfit.

  I wanted to somehow ameliorate the wind and start landscaping the rough prairie. Tree and shrub windbreaks seemed the practical way and I engaged the landscape team, Deryl James and Dave Quitter of Trees Unlimited. They had rescued some of the botched landscaping at the Centennial house, and, as they lived in Saratoga, it was logical to get their help. I enjoyed several good talks with Deryl about landscaping, rocks and native plants. In the spring my son Gillis and I, following some arcane directions from someone who didn’t really know, had tried to find a sage grouse dance ground—called a “lek”—northeast of Laramie. We did not find the lek but discovered some beautiful natural outcrops of rock and juniper, and raced from one to the next, proclaiming each rock-and-tree arrangement more handsome than the last. I took photographs to show Deryl who, when he saw them, said coolly that such groupings just happened to be his specialty. He and Dave and Deryl’s younger brother Gerald began to put in striking assemblages of native trees and shrubs and rocks.

  Only gradually did I realize that Deryl was something of a landscape genius who could have achieved fame and fortune in the wider world had he chosen. More revelations followed. His partner, Dave, was an experienced geologist who had attended the Colorado School of Mines and worked all over the world, specializing in precious gems and minerals. He also had a gift for keeping up with and understanding technology. Counting Gerald, the duo was actually a triumvirate, and that metamorphosed into a quartet when I learned that another brother, Dennis, lived in Alaska. As all but one of the men were brothers with the last name of James, it was easy to call them the James Gang, although Trees Unlimited was their professional name and they referred to themselves as “Trees.” But the James Gang stuck as a moniker. Deryl said, in his serious voice, “Oh yes, and then there’s our other brother, Jesse. He’s somewhat estranged from the family.” I am still waiting to meet Jesse. And the James Gang turned out to be much, much more than brilliant landscapers.

  One day there came an e-mail from E. It said that he was leaving Harry’s office to work on his own house. Harry made light of it but I was poleaxed. It seemed a very bad thing. In that moment I felt like one of P. G. Wodehouse’s characters who, when things take a turn for the worse, sense that the iron has entered his soul. I believed then that I should halt the entire proceeding and sell the property. I made out a painful little pro and con list.

  PRO

  • The architectural design is almost finished.

  • Harry T has more than a year of work already in on the project.

  • I already have a lot of money in the place.

  • Three miles of fence to keep cows away is up and paid for.

  • The new well is in.

  • Electric line is in and paid for.

  • Doug, the furniture designer, has already started on the kitchen cabinets and shouldn’t be stopped.

  • The property will be more valuable with a house on it.

  CON

  • I’m afraid I don’t have enough money for the whole enchilada.

  • Cow trespass is an ongoing and difficult problem.

  • We need three more miles of fence.

  • The place is hard to get to and far from services and stores.

  • There is a construction labor shortage thanks to the gas fields.

  • Contractor can’t start until late in the year.

  The arguments were not evenly matched, and I thought it all over when I went up to our house in Gunners Cove, Newfoundland. Although I had cold feet, when my accountant remarked that the property would be worth more with a house on it, I decided to keep on chasing the dream.

  It was a summer of back and forth between Centennial and Saratoga with easement papers, permits, right-of-way documents, then, in August, the long trip to Newfoundland and a decision to sell the old house there that I had spent more than a decade renovating. The travel to the Great Northern Peninsula was arduous and tiresome, the visit too short, as always. I chopped wood, peeled bark off the logs on the boat slipway, freed the ax from a clenched junk of wood and hiked the Raven Trail. The house was in the Atlantic boreal region where the salinity of the open sea was around 35 percent, but inshore a little less from freshwater streams and rivers. In the tidal pools east of our wharf there was black whip weed, unknown this far north before 1928 (another proof of climate change?), laver, rockweed with its paired air bladders, northern rock barnacles, acorn barnacles, minuscule snails best appreciated under a magnifying glass, tiny
reddish worms. In slightly deeper water were millions of blue mussels and green sea urchins, one or two purple starfish, a few moon and purple jellyfish. The year before there had been many jellyfish, but this year only a few.

  One of the hard tasks was going through the fisherman’s odds and ends from an earlier time that we had collected from the decrepit fish house before we tore it down, storing them in a box in the new boathouse. There was a fisherman’s wooden lunch box with a string and nail to close it, a galvanized can for kerosene, a wooden twine reel for winding net line, a wooden piece with six holes bored in it to keep sled dog harness from tangling, several reels for cod or squid jigging, mallets for pounding in boat caulking, an animal hide stretcher, a fish knife, a barrel-hoop forcing tool, assorted hooks, a mold for lead fish-shaped sinkers, various whittled wedges and stoppers. I still sometimes think I can go back there and see these things.

  I would miss the birds: a pair of furious peregrine falcons, a northern goshawk with a nest at the top of a deformed spruce leaning over the water, the three crow pals that worked the rockweed at low tide eviscerating sea urchins, then picked ripe berries on the hillside for dessert. One had a white spot on his neck. Piping plovers, difficult to identify gulls (which were herrings? glaucous? great black-backed?) and arctic terns were always there.

  A final regret came when the nearby restaurant removed turbot cheeks from their menu, a serious blow, as I thought this delicacy a prime reason to come to the peninsula. Never before or since have I discovered this dish in any restaurant or fish market. God knows where all the turbot cheeks of yesteryear have gone—probably home to the fisherman’s missus.

  Back in Wyoming, Harry Teague drove up to Bird Cloud with Jim Petrie, his new project manager. We all met in Mr. Construct’s office, Harry looking slightly rumpled, grumbled about another speeding ticket on the Baggs Road—his second. He remarked that the state ought to put up a roadside sign saying that stretch of highway was supported by Harry Teague Architects.

  Harry and Jim had brought all sorts of materials, including curious interior facings such as leather brick sheets (!) and some shiny copper panels also stamped in a brick pattern that I thought were ghastly. Harry said the copper would be a good covering for the entry room ceiling once a patina had developed. Someone said the best way to achieve that patina was to lay the sheets all out on the ground and pee on them. There were no volunteers. I disliked the shiny copper but said I would trust Harry on this one. Why do we hire architects? Why not sit down with a builder, as so many do, and work out what is wanted versus what can be done within a specific budget? Because, sitting down with the builder and listing what one wants, imposing one’s choice of materials on the design, supports the human tendency to cling to what one knows rather than experiment. Part of what one pays an architect for is his or her experience and design sensibility and knowledge of unusual materials and new technologies. So I agreed to the copper brick sheathing, trusting the architect, and in the end it looked beautiful, a rich, dark patina with a subtle texture.

  It was eight months since we had bought the property and still we did not have an estimate of cost from Mr. Construct. I was conscious of arrows of weeks whipping past. And then, in late summer of 2004, Mr. Construct, after delivering a shocking estimate more than twice my budget and twice the local per-square-foot costs, said he could not undertake construction work for many months. Even then the rush of time was more important to me than the money. I reluctantly decided he could not build the house. What to do? I began now to meet with different so-called upscale builders in Laramie, but found their very expensive houses badly built and run-of-the-mill suburban schlock. Costs would escalate because the travel time from Laramie to the Bird Cloud site was more than two hours each way in summer. The workers would have to stay in local motels—and I would have to pay for all of it one way or another.

  One of my three sons resisted the lure of the rock and the river and said he didn’t really like the place. Another son advised me to wait at least a year before building. The third son and my daughter thought I should go ahead. Someone said just build a little cabin on the property and do the big house later. But a cabin couldn’t hold all my books, never mind a bed, table and chair. Because I really wanted to live in this house, I decided to press on. I had no idea of the problems and hassle that would come with the house, all slowly building into stress, high blood pressure and frequent thoughts of fleeing to a tent in the dying forest. Years later I still wonder if I should have cut my losses and looked elsewhere for a house site.

  But I didn’t do it. The place was so beautiful, the great slab of cliff so vivid with birdlife, the plants and weeds so intriguing because unfamiliar, the rare Penstemon gibbensii still to be located, the night sky so full of constellations and meteors that even satellites, long-distance jets and the orange horizon glow from Saratoga’s 1970s mercury vapor lights could be ignored. The site of the future house at the north end of a valley bordered by the Sierra Madre and the Medicine Bow made me think of the explorer H. W. Tilman’s description of Kashgar, situated in “a valley in which men might live a hard life and yet exult in living.”1 The river at sunset became mottled green and peach in patterns that recalled the marbled end pages of old books. Quickly the evening dusk filled with darting swallows, their dark bodies gradually absorbed by the intensifying gloom. The great horned owl called from the island and everything fell silent except the murmuring river and a more distant owl. In this place there was so much to know. I told myself the house had to be built. I began to think of it then as a kind of wooden poem.

  I have difficulties with poetry, especially at the new-book bookstore, standing in front of the poetry shelves. I don’t know what is wrong but I can never find what I know must be there. It is very different in front of the poetry shelves of the secondhand bookshop where every other worn volume promises pleasure.

  I stumble into and around poetry, frequently knocked sidewise. Sometimes I don’t know what poetry is, and it seems as plentiful as sagebrush on the steppes, and other times it seems that no poem has yet been written, just images and a few joined words flaring in some people’s minds. What of David Nash’s wildwood sculptures, are they not poems? And I suppose that a kind of animal poetry illuminates the Clark’s nutcracker jamming yet another pine seed into its mouth. Bird Cloud was to be a kind of poem if a house can be that. After Bird Cloud was finished I knew it was a poem of landscape, architecture and fine craftsmanship when one of those yellow thunderstorms swept in near sunset with gold light spilling onto the ground and a rainbow. From the big windows I watched as the cliff went saffron as a candle flame, thunder marched around and hot lightning slammed the cliff. Pods of wind burst against the house with a side dish of chattering rain. In the east the towering bulk of the storm was a sulky purple-blue the shade of new denim, but in the west the sky was opening, showing a tender blue like the lining of an antique Chinese robe.

  After a long day of reading bad outlaw “history,” tiresome stuff on the greasy hijinks of western gunmen that strike so many westerners as the essence of the past, I took down Virginia Adair’s Ants on the Melon (thinking briefly of the Gourds who, with a nod to V.A., made a song with the same name) and Alden Nowlan’s What Happened When He Went to the Store for Bread.

  I started with “Ants on the Melon,” the poem, but instead, in my mind I kept hearing the voice of the Gourds’ Kevin Russell, which always sounds to me like a graft of a carny hustler onto a Missouri River flatboat man, roaring about putting down his brown cow. It got between the lines and I swapped Ms. Adair for Alden Nowlan. Plainly I had been headed there all the time. I have loved Alden Nowlan from the dusty moment years ago in the slope-ceilinged upstairs room of a bookshop near the Bay of Fundy where I first opened this very book and read “Stoney Ridge Dance Hall,” a poem I liked so much I almost fell over. A poem with homemade brass knuckles fashioned from bottle caps! I talked about Nowlan with the proprietor who loved “The Bull Moose.” Now my favorite is not the
brass-knuckled cousins, but the poem of his own beginning.

  I’m in trouble, she said

  to him. That was the first

  time in history that anyone

  had ever spoken of me.

  It was 1932 when she

  was just fourteen years old

  and men like him

  worked all day for

  one stinking dollar.2

  From the day of that reading I have loved this tender, fat, rural-poor poet who died too soon, unfinished. He had the Thing Which Cannot Be Explained.

  The year 2004 was a year of travel and worry. It seemed that every few weeks I was making the long drive to Denver International, flying east in late afternoon over the tight irrigation circles below, over the veined watercourses in the hills, the dull purple and brown land flattening and dark. The first farmhouse light shone—someone in a house already built—and soon after the main street of a town fired up pinpoint streetlamps and gradually there emerged from the darkness rosettes and bouquets of light that were towns and in between solitary flecks indicating yard lights at some agricultural outpost. Finally the cities of the east floated up from the rim of the earth as electrified jellyfish.