In the school year 1972-73, six
years after leaving the convent, I taught high school juniors in Claremont, New
Hampshire. Their syllabus included Look
to the Mountain, a historical novel written by LeGrand Cannon, Jr. It is an
engrossing story about Whit—a taciturn pioneer with great good sense, strength
of mind and body, and a tenacity bred by a hardscrabble upbringing.
Entering the wilderness with him is
Melissa. Together, they canoe far up river to claim land near Sandwich. The
novel, which takes place between 1769 and 1777, captures the background in which these two—Whit and Melissa—settle and raise a family as a revolution begins to brew in far-off Boston.
I enjoyed the book, which was new
to me, as much as the students did. We were thunderstruck by the paucity of
“things” on the frontier. We empathized with Melissa as she longed for the
companionship of another woman; we were impressed by Whit’s know-how. A few
students had seen that area of New Hampshire so they could describe the
differences two hundred years had made on the landscape.
That summer, while visiting Dad
here in Missouri, I told him about the book. “Your mom always enjoyed a good
historical,” he said when I’d finished my long-winded summary.
He got up, left the room, and came
back carrying two of Mom’s books: The
Spider King, a historical novel about Louis XI and . . . you guessed it! .
. . Look to the Mountain. I’d had no
idea my mom had read it.
“Here, you take them,” Dad said.
“You enjoy a good read just like your mother did.”
For thirty-eight years the two
novels sat on a bookshelf in Stillwater, Minnesota. When I moved back to
Missouri, I shelved them again. I’d read neither since the day Dad gave them to
me. To be truthful, I didn’t even think about the fact that Mom had handled and
read both of them.
Then this past Monday I wanted to
read something about the Revolutionary War. All these years—forty-one—since I
left Claremont, I’d remembered two scenes from Look to the Mountain: the mowing contest and Whit going off to war,
carrying his prized rifle.
So I removed Mom’s copy from the bookshelf
and began, once again, to read the words that so compellingly brought to life the
inhabitants of Kettleford and Sandwich, New Hampshire. After all these years,
they sprang forth from the pages to greet me as an old friend.
In the quiet after midnight, as I
entered Whit and Melissa’s world, I idly looked at the copyright page to see
when the book had been published. 1942. Then it was that realization unfolded
within me: My mom must have bought the book brand new in Parsons, Kansas, where she lived in a
refurbished chicken coop with my little brother while Dad worked at the nearby munitions factory. I
was in Kansas City, attending kindergarten.
Last night I saw my mother—my
brother and Dad asleep while she read late in the night, missing me, I believe,
and hoping that my asthma wasn’t acting up.
She had turned the pages of that book
just as I was turning them. Both of us—night owls—found solace and retreat in a
historical novel. Both of us felt the heft both of the story and the hardbound book
with the mountain on the cover. That mountain encouraged Whit to venture into the
wilderness.
Seventy-two years ago my mother
completed that book and sat within its story. She, too, had left her home and entrusted
her life to another.
Early this morning, seventy-two
years later, I laid the book aside with a deep sigh of satisfaction. Partly
from the story and partly because I knew that Mom had reached out across a vast
space of time with its arc of love and had spoken to me of the ties that bind
us together as One. She spoke; I listened.
There is much to be grateful for as
we age. This is one of those things. Peace.
All photographs from Wikipedia except for book cover, which is from Amazon.
All photographs from Wikipedia except for book cover, which is from Amazon.
