Library patron

All 17 chapters in “Feels Like Far: A Rancher’s Life on the Great Plains,” by Linda Hasselstrom, c 1999, have animal names in the titles. Here are some examples: Sonata for Horses, Badger’s Business, and The Young Cow: Going Back to Grass. Each chapter begins with a brief introduction (in italics), and a quote, usually from a well-known writer.

I will tell you about “Looking for the Light: The Elk in the Aspen.” In the introduction, we read about a dream she had just before her 49th birthday. She opens a box of bones, and they are from her second husband George, who passed from cancer. Then she is flying through the air, and she is free of the daily problems she has.

The short reading is from “Advice to a Young Wife from an Old Mistress,” by author Michael Drury. The key phrase is “we belong to ourselves” (p. 154). Linda listens to this because she is feeling torn by responsibilities to her father and the family ranch, and the male friend she is with now — Jerry.

After she wakes up, she goes downstairs where he is making coffee. Soon they will drive in their camping trailer from the Hasselstrom ranch in western South Dakota, to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Jerry will fish and she will teach writing workshops. Then they will walk together using walking sticks that he has made for safety. We read about this area two centuries ago, when the Gros Ventre Indians lived close to nature. Now it’s many people who are wealthy and want to build a house there.

Twenty years ago she was walking in this area by herself, and she lost her way back to her car. She was taking the hike to be where a horse thief, Lame Johnny, had lived in the late 1800s.

As she is by herself, she is going over her relationships with her father and with her friend and partner Daniel, her friend at that time. “My habit of abiding a man’s domination had begun to disintegrate” (p. 157).

She knows there could be bears, but as she is resting, she sees a bull elk not too far away, looking at her. She waits quietly, and then the elk runs in the other direction.

Back to the present, she knows that elk are more frequently coming closer to where people are. She and Jerry get back in the pickup, and they drive again to where he fishes. Linda and her dog Frodo take a walk. She is thinking about George, who passed five years ago … he “half-believed in time travel” (p. 162).

She remembers a three-minute earthquake that was here in 1925.

Then Frodo goes into water, and she is worried that he will not be held by the leash. She and her dog are both in danger. She is in emotional danger, too, not being certain about her relationship with her father and with Jerry. She comes back to the pickup with Frodo, and she puts a blanket over Frodo, and cries. Soon Jerry comes back to the truck, sees what is going on, and “wraps his arms around me and my dog, holding us safe” (p. 165).

In the epilogue, she writes about one of her visits to the Hermosa Cemetery in South Dakota where George is buried, also her mother and father. And someday she will be buried here.

The last scene in the book takes place at this cemetery, where she is taking care of the plants near George’s grave. She sees another woman at a grave nearby. This woman feels close to the grave of her daughter who passed. The two women are used to being with the loved ones who are buried here, but this time they begin sharing with each other, and the book ends with Linda quoting a line from Whitman: “the beautiful uncut hair of graves” and Gail quoting a line from Carl Sandburg: “I am the grass. Let me work.”

Here I went to our library shelves and pulled off a collection of Whitman poems and a collection of Sandburg poems. This did make me feel even closer to Linda Hasselstrom, a person who teaches her readers a good way to live. She is open to learning from each new day. I wish we could show each other our cupboard shelves that are stacked with journals.

You can also check out these Hasselstrom titles at your Marshall Lyon County Library: “Caught by One Wing,” 811.54 HAS (MN Collection); “Dakota Bones: Collected Poems of Linda Hasselstrom,” 811.54 HAS (MN Collection); “Land Circle: Writings Collected from the Land,” 818.54 HAS; “Roadside History of South Dakota,” 917.8304 HAS (Travel); “Windbreak: A Woman Rancher on the Northern Plains,” 818.5403 HAS; “Feels Like Far: A Rancher’s Life on the Great Plains,” HASSELSTROM, L. 1991 (biography). Your library is open Monday-Friday 10 a.m.-6 p.m. and Saturday 10 a.m.-2 p.m., marshalllyonlibrary.org.