The Solace of Open Spaces

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While The Solace of Open Spaces is about self, emotions, transiency, beauty, the nature and setting of the west &c., it also captures the indomitable spirit of the people who live simple but inspiring lives there. And all this is told by Gretel Ehrlich in gorgeous prose. The writing reads often as prose poetry—most frequently when the landscape and its inhabitants are described. This is what I liked most about the book. I have never been out west. This was new territory for me. I am more at home om wooded, lushly vegetated, hilly terrain. Yet I do appreciate the wide open vistas at the sea. Places inhabited by few do attract me, and so I easily connect to Gretel Ehrlich’s musings. Here follow a few short quotes. See what you think: So much has broken away already, there is nothing to drink but air, nothing left to walk on but water, yet the fasting heart grows full.” On the same day that a Kiowa friend invites her to attend an ancient Sun Dance, she reads in the news that astronomers have discovered an infant solar system forming around another star. With an eye to the centrality-calibrating poetry of the cosmic perspective, she reflects:

Poet and filmmaker Gretel Ehrlich went to Wyoming in 1975 to make the first in a series of documentaries when her partner died. Ehrlich stayed on and found she couldn’t leave. The Solace of Open Spaces is a chronicle of her first years on “the planet of Wyoming,” a personal journey into a place, a feeling, and a way of life. Wyoming’s sweeping landscape may be the “doing of a mad architect, ” but for the state’s 470,000 residents, vastness is all In the Empire of Ice: Encounters in a Changing Landscape, National Geographic Society, 2010, ISBN 978-1-4262-0574-3

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A sense of panic ensued, but panic is like fresh air. The world falls out from under us and we fly, we float, we skim mountains, and every draught we breathe is new. Exposed and raw, we are free to be lost , to ask questions. Otherwise we seize up and are paralyzed by self-righteousness, obsessed with our own perfection. If there is no death and regeneration, our virtues become empty shells” (199)-- Ehrlich's _A Match to the Heart_.” The Solace of Open Spaces, by Gretel Ehrlich, is a beautiful little book that I happened upon in the sale bin at a used book store. In the late 1970s, Ehrlich traveled to Wyoming on assignment for her work, and stayed because it draw her in in her grief upon losing her loved one to cancer. She lived there for many years, living and working on ranches, and this book is a collection of essays describing her time there and the feeling of living there. Her writing is lyrical and almost what I would call "prose poetry" at times. She conveys effectively the wide open feeling of Wyoming, and I was easily able to imagine the scenes and sensations she described. It is a lovely book and I highly recommend it. Here is a quote, selected randomly: I recently discovered Gretel Ehrlich, not that she isn’t well known by others. The discovery merely reflects my ignorance...and yet, I get great joy from finding new food—someone whose words I immediately want to absorb. I found the book in a used book store. The title alone intrigued me—one who thinks that soul nurturing places, solitude and silence are the final luxuries. And her essays are about Wyoming, my neighbor state and our least populated one—to me, a feature, not a bug. Also, two of my favorite authors, Annie Dillard and Edward Abbey, who I’ve re-read multiple times, gave her high praise. I expect to read more of Ehrlich. She explains all this, and tells us about men, something other than the romanticized Marlboro man version: “If he’s ‘strong and silent’ it’s because there’s probably no one to talk to.” There is an effect of “geographical vastness,” on “emotional evolution” but also a “true vulnerability in evidence...”

For all of those reasons, I'm both proud of myself for powering through this one and disappointed I didn't trust my gut enough to put it aside early on. It had occurred to me that comfort was only a disguise for discomfort; reference points, a disguise for what will always change.” In her first essay, she writes of John, a sheep man who put her to work—extended hours of it, which she says woke her up: Some days I think this one place isn’t enough. That’s when nothing is enough, when I want to live multiple lives and be allowed to love without limits. Those days, like today, I walk with a purpose but no destinations. Only then do I see, at least momentarily, that everything is here. — Gretel Ehrlich, Islands, the Universe, Home (Penguin, 1992)” You can also become a spontaneous supporter with a one-time donation in any amount: GIVE NOW BITCOIN DONATION

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Walking to the ranch house from the shed, we saw the Northern Lights. They looked like talcum powder fallen from a woman’s face. Rouge and blue eyeshadow streaked the spires of white light which exploded, then pulsated, shaking the colors down — like lives — until they faded from sight.