I’ve been preoccupied the last few weeks. By the time my head hits the flannel sheets, I am out like a light. It’s near Thanksgiving, the time of year when I should be giving thanks. Yet it seems like there is so much wrong with the world. Bad things happening to good people. Why?
I’m thinking about the flannel blankets we had growing up, how Mom used to swaddle my two younger brothers in rectangles of blue flannel. It wasn’t plain blue though, there were little pictures of pacifiers or teddy bears or rainbows on those blankets. Think of the word swaddle, swaddling babes.
I recently ran into a letter I had written my family back in 1968. Or was it 1969? I was with 3 of my siblings in South Carolina visiting my step-dad and his wife. I must have been 13 or 14, a brooding teenager. Yet the letter was so tender.
I described a typical day in the sweltering Southern summer, then talked about how much I missed my two younger brothers, only babies at the time. I was entering junior high when they were born. I felt very nurturing toward them and the love I felt was obvious in the letter. I really missed my new family life in Pennsylvania.
Flannel — it reminds me of how quickly things can change. From summer cotton, to winter flannels. The jeans I used to love with the flannel lining. Warm, soft to the touch, against dry winter skin.
Last night, we were watching a documentary on Ernest Thompson Seton, a New Mexico naturalist who waged war on wolves in New Mexico in the late 1800’s. The head of the wolf pack and King of the Currumpaw, Lobo, was too smart for him and evaded his poison and steel traps. Finally, in desperation, Seton shot and killed Blanca, Lobo’s life mate, in order to catch Lobo. Liz and I cried.
Later, Seton would have a change of heart and let Lobo go. But it was too late. Lobo died of a broken heart. It broke Seton’s heart, too, and from that moment on, he never hunted another wolf. He went on to write Lobo’s story in the book, Wild Animals I Have Known, spearheaded the environmental movement, and helped found the Boy Scouts.
At the rolling credits, eyes red, peering over the top of the down comforter, Liz asked if I was a romantic. I smiled and nodded. It was a rhetorical question. I knew she knew the truth.
“What about you?” I asked. “Are you a romantic?” “Hmmm, sometimes,” she said, taking another bite of her sub. I smiled. “Yeah, you’re half and half.” She laughed. By the time my head hit the flannel sheets, I was already dreaming.
-related to Topic post: WRITING TOPIC – FLANNEL SHEETS
I would have cried with you over Blanca.
I’m a Romantic too. 😉
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QM, the Ernest Thompson Seton documentary just sounds heart-wrenching. Why, as a naturalist, did he wage war on the wolves? I mean, I know a lot of folks don’t like wolves, ranchers in particular, but it seems kind of odd that a naturalist would rage against a particular animal in the food chain and ecosystem.
Also, did you rent the documentary on DVD or was it on public television?
Last evening there was a PBS documentary on about the plight of seals that get poisoned by a type of algae. It was just so excrutiating to see the seals start showing the symptoms of the poisoning—head bobbing, starts to become listless and reactions, for example toward humans, don’t function. Jim said to me, “Sorry, I can’t watch this.” It was just too painful. Much as I wanted to see the outcome, hopefully see that they had found a way to perhaps reverse the effects and save the seals, it’s also at times too much to contemplate all of the suffering in this world. It really makes me sad.
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heather, always wonderful to find like-minded sappy romantics like me. 8)
ybonesy, I think it was a PBS documentary but let me ask Liz. We did watch it on TV. Maybe I can come back later and add the title and a link. About Seton, it went into the psychology of the complex and contradictory person he was. At that time in history, the late 1800’s, even people who wanted to preserve, document, sketch nature and the outdoors, still saw wolves as having no heart, no soul — they saw them as killing machines. Seton was of the same mind at first.
He spent months tracking Lobo and his pack in New Mexico (he did this partly for a living) and learned so much about wolves. But his mind was still unchanged. Until after he killed Blanca and heard Lobo howl for nights on end, grieving for Blanca. It was then that he knew wolves were like the rest of nature — with heart and soul.
It was Seton’s encounter with Lobo and Blanca in New Mexico that changed him. He went back East and tried to educate others. He was probably instrumental in keeping the wolf population from being wiped out forever. Eventually, he went back out to his beloved New Mexico and settled there. It’s a great documentary. They even interviewed the ranchers who live on the land where Lobo roamed back then. Seton had one black and white photograph of Lobo — priceless.
It made me want to read a book about Seton. He wrote tons of books about nature and also meticulously sketched her. It’s the kind of story that is most compelling to me — where a person has a dramatic transformation or change of heart, and ends up doing what is right — for the good of the whole.
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