When I Came West (Part Three)
What I realized as I began to stitch together the pieces of my life story that had survived my purge-the-past ceremony is that the book I had wanted to write could never be written because that story needed a dual perspective. The truest story, the most authentic, relied not only on my voice and my memories, but also on Bill's. During the time when I was still in touch with Bill through the mail I asked him if he would agree to partner with me on such a project. He refused and I understood his desire to maintain his privacy. I also requested his permission to use the letters that he had written to me because I believed that those letters, coupled with my responses to him, set a very rare stage for the romance that brought me West.
Again, Bill declined to be involved.
Delayed, but undaunted, I decided that it was still crucial for me to tell this part of my life story, but that I would need, in the end, to rely on my sole voice. The shift in focus brought me into an understanding that the story about my coming West was not so much about me, or even about Bill, but about the wilderness we lived in and the people who came into our lives. While I am present in the stories as the observer and recorder of events, there is always something else I hoped to illuminate, whether it was Old Tom or Snook Moore, the goats or horses, the moose or grizzlies, the weather or the landscape, the need for hunting or the ethics of trapping, the advent of romance or the demise of love.
I began to see that the book I would write depended on my perspective over many years and therefore would be built upon the foundation of essays and articles that I had written in the past.
But first, I needed to find a publisher who would be interested in such a memoir.
