Arts & Entertainment
Climbing walls while sitting in a chair
Published
4 years agoon
Posted By
Outlaw PartnersBy W.S. Robinson WRITERS ON THE RANGE
Reclining in my favorite chair recently in vanishingly small Inez, Wyoming, I found myself close to tears. My wife Maria sat beside me to ask what was troubling me.
Suddenly tears flowed. “Geez, you could say I squashed a bug.”
I’d pinched a queen honeybee earlier that day while transferring a package of bees into a hive. I know better. I’ve kept bees my entire adult life. But I was contemplating other things as I substituted a little marshmallow—a temporary block that the worker bees can remove—for the cork confining her in her cage while in transit.
She popped out. I clamped my finger over the hole, but hit her instead. She staggered off among the 10,000 other bees of her colony. I feared I’d find her dead at the bottom of the hive.
I was raised to admire, not kill, the six-legged. I recall appearing before my draft board, applying for conscientious objector status with the Vietnam War in full swing. My mother sat beside me at the long table and told all those grey-headed World War II veterans, “This is who we are as a family. We don’t even kill yellowjackets.”
But tears? Maria, always perceptive, said, “Maybe that queen is just the straw that broke you.”
She’s right. The real weight is this pandemic, which should scarcely be a factor in my life. We live in perhaps the safest place in the Lower 48, a ranch in eastern Wyoming, where our nearest neighbors live over a mile away. As I write this, the Wyoming Department of Health lists fewer than 1,800 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the entire state.
Yet each day I read the news, and I mourn for this country and the world, ill-equipped to handle a virus ravaging us all. The college where I teach has gone online. The class I teach in Yellowstone National Park is canceled. Here I am, unhappily home on the range.
Every morning by sunrise I am walking fields and cottonwood bottoms along the North Platte River. It’s not painful duty. A bald eagle stands alongside its fledgling eaglet on an immense nest, as its mate fishes from a branch over the river. White pelicans sleep in snowdrift-like groups, oblivious to my passing. The dew reveals thousands of glistening orb webs strung between stalks of crested wheat grass and rabbit brush. It brings to mind Tom Paxton’s song “Getting Up Early” that I sang years ago at my wasp-loving mother’s memorial service: I walk the long grass, get my legs all covered with dew, Getting up early, remembering you
Songs in my head have always provided a background rhythm on these ranch walks. Until now, they were often tormenting earworms from my youth, tunes by Herman’s Hermits or Gary Lewis and the Playboys. Now the songs are melancholy, brought on by John Prine’s death from COVID-19: Sam Stone was alone when he popped his last balloon
Climbing walls while sitting in a chair
Even Prine said he couldn’t sing Sam Stone, that desolate song of drug addiction very often. But it’s with me every morning and it echoes through the day. Even though I’m privileged, fortunate so far in my experience of this pandemic, I seem to be climbing walls from my recliner.
I miss teaching young minds in the classroom. I miss bumping into friends in town. I already miss those unwritten songs that John Prine still had in his complicated brain, full of snakes and bluebirds.
Hell, I still miss my mother. I worry about friends and family, all in more vulnerable situations than I am. I fret over the legions of unemployed, the professional caregivers and factory workers. I worry about topics I’m teaching: unabated carbon release into the atmosphere, the planet-devouring human population.
Every morning I watch the sun rise on the prairie. I can almost feel the Earth turning to embrace that distant fireball burning away the dew. Today I checked the beehive. The queen is alive. I find her busily seeking empty cells where she can deposit her eggs. She has a noticeable lurch in her walk. Maybe that’s the best even the most sheltered of us can hope for.
W.S. Robinson is a contributor to Writers on the Range (writersontherange.org), a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West He studies honeybee behavior and teaches at Casper College in Wyoming.
The Outlaw Partners is a creative marketing, media and events company based in Big Sky, Montana.
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My Barking Dog is a nightmare comedy
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My Barking Dog is a nightmare comedy that tells the story of Toby and Melinda, two lonely people whose lives are forever changed the night they encounter a starving coyote at their apartment building. Over time they grow to expect him, leaving ritual offerings to entice the coyote every night. Toby and Melinda forge a connection over this visitor and share curiosity and concern about his presence in the city. The coyote expands their world–until, one night, their world is shattered. Their lives are pushed suddenly into uncharted territory, sending them on a surreal odyssey that changes their city–and the world–forever.
Directed by LX Miller. Starring Max Schneider and Denise Hergett
Verge Theater is continuing their mission to provide accessible theater to our community. Tickets for My Barking Dog are Pay What You Wish with a suggested price of $35. Audience members are offered the opportunity to select the price point that is comfortable for them when purchasing tickets.
My Barking Dog runs March 15-17, 22-24, 28-30
Performances on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays begin at 7:00 p.m., with Sunday matinees offered at 3:00 p.m.
Suitable for ages 16 . No animals are harmed in the staging of this production.
Tickets are available online at www.vergetheater.com
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Area parents are encouraged to bring their young children to Symphony Storytime with a Bassoon which will be presented at the Bozeman Public Library’s Community Room during
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Area parents are encouraged to bring their young children to Symphony Storytime with a Bassoon which will be presented at the Bozeman Public Library’s Community Room during their regular Toddler and Preschool Storytime on Wednesday, March 20, at 10:15 a.m. The free program, presented by the Bozeman Symphony is especially for children ages 3 to 5. Children will be able to listen to Montana Shakespeare in the Parks actor Emma Rather, who will be joined by Bozeman Symphony Bassoonist Sam Macken. The goal of the program is to encourage a love of music, literacy, and discovery. Additional programs are scheduled at the Library on April 10 and June 12. For more information, visit www.bozemansymphony.org or call 406-585-9774.
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