High Country : A Novel (40 page)

This book was a long time in coming. It was conceived along countless miles of Montana and Sierra trails, and through countless winter nights contemplating those miles. The writing took over four years, the revisions as many. Thanks to friends who have shared my camps—and to others who have relished the stories about those camps—it is finally done.

My thanks for helping it find sunlight go to many. I owe much to the rangers and trail crew members with whom I have shared humor and wisdom and high country routes. To my sons, Bill and Jed, and to the many who have come on my trips, traded tales and shared passages of this book around my fires, I owe more. Whole families have read drafts and chapters as they came to life: the Mosers and the Polhemi, the Ponds and the Hastorfs, the Pennypackers and the Bests—especially Craig, gone now in fact but not in spirit. There have been wonderful cheerleaders too: Betty and Ruth, Gaye and Danny, Brad, Kathy, Will, and Sarah—even Annie. I thank Cam Schryver, Ike Livermore, and David Buschena for their technical advice, particularly David, whose wife Maire urged more talk about cooking while constituting one half of an extraordinary set of high country twins.To the other half, Fiona O’Neill, I owe even more, not only for her delicate sketches of the Sierra ranges but for her wise humor and unflagging encouragement.

To Nancy Flowers I am indebted for intelligent readings and steady optimism about where this work was going. And I owe deep thanks to those sure readers kind enough to take on the entire text and beard me with its problems: Stacey-Lee Cominker, Dorothy Ingebretsen, Lois Miller, Trish Hooper.

I am also grateful to the writers and critics kind enough to nudge my work along: Willie and JoAnne Morris, who were among the first to tell me I’d written something of value. Steve Pyne, my old student and the

gifted writer about fire and life who told me it was my characters, not my mountains, who made this story. Robert “Ace” Parker, my old friend and that master of dialogue who admitted that I “might” even know what I was doing. Toby Wolff who brought warmth to my campfires, to my life, and to my work. Chris Ames, who claims he’d never understood the mountains until I brought them to him. Jim Houston, who declared this work “authentic”—and meant it. John Sweney, who suffered a bruising pack trip only to return and go through my text with new understanding and intelligence—and the thoughtfulness to bring it to the attention of Joe Martin of Cornell’s EPOCH, who in turn helped me reshape a long passage into the story, “Fenton’s Cut-off.”

Not quite finally, but almost, I am forever grateful to two kind readers and steadfast supporters who somehow provided both practical help and almost poetic hope: John Hessler and Tom Haydon, each of them so unassuming they have no way to understand their importance to the completion of this novel.

It is hard to think of a way to thank my Oklahoma Press editors: Bill Kittredge, for having the courage to take this book on, Karen Wieder and Sarah Nestor, who had the patience of Job and the wisdom of Solomon as they pruned my excesses and tolerated my crudities, and Marian Stewart, who brought us all together on the printed page. They were cheerful and generous, good-spirited and smart. I am deeply in their debt for their work, their generosity, their friendship.

Finally there is Jane to thank. No one could have suffered through so much so gracefully. She has somehow managed to be at once the most hawkeyed and kindest critic of all. Her good sense was a gift to this novel. It is irreplaceable.