craig arnold memorial

Tonight, in Laramie, was the memorial for Craig Arnold--the poet (and my professor) who got lost on a volcano in April and was never found. It was really strange then, to have someone we knew simply disappear, and it's still strange now. They assume he fell off a cliff while hiking a volcano, but they never found a body, which of course leaves all sorts of unanswered questions. He was in Japan, writing about volcanoes. It was so strange--exactly a year before that, Craig and eleven of us students were sitting in a class that same week, talking about travel writing--his upcoming trip, our own trips.

I forgot there was the memorial tonight--but I was in a writing workshop at my new school and Craig's name came up, randomly & I realized it was the night. I wonder what the memorial was like, and wish I could have been there--in part to think about Craig with people who knew him--but also in part because this was a part of our shared life in community. This is the strange thing about moving; a shared life changes and sometimes changes a lot. I'm glad I'll be in Missouri awhile--a long while, probably--but I think I will often miss some of that shared life in Wyoming, the same way I still miss some shared life in Wheaton. There are a few people in both those places I really love. In Wyoming, right at the end, I met some really good friends--Paula, Julie, Evie--and also a pretty terrific mentor, Kate. (That's how it worked at Wheaton too, I guess--a lot of good things happen near the end.)

But even beyond the people, there's something about Wyoming. People told me that, but it's true--it feels like a quiet place: the landscape, the low population, the mountains. The morning before I left, I drove out of the Snowy Mountains at 5 am and the sunrise was cresting over all the plains and the city and the mountains behind them and I had the distinct sense that I was the only one out there seeing it. I was reaching for my camera then stopped and realized that kind of beautiful quiet can't really be pictured.

I was never close to Craig--not in the way some friends were, at least--but it was such a strange way to end an MFA, for everyone in my class, having one our major professors suddenly, simply, vanish. He was always risking in his writing, always tipping on the brink, especially of a place like Wyoming. Craig wasn't quiet. None of us thought he'd stay there--but I guess, in some ways, now he has. Anyway, I'm thinking of Craig and his son Robin tonight, and also Wyoming. The photograph--I'm in green; Craig's in the middle, front--was taken the week I arrived in Wyoming. So right at the beginning of the things--the same place I'm at here in Missouri now. All sorts of promise, but also all sorts of leaving things behind.

Here's what Craig wrote about his work before he left:

" “This is part of the sublime / From which we shrink,” says Wallace Stevens. He is thinking of Pompeii and Vesuvius, of cities and civilizations laid low by disaster, of the utter indifference of geology to humanity.

The Volcano Pilgrim has dedicated the last three years to the belief that one need not shrink from the sublime. Nay, rather, one may seek it out, with a pack on your back and a stick in your hand, liberal applications of sunblock and when necessary a gas mask over your face.

He recognizes that chasing this particular dragon may not strike some people as entirely healthy or balanced behavior, but the nature of that imbalance is one of the things he hopes in the course of the journey to understand.

And he has found that, when you’re clambering up the side of a smoking mountain, driven by apocalyptic fantasies of fiery death, many things may catch your attention along the way – birds, beasts, flowers, people. Though he doubts Basho would have shared his love for lava, he suspects the master would recognize the restlessness that sends one out searching for it."