The Wilder Life (49 page)

It was dark by the time Kara and I got back to Chicago on our return trip from Minneapolis. I dropped Kara off and then headed back to the apartment and Chris. We had dinner and I told him about the musical (unremembered history, perhaps?), and how I saw Pepin again, and how much I'd missed him in every single last place.

“So where are we going next?” he asked. “Are we going to have to go off in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere?”

I could tell he was willing to go. He'd read the whole official Little House series and the three unofficial books, too. He'd gone to De Smet and Walnut Grove and Burr Oak and even the illfated Homesteading Weekend chock-full of End Timers for me. I looked at him, with his beautiful big head and wearing one of his obscure band T-shirts that he always has to explain to me, and thought about how I really
would
be in the middle of nowhere without him, which was the last thing I wanted.

“We're done with the Laura trips,” I told him. “I'm home.”

This year we got to be home for Christmas, which is to say that my dad flew in from Albuquerque and my brother came down from Wisconsin to stay with us in our apartment, and for the first time in my life I would cook them all a Christmas dinner. For the past two Christmases since Mom died, none of us had really figured out how to do the holidays; we were still trying to learn how to work as a family, figure out who we were. Well, we knew this much: we loved prime rib. I'd gotten a roast at Costco that would have cost Laura three full months of her teaching salary at the Brewster school and it was waiting in the fridge.

It did not seem strange, though, to see my father on his own. My dad had the same kind of singular presence Pa had, and growing up I'd loved how much time I'd spent with just him, over dinners when my mother worked late. His most wonderfully Charles Ingalls–like endeavor had been buying an old VW Beetle as our family's second car and continuing to pour money and love into fixing it up even after it had proved unreliable, so much so that it had burst into flames in our driveway. He'd gotten the engine rebuilt and when he'd said, in classic Pa fashion, “That fire was the best thing to happen to that car!” we'd all felt more proud than unlucky.

I'd asked him for only one thing for Christmas, which was to transfer the dozens of family home movies to video. We hadn't seen them in twenty years. I barely knew what was in the movies anymore, but I'd hated to think of them all rotting away in a box in my dad's garage. Now my dad had given my brother and me both a set of gift-wrapped DVDs with the first batch of old films, and on Christmas Eve we watched them.

There was the house I didn't remember and then the house I knew. I saw our backyard and a party and my grandparents and Christmas. At the first sight of my mom my eyes filled up, but I held on because it was about time I remembered. I'd thought I couldn't see her anywhere, but I could remember and I could see her here.

I sat in the dark next to Chris and my family while the video remembered the film. The old Super 8 stock flared and flashed sometimes, and while the video was silent, something about the motion around the edges reminded me of the old ticking of the projector. I could see all the camping trips we'd gone on, back when we'd had a borrowed tent and then, later, our own. The names of all the places we'd been came back to me in the right order, like a story I'd learned: Trout Valley, Fish Lake Beach, Landuits Lake, and Lake Louise. It was like my own Laura saga. I loved this part best.

I saw footage of myself, maybe seven years old, with my brother running through rows of tall pines. The light was so dim the film grew grainy. I didn't know whether I was remembering or unremembering anymore, but as I watched myself run, I was sure I knew everything I'd thought that day: We would live here now. We were in a new country. If we stayed here long enough we could know all of the world, the woods and the creeks and the fields and the lakes. And we would know all the little houses, a bright
now
in every one.

I am thankful for the encouragement of Megan Lynch, my editor, and Erin Hosier, my agent. Their early support for this project helped me greatly in those anxious first months of writing. Michael Taeckens heard me talk about “this Laura Ingalls Wilder book that I'll write someday,” and suggested that I write it sooner than later, and I am forever grateful for his advice and friendship.

Many people helped and inspired me with their deep knowledge of Laura Ingalls Wilder's life and work: Sarah Uthoff, Amy Mattson Lauters, Rebecca Brammer, Nancy Cleaveland, Pamela Smith Hill, John Miller, and Bill Anderson. Thank you all for answering my questions; meeting you has been an honor. Much appreciation as well to Barbara Walker, Donald Zochert, William Holtz, Anita Clair Fellman, Kathryn Lasky, Stephen Hines, and Ann Romines for their Wilder-related works and research.

Sandra Hume was my first “Laura friend,” and I'm glad for her humor and generosity. I feel fortunate to have met Catherine Seiberling Pond and Erin Blakemore during this book's journey. I am very grateful to Meribah Knight, Mike McComb, Amy Finney, and Virginia McCone for their contributions. Many thanks to Dean Butler, who helped me at a crucial juncture.

Several friends served as writing buddies, travel partners, fellow butter churners, or just as moral support: Kara Luger, Jami Attenberg, Jen Larsen, Monique Van Den Berg, Wendy Wimmer Schuchart, Cinnamon Cooper, Anne Holub, Rose Lannin, MacKerrow Talcott, Claire Zulkey, Kate Harding, and Laura Pearson. Thanks also to Jody Michael, Emily Rems, and Ellen Willett.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Kathleen Tucker, Abby Levine, Josalyn Moran, Michelle Bayuk, Margaret Coffee, Nick Tiemersma, John Quattrocchi, Pat McPartland, and everyone else at Albert Whitman & Company for getting behind
The Wilder Life
with as much enthusiasm as for one of their own books.

I'm very happy to have Sarah Bowlin, Geoff Kloske, Mih-Ho Cha, Claire McGinnis, and Liz Hohenadel on my team at Riverhead.

While a few of my research pursuits did not make it into the final version of this book, I appreciate that Deirdre Churchill, Eve Richards, Betty Charbol, Emily McConnell, Eve Dutton, Cathie Maitland, Laura Bogue, Jess Hutchison, and Marilyn Ringland could take the time to talk to me.

Many thanks to the staff, volunteers, and supporters at all the Little House museums and homesites: the Laura Ingalls Wilder museums in Pepin, Wisconsin, Burr Oak, Iowa, and Walnut Grove, Minnesota; the Spring Valley Methodist Church Museum in Spring Valley, Minnesota; the Little House on the Prairie Museum in Independence, Kansas; the Historic Home and Museum in Mansfield, Missouri; the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society in De Smet, South Dakota; the Ingalls Homestead, also in De Smet, and the Wilder Homestead in Malone, New York. Special thanks to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa, and to the Little House Heritage Trust.

Thank you, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane, for the books that shaped my inner life and helped me find my way in the world.

Thank you to my family. Thank you, Mom. I miss you.

Thank you Christopher, for being at my side—for reading the books, reading my chapters, and for driving the car through Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Iowa. I couldn't have done it without you.

(Published in New York by Harper & Brothers, later Harper & Row, unless otherwise noted)

(The page numbers in
The Wilder Life
refer to the revised editions published in 1953.)

 

Little House in the Big Woods
, 1932.

Farmer Boy
, 1933.

Little House on the Prairie
, 1935.

On the Banks of Plum Creek
, 1937.

By the Shores of Silver Lake
, 1939.

The Long Winter
, 1940.

Little Town on the Prairie
, 1941.

These Happy Golden Years
, 1943.

On the Way Home: The Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to MansfiEld, Missouri, in 1894
, with a setting by Rose Wilder Lane, 1962.

The First Four Years
, 1971.

West from Home: Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, San Francisco, 1915
, edited by Roger Lea MacBride, 1974.

A Little House Sampler: A Collection of Early Stories and Reminiscences
, by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane; edited by William Anderson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988.

A Little House Traveler: Writings from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Journeys Across America
. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks
, edited by Stephen W. Hines. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007.

Anderson, William.
Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography
. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.

Hill, Pamela Smith.
Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life
. Pierre: South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2007.

Miller, John E.
Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Woman Behind the Legend
. Missouri Biography Series. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998.

Zochert, Donald.
Laura: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder
. New York: Avon Books, 1976.

Fellman, Anita Clair.
Little House, Long Shadow: Laura Ingalls Wilder's Impact on American Culture
. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008.

Miller, John E.
Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane: Authorship, Place, Time, and Culture
. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008.

Romines, Ann.
Constructing the Little House: Gender, Culture and Laura Ingalls Wilder
. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997.