The Epic Nature of Life

By
Last night, for the umpteenth time, I snuggled on the couch and let myself be engrossed, mesmerized, entranced, enraged, impassioned, and yes, infatuated, by the movie Last of the Mohicans. James Fenimore Cooper on the big screen - frontier romance writ large, bigger than life, panoramas that spread from horizon to horizon, close-ups that show every vein on every leaf, every scar on Magua's face.   It's hard to find an onscreen villain more frightening than Wes Studi. And have you ever seen such romance as that between Hawkeye and Cora Munro?  And what about the clash of cultures?  Stolen land?  Nation against nation?

Each time I watch the 1992 movie based on the second book in Cooper's The Leatherstocking Tales, I ask myself if I am brave enough to WRITE BIG.  Not safe, but BIG. Fearless.  After the movie last night, I came into my office and without turning the lights on,  typed this declaration:

There is nothing more beautiful than human tragedy and triumph. Nothing  more beautiful than a man protecting the woman he loves, than a sister shielding a sister, a man giving his life for the woman he knows he can never have, a father seeking vengeance for the death of his son, a woman killing to protect what is hers.  There is nothing more beautiful than a woman hungering for a man, nothing more beautiful than a brother loving a brother, nothing more beautiful than a father's love for a daughter, nothing more beautiful than friendship between man and woman and child.
Watch Movie Trailer
Can I write such a story? Am I brave enough?  Can I see the beauty in the pain?  Do I love humanity enough?  Can I set aside my own fears, my own smallness, my own frailties, and enter the fathomless sea of human experience?  Can I envision a story that lives outside the borders of all I know, yet comes from the depths of all I feel? 

The answer is YES.  Yes, we can write these stories.  Yes, we are brave enough.  Yes, we can set aside our smallness and our frailties and reach for that deeper part of ourselves that knows there are GREAT TRUTHS in this world, and it is these truths about which we must write. 

Book's endpaper by N.C. Wyeth
Be brave.  Write the BIG story.  Be fearless in your belief  that there is nothing more beautiful than your struggle to hold onto all you believe to be sacred, all you believe to be eternal. 


Trust the humanity of each character who finds his and her way into your imagination.  Trust that life is meant to be lived with passion, full throttle.  Dip your pen into the center of your own beating heart and paint a timeless image on the rock wall of the world. 
Pictographs at Lathrop Canyon
Leave something behind that is worthy of the path laid before you.  Footprints in the sand.  Handprints on a cliff.  Even the deer leaves tracks, and the winds form dunes, and the rivers carve their canyons.  Write your story.  Tell the greatest truth you can tell.  Believe in the epic nature of life.
*     *     *
THE MOHICAN TRIBE TODAY: "Contrary to early American literature and Hollywood license, the Last of the Mohicans continue to outlive James Fenimore Cooper's book-ending prediction. We are alive and thriving in a beautifully forested section of Northern Wisconsin." 
THE 2013, 10th Biennial JAMES FENIMORECOOPER PRIZE Competition: Honors works of literary fiction that significantly advance the historical imagination. The winner will be chosen for its literary quality and historical scholarship. Sponsored by the Society of American Historians.
An advisor for the Rocky Mountain Land Library and member of the International League of Conservation Writers, Page Lambert has been writing about the western landscape and leading nature retreats in the West for twenty years. Founding member of Women Writing the West, member of Wyoming Writers and Colorado Authors’ League, Lambert’s writing can be found inside monumental sculptures at the Denver Art Museum, online at Huffington Post, and inside the pages of dozens of anthologies. Page designs and teaches graduate writing courses for the University of Denver’s University College. Recent published works include “Not for Sale” (Langscape Magazine and “The Rural West,” included in Fulcrum’s new book, The Light Shines from the West. Forthcoming are 3 poems in DoveTails: Writing for Peace. Page writes All Things Literary/All Things Natural from her mountain home west of Denver.

Comments

Carol Grever said…
Incredible inspiration for me, Page. You make me believe that even I can do this. Thank you!
Carol Grever
February 7, 2012 at 2:50 PM
Connecting People with Nature, and Writers with Words said…
Carol, I’m so glad it was inspirational for you! I’ve got to admit, I love this movie – and each time I watch it, I am re-inspired.
February 7, 2012 at 3:04 PM
Anonymous said…
Hey Page,

Your name came to me as I attended the Feminist Luncheon for the first time today. I loved what you just sent and printed it out as a guide. Thanks,

Shirley
February 7, 2012 at 7:45 PM
Barbara Marshak said…
Love your newsletter; always so beautifully written, Page! And this one so timely ...

Your opening Write Brave, Write Epic, addressed to me personally....well, let’s just say it spoke to my heart, especially as I’m contemplating a sequel to my book about Paul LaRoche, Hidden Heritage. (Never mind that Last of the Mohicans is my absolute favorite movie; I’ve watched it enough times that I can recite the entire script along with the movie.)

So everything you wrote tonight really connected with me. As you said, “Leave something that is worthy of the path laid before you.”

Love that whole paragraph. Maybe I’ll frame it (with your permission & name) and post it in our ranch office.

Barbara Marshak
February 7, 2012 at 8:01 PM
Camille Lione said…
Wow. Write!

Camille Lione
February 7, 2012 at 8:13 PM
Heloise Jones said…
Hi Page -
Love your post. I'm finally starting back into the novels and my charge to myself is go deeper. Take risks. Tell more than the good story.

I, too, love "The Last of the Mochicans film" (one with Danial Day-Lewis). Something about it. Perhaps it's that it was filmed in natural lighting as much as possible. The fort (in Asheville, down the street from where I lived, btw) in natural darkness. The confrontation at the falls in natural daylight. Perhaps it's the truth of what we will do for love, as you say. What I know is the moment it hit me, when I got "it." It was when the runner from the fort with the message runs, trusting his compatriots for protection. Tho he knows Indians surround him - who will fly at him, shoot at him, tomahawk him - he stays focused, never hesitates one-half second, never looks back...because he knows he'll surely die if he does. *That* blew me away.

Hope 2012 is turning out to be a good one for you.
Aloha,
H
February 7, 2012 at 8:21 PM
Connecting People with Nature, and Writers with Words said…
Hi Heloise. Thanks for sending the note, and of course, you would have special reason to love the move, seeing as how it was filmed in your beautiful neck of the woods, even though you’re now living in another beautiful place. And yes, the scene with the runner, that he never looks back, is amazing.

Yes, 2012 is promising to be a much easier year than 2011.

Aloha. Page
February 7, 2012 at 8:23 PM
Dan Guenther said…
Page,

I really enjoyed your comments on Last of the Mohicans.

What a movie that is...

Wes Studi's Magua is a classic.

Dan
February 8, 2012 at 10:43 AM
LH said…
I LOVE!!! that movie too! And yes, who can forget Maugwa. I have it in my collection and the soundtrack as well. Thanks also for the info on the "treks"! Perhaps I'll get to consider one in the future when work doesn't take up time. The best to you and a great remainder of the week!

LH
February 9, 2012 at 10:34 AM
Sherry said…
This is beautiful. Sherry
February 9, 2012 at 10:38 AM
Lois said…
Thanks for a truly inspiring--in the whole sense of the word--response and encouragement based on The Last of the Mohicans. Right on; write on. All the best! Lois
February 10, 2012 at 1:15 PM
Anonymous said…
You always inspire us, Page, especially in this post about brave, BIG, writing. Thank you!
February 26, 2012 at 4:59 PM
Connecting People with Nature, and Writers with Words said…
Lois, thank you for taking a moment to leave a comment. Yes, write on!
February 26, 2012 at 5:31 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Celtic Blood, Cherokee Blood, and Nature's Earthly Spirits

By
Image
Helen Terry Dunton c. 1912 When I asked my redheaded Great Aunt Violet, who died many years ago but in whose western saddle I still ride, to tell me what she remembered about my paternal grandmother, she said, "Well, besides being a crack shot with a rifle, Helen was part Irish, and part Cherokee , and that wasn't a very good thing to be back then."   Auntie Vi was from the Dunton clan, my father's clan. "We have Scots blood," was the pronouncement, and I took it to mean that Scots blood was somehow superior to the Irish blood my grandfather had married into.  The Cherokee blood was rarely mentioned, and never with "princess" lineage claims. I continue to research this claim but have found no direct lineage tying me to enrolled ancestors, only the names of distant cousins and ties to Cherokee communities in Oklahoma such as Wauhillau and Stillwell. Beyond the American Pale In David M. Emmons book, Beyond the American Pale: The Irish in t...
READ MORE »

The Moral Dilemma of My Mother's Mink: Earning Our Place in the World

By
Image
My mother’s mink stole and two fur collars, one sable, one white, have been hanging in the back of my closet since she died five years ago.  I remember how beautiful she looked to me as a child when she wore her mink—how the soft fur graced her bare sloping shoulders and showed off her own mother’s strand of pearls—how proud my father looked as he offered my mother his arm. The mink stole symbolized to my father his ability and desire to provide for my mother (not unlike what his grandfather must have felt when he dragged a deer back to his waiting wife). Old Fugate Sawmill, Stringtown, OK read essay My grandmother never wore a mink stole, though.  She had been born in Indian Territory—the child of a laboring, mixed-blood family that logged for the railroad companies as they laid track from Arkansas and Kentucky and Oklahoma west to Washington.  Judging from old family photos, they ate a lot of deer meat—and rabbit.  Members of the weasel family, no doubt, provi...
READ MORE »

The Grand Design of Our Lives: Connecting the Synchronistic Dots

By
Image
SYNCHRONISTIC MOMENTS  - seemingly unrelated events that connect in unplanned ways.  How often do they occur?  How often do we fail to "connect the dots" that tie these moments together?  What do they tell us about the Grand Design of our lives ?  When the old man in John Steinbeck's collection The Pastures of Heaven stared down into the valley where he had lived his life, tears came to his eyes and he beat his hands helplessly against his hip. "I’ve never had time to think," he said.  "I’ve been too busy with troubles ever to think anything out. If I could go down there and live down there for a little while—why, I’d think over all the things that ever happened to me, and maybe I could make something out of them, something all in one piece that had a meaning, instead of all these trailing ends.” All those trailing ends--the threads of our lives that we long to weave into something whole and meaningful.  But how do we begin the...
READ MORE »