then there was a silence you took to mean something

i’m paraphrasing, which goes against the spirit of this entry.
tom walker, a local historian and writer, self-described obsessive compulsive perfectionist and wealth of information on anything one might need to know about anything, including the date of the last cleaning of my chimney and the cause of the fire that swept through the mckinley station in 1924, spoke tonight at the community center on his latest book, mckinley station: the people of the pioneer park that became denali. the book is the product of almost 30 years of research, and tom concluded his slideshow of photos compiled for the book with a black slide and white text: “a never again production.” he’s into details, and defended himself again the criticism that his work “gets too personal” about the emotional struggles, flaws, and moral discrepancies of his subjects, often people we like to imagine as frontier heroes and mythic clichés, saying (something like), it’s the details that make the story. “take the small things and they inform the big picture.” he said the quest for details and the stories they create is about sense of place, and yes, isn’t everything these days, but went on to discuss sense of this place. “why are we all here?” he asked. “i first arrived in 1969 and like many of you have been here longer than i ever imagined i would be. why? i don’t know. none of us can explain it.” and that the people of mckinley station, 1922, had that same sense.
our only interactions have been last fall, a brief discussion at nan’s about the revision process, and this week, an email exchange about the melt water lake in anita’s shed and the meaning of my email address. these are details, but i agree: they can be important. it’s presumptuous to even say i have a writing project at this point, and if i did it would be, i think, too frivolous, contemporary, and lacking proper references for tom’s tastes, but i’m formulating a list of questions about details and place: where is the line between simply “true” and relevant? can any story exist independent of place and if not, how subjective is the sense of it?
in a recent interview in high country news, annie proulx describes her current project (on wyoming, of course) as “a mix of history, bird and animal observations, soil and water, rare plants, archaeology, fence problems, the rigors of house construction, things that went right and others that did not, conservation efforts—something between a memoir and a close examination of place.” in wisdom sits in places, his study of western apache place names, keith basso includes the story, for example, of being told by nick thompson, one of his consultants, that he looks lonely. “the old man wastes no time…he urges me to have prolonged and abundant sex with very old women. he says it prevents nosebleeds. he said that someday i can write a book about it” (43).
and so if nothing else, i’m trying these days to remember the details. who was seen with who and where and how snowshoe hare legs are strung up in a leafless willow by a single sinewy thread or strewn in the middle of the trail, disconnected and bloodless. the thickened point of impact on a piece of chert and who brought what kind of salsa to cinco de mayo knitting night at kris’ house. i don't have the distance yet to know what's important and what's just true.
of course, the problem is that i also make things up.
(wednesday, 5/6/09)