News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
When Marilyn and I pulled into Sisters in October of 1993, one of the first things I did was stop in at Paulina Springs Books. There, I picked up a book titled “Legends of the Fall” by Jim Harrison. It’s a collection of three novellas: the title story, about three brothers entwined in tragedy in Montana in the years around World War I; “Revenge,” a tale of love and betrayal in Mexico, and “The Man Who Gave Up His Name,” the story of a man who upends his life in search of his own identity.
The stories — especially “Legends” and “Revenge” hit me like a round from a .50 caliber Sharps buffalo rifle. They were compelling meditations on themes that have always driven me — the imperatives of manhood, the power of nature to both destroy and heal, the bittersweet ephemera of perfect peace and beauty, the tragic art of living and dying well.
And the writing… it was a feast; muscular and powerful, carrying the weight of tragedy but leavened with what one critic called Harrison’s “ferocious love for life.”
Harrison died in 2017, a mighty literary oak toppled by age and infirmity, death summoned by an extreme lust for life. He is featured in a short documentary dropped last week by YETI Presents, titled “All That Is Sacred.” The film captures a moment in time in the early 1970s when Harrison and Thomas McGuane were living, playing, and working in Key West, Florida. It was their passion for fishing that landed them in this run-down outpost of America, where Ernest Hemingway had once plied fishing rod and typewriter. A counter-cultural community coalesced around them, which included a young, aspiring singer-songwriter named Jimmy Buffett.
For a brief few years, that Key West scene was truly epic. Days fishing the flats, nights in the bars, all the while engaged in serious writing. McGuane hit big with “Ninety-two In The Shade,” and Buffett wrote some of his finest songs in those wild days. Inevitably, it didn’t last. Their outlaw hideout was “discovered” — in large part because of them — and was infiltrated by hipsters, and the dark eminences of the cocaine trade. The chaos and excess of a truly wild and free life is dangerous — and, as a friend notes, it’s the danger that draws us. Many of the colorful characters that made the scene what it was didn’t survive it. By the late 1970s, McGuane and Harrison had decamped for Montana, and Buffett had launched a touring career that became its own cultural phenomenon.
But what a time it was…
Sisters isn’t anything like as wild and louche as Key West was (your mileage may vary as to whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing). Regardless of the wild and crazy, we’ve got a remarkably fertile community here ourselves. It’s a good thing to every now and then step back and recognize how remarkable it all is. Last week, there was so much music in this little town that the most ardent-hearted were hard-pressed to take it all in. We’re home to authentically world-class events. We’ve got the allure of the natural world all around us, inspiring writers, musicians, filmmakers, painters, sculptors, quilters, woodworkers, culinary artists…
Sustaining the creative community we have built here requires mindfulness. We can’t take it for granted — magical places and moments can fall apart and blow away on the wind. Fortunately, there are a lot of people in Sisters who put in a lot of effort to keep the creativity flowing. One of the most important things all of us can do in that line is simply to get out and live in it. Get out on the trails and streams; eat and drink deeply; love wildly; make something. Every damn day.
Be ferocious about it.
(You can find YETI Presents: “All That Is Sacred” on YouTube).
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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