Rich Wandschneider

In May, I went back to Turkey, where I had spent some of the best years of my life in the 1960s. In June, I went to Oceanside, California, where I graduated from high school in 1960. This past weekend at the Wallowa Lake Lodge Fishtrap, the “Writing and Thinking in the West” nonprofit I had the great pleasure of leading for 20 years, celebrated its 35th birthday. And this week in Wallowa the nimiipu, the Nez Perce from reservations in Idaho, Washington and Oregon and from other places across the country, will gather at the Wallowa Nez Perce Homeland grounds for an annual celebration.

One more anniversary. It was just 51 years ago this month that I came to Wallowa County, climbed the stairs of the courthouse to the county Extension Office, and waited for my new boss, the Wyoming cowboy and, in 1971, the Wallowa County Agent, drink his coffee at Homan’s Drug Store across the street and come to meet me.

Chuck Gavin threw his booted feet onto the desk and asked me where I’d grown up. I nodded to California — this in the time when bumper stickers warned about “californicating” Oregon — and reached back to Minnesota, where I was born and spent my first 10 years. “How big a place,” Chuck wanted to know. “Well, Fosston probably had about 1,500 people,” I guessed. “You might make it here,” said Chuck.

It’s been — still is — a great ride, even though I don’t live in one of those million-dollar houses like the classmates who stayed in or moved back to Oceanside. And even though the sounds and tastes of Turkey were a tempting homecoming just weeks ago.

Even though the reins of Fishtrap have long passed from my hands. A video of earlier Fishtrap days showed a much younger me, along with the younger Kim Stafford, Craig Lesley, Ursula LeGuin, Elizabeth Oliver, Janie Tippett and my old mentor, Alvin Josephy. It was wonderful to remember those days and the ones who have passed, but nice now to know that Fishtrap is in the very capable hands of Shannon McNerney, Mike Midlo, and a new cohort — supported so well by the multi-talented Janis Carper from my time, and directed by a new board with old hands Elizabeth Oliver and my ex-wife and good friend, Judy Wandschneider.

Summer Fishtrap has moved from the old Methodist Campground to a big tent parked on the lawn at the Wallowa Lake Lodge. Fishtrap sold the Coffin House we bought some 20 years ago, and will soon move into a spacious, remodeled Bowlby Building on Main Street in Enterprise. Main Street and Mainstream!

On Friday night at Fishtrap, luk’upsíimey, a group of Nez Perce writers and artists enrolled on many northwest reservations and living and teaching across the country, read, talked and laughed in the Nez Perce language and in English. This week they are staying at the farmhouse on the Homeland grounds near Wallowa, working on language and craft, reviving, renewing what was once the only language spoken here.

They’re part of a national renewal and revival of native languages and cultures in a land that is burning and flooding and seeking ancient knowledge. Deb Haaland, a woman I call “saint” and one of my Nez Perce friends calls “superwoman,” a member of the Laguna Pueblo Tribe, is showing competence and consciousness in addressing natural resource and tribal issues nationally. I’ve heard no criticism of this Biden appointee, or of Chuck Sams, the Umatilla enrollee she appointed to run the National Park Service.

A common lesson from this Indian revival and from the high school class of 1960 is that we — men, especially white men — have made messes of many things by ignoring others. The cute and popular girls of 1960 were not told, as a homecoming princess of the day told me in Oceanside, that they could be athletic or smart. Women, and black and brown classmates of all genders who we oftentimes unconsciously belittled, have battled their ways to successful lives. Few remember that pre-Title IX and the Civil Rights Act, medical schools, law schools and many private colleges had quotas on the number of women, African-Americans and Jews that they admitted.

It’s been a rough road for many, but Audrey, who is still playing tennis at 80, gained a career and raised kids on her own, now graciously keeps the class of 1960 in touch. The clinics and hospital in Wallowa County are staffed largely by women doctors, and the law shingles here advertise as many women as men.

If we can learn to laugh with and listen to women and to Native wisdom, we might thread our ways through the current hails of fire, flood, discord and violence that threaten us all.