Settings

How a character reacts to or feels about setting adds to a story, movie, or novel, creates emotion, connection and depth. Setting can become a whole poem. Think about Gone with the Wind and you think about Tara, how Scarlet felt about it, what it meant, how it shaped her life. Think about Witness and how place was as much a character as Rachael, her son, Samuel or John Book.

Setting-where you are born, grow up or what you are introduced to in your life shapes you. You love or hate a place or learn to. Place sets a tone. It seeps into every aspect of a person’s life. Dictates speech, tastes, attitudes and actions. Think about your own life and how where you have lived has made you who you are, who you become. This is what you need to do with every character in your writing.

It’s more than getting the details right. It’s having as much firsthand knowledge as possible. It’s seeing a place as your character sees it. It’s standing in the rain and seeing how the corner store looks, misty and sad. Knowing the roof leaks in the northwest corner by the magazines. Knowing how irritated your character will be because that northwest corner is where she likes to hang out to read People magazine. It’s knowing the last gas pump to the north at Common Sense is always out of order and damn the inconvenience.

So, whether I’m writing a poem, a novel or a story I research setting. If I’m lucky enough to visit the place, I take notes and pictures. I try to get a feel for the place, close my eyes and listen to the sounds of everyday life. I try to imagine how my character feels about this place; figure out his/her emotions. This is nothing new. You’ve heard this before from writers teaching how to do setting.

It works, too. I go a step farther and do a character sketch of the place. That helps. I list words that fit the scenery. I watch people and imagine my character interacting with them.
We’ve been vacationing as a family in the Uintahs for twenty years, my husband, much longer. He knows the roads and terrain well, but still there are places he hasn’t seen. In the summer, while we were stuck inside because of rain, I studied the map to get names of mountains, etc., for a poem I was working on.

There was a small lake my husband hadn’t been to. Heart Lake. Wonderful, intriguing name, isn’t it? As it rained most of the vacation, we were never able to take the ride to see it. We took the opportunity between rainstorms, this fall. The road to Heart Lake was rough, the scenery shattering. Another lake on the way-Yellow Lake.

Tiny lakes, scenery that fed my soul. We didn’t get all the way to Heart Lake because of the road and storm threatening. Still, I wrote tons of notes, took pictures, spent some time pulling in the feel of the area. Will I ever use it? I’m certain, there is a poem coming. And I can see using the scenery for one of my western historicals.

More importantly, I see that something of that place, that setting has stamped me, changed me. Made me something more than what I was. That is what setting does.

Uintahs

With the tree moved, we easily traveled to where we park the truck. I’ve never been in the Uintahs this time of year. It’s always either been early, in June or later, mid-October. I worried about the hike but I made it up the trail easily.

I’m almost certain my husband stopped more often, not for himself, but for me. A breeze tangled in my hair. My sweatshirt was just enough. The quakies held just enough color to cast the forest in a bit of a golden haze. We made it to the tree and paused.

I’d been trying to get there for more than a year. It overwhelmed me a bit. The whole journey through this illness had been life changing-mostly in small ways, but—one big way is that I feel such gratitude for every small gift. I took a minute just for that.


We carved—Goodnight, Irene—in the tree.

I know it doesn’t show up very well, but eventually it will.

Why this tree? Why feeling the way I do about nature have I carved in this tree? Years ago, my husband found this tree back in the forest on a hunting trip. It had his father’s name in it and a date. His father had been dead several years and he knew his father wouldn’t have done it. He hadn’t believed in that, but where and when and how and who nagged us.

A few years later, we found out one of my husband’s cousins had done it while on a hunting trip with my husband’s father, Mel. The boy had lost his father very young. Mel often took him on hunting trips.

It felt like a whisper of the past, a nod to Mel. We took pictures of our family members by the tree. When Annie died and we had her cremated, I thought of that tree. Annie loved the area so much. We buried her ashes beneath the tree and covered it with rocks.

The next summer when we hiked up to the tree, the grave had been dug up, the box with Annie’s ashes broken by bear, her ashes scattered. Probably fitting. I liked that, maybe, she was set free. We gathered up what was left, reburied and covered it with more rocks. It’s never been disturb again, but each time we're there we stack more rocks at the base of the tree.



After we carved Irene’s message, we placed a few more rocks at the base of the tree. My husband pointed to the sky said we better be getting off the mountain, a storm was coming. We got down off the mountain just in time and as we looked back and the clouds lifted, again there was snow at the summit where we’d been.


As a writer, I have learned to get the most from any outing. I go prepared. Notebook, camera, pen and mind set.

The Unitahs have tucked into my heart. They stir my emotions in so many ways. When I was sick, it was one of the places I grieved about missing. I wondered if I would ever get there again. Since then, I embrace everywhere I go more. I try to notice details, record them, look beneath to emotions, feelings of a place. How each of us let a place affect us. This is setting.

Setting is a character in a poem, essay, story or novel. Do what you must to learn a place, love or hate a place.

Sometimes Trees Blocks Our Way

I’ve been on a retreat, a sabbatical, a vacation and as most things this year, it didn’t go exactly as planned and we returned early. While there-high Uintas-maybe, truly God’s country. (For a writer and/or poet, it’s perfect country.) It was simply perfect—even the storms, the rain. The backcountry is just starting to get into autumn color. Yellow, orange, russet, and red creeping into ravines and land folds.


A vacation was just what we all needed. But as I’ve said before, life is mostly plan B. Sunday, when we arrived at the campground, I found a big screw in our trailer tire with a slow leak. We’re miles from civilization, so plans were made to travel to the nearest city Wednesday and get the tire fixed. Antique shops could be visited—a big plus for me—so not a big sacrifice, not at all.

It stormed, but Monday morning was glorious. Cool, but not too much. The sky clear, and blue, and promising. One of the things that most devastated me last summer while I was battling MPGN was the loss of my companion, Irene. A sweet cat, always near. She slept next to me and put me to sleep with her ragged purr. While I was sick she never left my side, but as if sensing how sick I was, she never pestered me for more attention. Which, of course, was her usual habit. She’s a cat.

She started having seizures right about that time. Terrible seizures that just kept getting worse. The vet couldn’t find a cause and no real promising cure, but there were a few things we could try. The thing was we had no way of doing it. I couldn’t sit up, my husband’s work demands travel; my mother is 92, my children all working too long hours. We had a heartbreaking decision that suddenly needed to be made immediately because Irene’s seizures were getting worse and more often. I made the decision to end her suffering.


I’ve second guessed myself, I’ve felt bad that I wasn’t able to go to the vet’s with her, I feel worse that I had no ashes, no nothing to honor her by. I did the best I could, put her favorite collar in a small box, and buried it in my flower garden with a stone covering the spot.
But I promised myself and Irene I would put her name on a tree up in the forest where we camp next to Annie’s.

Annie was another beloved pet—a lab, which we had to put down when she could no longer see or move. We buried Annie’s ashes up there and carved in the tree—Annie, a good dog.

I wanted to do similar with Irene, but I never got up there last summer, then in October when the doctor finally said I could go to high altitude and hike, the weather was so bad we couldn’t and wouldn’t chance the roads—bad enough when dry, horrible when wet. We do four wheeling but we try to be responsible and not tear up the roads.


So after breakfast Monday, we headed out as soon as we could to beat any stormy weather. We would drive in as far as possible, then hike. We got nearly to the spot we park the truck when this tree blocked our path.


When something blocks your way, go around, go over, go through or if necessary move the obstacle. It works in four-wheeling and in writing. With help from friends and family and a lot of determination. The road is cleared.

Life is often that way. Writing life is that way. And when we look back on all those trees and stumbling blocks we realize, that was the best of life.