Echoic Memory

In this lyrical essay set in Idaho’s Frank Church Wilderness, CMarie Fuhrman listens for what the land holds in its memory: the Tukudeka people brutalized by colonization, the nearly silent salmon run, and wolves howling in the dark. “We are not content with borrowed starlight,” she writes. “We seek the illumination of our own experiences, the radiance of the first stories.” This is a profound meditation on what colonization silences, and what the earth, if we press our ears close enough, still carries.

“That one,” he said, pointing north, for it was summer, “is the North Star. Do you see how bright it is?” Stars all looked like stars to me, but I was a daughter seeking to please so I squinted hard in search for it and said, “Yes, I see,” though honestly, I am not sure that I did. But he traced a trail with his finger which led to the Big Dipper and as he connected the dots, I did see it. He said, “The Little Dipper is pouring into the Big Dipper.” I asked what it was pouring and he said that it was only a metaphor, nothing was being poured. I must have shrugged or seemed to lose interest. These were the days when the Milky Way was as obvious as the moon, and yet, it was not obvious to me that my father was not only connecting the dots to form a shape in the sky, he was re-shaping the sky to re-member it. My father, too, carried soil beneath his fingernails. “Sometimes, Bug,” he said, placing his pointing hand on my knee, “it helps to stare at the place between the stars. Staring at the darkness makes the stars more visible.” This, which I made metaphor, I carried, like the dirt, always with me.