Wilder

Recently an American Masters about Laura Ingalls Wilder aired on PBS. Her life spanned Conestoga wagons to the nuclear age. Maybe not apples to oranges but my life has gone from television to streaming.

Anyway, it sparked a memory of the time I was first introduced to the LIW books. My big brother Steve had taken me to the library. Of any in my family, Steve shared my affinity for reading. He said, Let me show you a book you might like. I can still envision the corner, the row, its location on the shelf because I returned to it again and again, first one book, then the next, the whole series, then rereading it. I was quick to buy a biography of LIW by William Anderson. There was the controversy over Rose Wilder Lane and the mother/daughter collaboration. There was Rose’s Libertarian politics and odd decisions over the Wilder literary estate. I could have told PBS the story of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

She was no angel, as is the story with every writer. Yet she told her story and that story has influenced countless readers. If anything the controversies and criticism has sparked discussion of revisionist history and how it fits into the American narrative.

I also at the time read books by Carol Ryrie Brink and Helen Fuller Orton. There must have been something about women with three names. Mary Mapes Dodge.

As a teenager I wrote to National Geographic to pitch an article of revisiting all the LIW sites and writing about the pioneer journey. I might have suggested I would use a bicycle to reach these destinations. I remember going into great detail about my vision for the piece—comparing what the site might have looked like then to now, reckoning that a Walmart Superstore really impacts the landscape, erasing all signs of wagon tracks.

Now there is another thing that links me to the writer Laura Ingalls Wilder, On Dec. 29, 2020 my daughter had a baby. I begged her not to tell me the gender, but that soon got to be impossible. Finally we agreed that the name would be the big reveal. My daughter is also a big reader. It hopefully runs in the family. My grandson’s name is Jack Wilder Garvey.