Editor’s note: This commentary is by Linda Ramsdell, of Craftsbury Common. A slightly different version was published in the Hardwick Gazette on Feb. 1.
[I]n January we said goodbye to another beloved voice of the Kingdom, Howard Frank Mosher. He joins his great friend, Leland Kinsey, at some heavenly trout stream, and I like to think of both of them meeting up with David Budbill by a fire pit in the woods to fry their catch and read some poetry aloud, Leland’s voice so much of this place, and David adding flute and song to some of his poems.
These are the images and imaginings I find to cope with the tremendous loss to our literary landscape. Among them, these three writers have given us nearly 50 books — novels, poetry, plays, memoir, essays, children’s books, opera! Leland, David and Howard left us even as their writing was strong, so that we, their readers, will have the gift of a book from each published after their passing to add to the enduring work that weights our bookshelves and comes alive as we read. Who can travel the Kingdom and look at a pile of logs on a landing without thinking of Marie Blythe, pass a remote hill farm without thinking of Raymond and Ann, or see a hay wagon and not hear the Kinsey children calling to each other on a late summer night. In our great sadness, we need only open books and turn pages to hear their voices again. We walk in the woods and explore our mountains to feel how each of these writers has enhanced our landscape by chronicling it, and populating it with rich characters we might call our imaginary friends, if they were not so real. This is our solace, even as so many of us who called these men neighbor, friend, mentor, family, advocate will miss their laughter, call on the phone, chance encounter in town, or counsel.
Leland, David and Howard left us even as their writing was strong, so that we, their readers, will have the gift of a book from each published after their passing to add to the enduring work that weights our bookshelves and comes alive as we read.
Much has been written, discussed and studied about the ways each of these writers have enhanced our sense of place. Theirs are among the strongest, and most well known, voices of our region. The word hardscrabble may be the most common word used to refer to their work, and it is apt. There is another vein that runs deeply and inextricably through all of their work, through every book that Leland Kinsey, David Budbill and Howard Frank Mosher ever wrote. That is love.
Love of this place and this landscape — that is perhaps most obvious and celebrated in the work of each writer and is easy for us to grasp and to affirm, given the natural beauty surrounding us. Sometimes less obviously, but no less emphatically, Kinsey, Budbill and Mosher have populated this place and this landscape with neighbors who love each other. This is sometimes harder to discern, given the flawed, larger than life, desperate or criminal characters these writers have created to live alongside those characters we might be more comfortable with — the loving grandmother, the boy who dreams of becoming a baseball star, and the sturdy farmer. This vein of love runs through the conflicts, generational grudges, misunderstandings, crimes and everyday struggles with each other that these characters are engaged in. It is this vein of love that springs forth as compassion and empathy, be it among characters in any given book, or felt by us as readers.
Leland Kinsey, David Budbill and Howard Frank Mosher were each unfailingly generous. Leland Kinsey, David Budbill and Howard Frank Mosher each loved this place and their families as much as anyone I have ever known. They also loved their neighbors, including in their books those who are often invisible or left out of many narratives of the Kingdom. Those neighbors living deep in the winter woods in dwellings without heat, the homeless women, the hungry kids, the neighbors stealing tools so they can try to make a living, the ones drinking alone and lonely, the migrant farm workers, the black preacher. These generous men found a place in their heart, and in their work to love and include all our neighbors. They leave us with a path to do the same. We can start in our houses with books by Leland, David or Howard, maybe by the woodstove in winter, to feel compassion for someone whose life we can’t imagine, or someone unfamiliar, or someone who makes us uncomfortable. And then we can leave the house, and go out into this beautiful landscape where we all live together, remember these generous men, and honor them by loving our neighbors, one and all.
