Anyone wanting to understand southern Saskatchewan could read Wolf Willow. (Reading it in the house Stegner remembers in the book, well that's all right too.) South Sask or not, anyone wanting new forms of knowing any particular place cou learn much from this book. And in the coincidence department, this entry: Stegner cites a passage from the Chekhov story "Gooseberries", the next story I came to when I picked up my Chekhov last night at bedtime.
Otherwise, I read some Hill yesterday, as in yours truly, a section from a book-to-be (I hope) called Natural Cause: The Stan Still Poems. Added a couple of pieces from the StanSlush pile (itself many many pages long), flipped the order of pieces a bit, tried to push on some bits here and there, enjoyed the usual range of responses from Oh my God to Hey, not bad.
But Wolf Willow. When he returns to Eastend in the early 50s, more than 30 years after leaving it, Stegner is troubled, uneasy, sensing he hasn't quite found his re-connection to the place, despite its obvious familiarities. There's a smell he can't put his finger on. He literally sniffs around until he realizes it's the common wolf willow, and now he's released into a bloom of memory and reflection.
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