Letters from Yellowstone Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  1. MIMULUS LEWISII

  2. LEWISIA REDIVIVA

  3. CALYPSO BULBOSA

  4. EPILOBIUM ANGUSTIFOLIUM

  5. ROSA WOODSII

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published in 1999 by Viking Penguin

  a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Copyright © Diane Smith, 1999

  All rights reserved

  Illustrations, Mimulus Lewisii, Lewisia rediviva, Calypso bulbosa, and Rosa Woodsii, all courtesy of Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

  Illustration, Epilobium angustifolium, from Handbook of Rocky Mountain Plants by Ruth Ashton Nelson and Roger Williams. Drawings copyright © 1969 by Dorothy V. Leake. Used by permission of Roberts Rinehart Publishers.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Smith, Diane.

  Letters from Yellowstone / Diane Smith.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-11909-9

  1. Yellowstone National Park—History—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3569.M5255L48 1999

  813’.54—DC21 99-12904

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Hannah Smith

  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

  Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

  —Hamlet, William Shakespeare

  Act I, scene v

  1. MIMULUS LEWISII

  A. E. Bartram

  Cornell University

  Ithaca, New York

  March 10, 1898

  Prof. H. G. Merriam

  The Agricultural College

  of the State of Montana

  Bozeman, Montana

  Dear Professor,

  Dr. Philip Aber of the Smithsonian made a presentation on campus last week in which he discussed your planned field study in Yellowstone National Park. Although I have studied medicine during my tenure here, I prefer the study of botany over anything else. I have a personal collection of over 5,000 specimens, some of which I inherited from a distant relative on my father’s side, and have worked extensively on classification. For the last three years I have summered in Philadelphia studying the Lewis expedition, and have initiated an illustrated documentation of their collection, specializing in the Rocky Mountain species, e.g., Lupinus argenteus, Linum Lewisii, Clarkia pulchella, and, of course, Lewisia rediviva.

  I have found this work to be immensely satisfying, but it has, of necessity, focused on studying species out of place and time. I am indebted, as we all are, to the earliest collectors, but am equally interested in exploring the complexities of plant life in their natural environs, and contributing to a scientific understanding of the plant kingdom. I am young, single, and without any engagement to confine me here. With your expressed interest, I could reach Montana by May 15; May 30 at the latest. Please advise at your earliest convenience as I am most anxious to make plans.

  Sincerely,

  A. E. Bartram

  Howard Merriam, Ph.D.

  The Agricultural College

  of the State of Montana

  Bozeman, Mont.

  April 2, 1898

  A. E. Bartram

  Cornell University

  Ithaca, New York

  Dear Dr. Bartram,

  Your letter arrived at a most fortuitous time. I am indeed planning a scientific expedition into the Yellowstone. My goal is threefold: to study Rocky Mountain specimens in their native setting and to initiate a collection of those specimens for a research herbarium I wish to establish here at Montana College. Based on this work, I plan to prepare a complete enumeration of Yellowstone and other Montana species.

  As you may know, aside from Coulter’s preliminary work, little has been done to systematically collect, classify, and analyze the plant life of the northern Rocky Mountains, and much must be done if we are to better understand the region and its potential. I have selected the Nation’s Park as a starting point for my investigations because it shelters a diversity of virtually undiscovered plant life in what could very well be the last uniquely wild place in America. But that will not last, given the tourism promotion of the U.S. government and its railroad friends. Sadly, the situation throughout the West is much the same. Agriculture may be the future of this region, but it will destroy the land as we know it. Needless to say, there is much to be done and very little time before a wealth of native species is lost to us forever.

  We will establish a camp of operations at Mammoth on or about May 1, weather permitting. I suggest you plan to meet us there as soon as possible after that date. You are welcome to pursue your own interests in plant life and the environment. I ask only that you contribute to both the Montana and Smithsonian Institution’s research collections, and provide me with a copy of your field notes.

  Although the high-mountain country around the Park warms slowly (and this has been an unusually severe winter), I plan to start my work in the areas around Mammoth Hot Springs and other geothermal activity so we should not be too delayed. Having collected extensively around the hotpots of Northern California while a graduate student at Berkeley, I look forward to comparing the species in these northern climes.

  You, too, may find this unusual environment of interest. Thanks to a federal program of road construction, the Park is rapidly becoming overrun with tourists and other travellers—they say more than 10,000 last year alone!—but I think you will find that most of the natural systems and wildlife which have evolved in concert with the geothermal areas, and which can add to an appreciation of plant life in this region, are still firmly in place. I do not know the Park well, but I assume you will also find ample opportunity to investigate the bitterroot in all its unusual stages of development—if not in Mammoth and environs then in the higher backcountry once weather and other conditions improve.

  I notice that in your letter you did not call out the Lewis monkeyflower. Perhaps a specimen did not survive the multiple owners and travels back and forth between Europe that the Lewis collection reportedly made before finding its permanent home in Philadelphia. You may wish to refer to Pursh’s illustrated Flora for additional information. The monkeyflower is, if I may say so, a lovely specimen. To encounter it at 9,000 feet is to share in some of the adventure of that first great American naturalist as he reached the elusive headwaters of the Missouri. Those compact petals and almost sensuous corolla lobes lilting along the creekbeds must have been as joyful a sight then as they are now. As you can tell, I, too, am devoted to the work of Meriwether Lewis and look forward to learning more about your studies.

  Dr. Bartram, before closing I fear I must be perfectly frank with you. Although you appeal for no commitm
ent, I would be remiss to ask you to travel such a great distance without some word about your prospects once you are here. I can reimburse you, of course, for your travel to and from Montana. I can, naturally, provide for your room and board in the field. I can also offer a small stipend, but only upon successful completion of the work, and only if the expedition proceeds as scheduled. Since you are a collector yourself, you know the financial and other hazards that await us in the field. Please understand that I cannot afford to finance any unexpected expenditures out of my own pocket. Such expenses must come from my very limited expedition funds. I had hoped to be joined by my colleagues here at the college, which would have cost me little, but due to a marriage, a death, and a trip to our nation’s capital, those plans have not been realized. Thus, I find myself embarrassingly short of funds to adequately support and reward your participation.

  Additionally, although there will be much classification to be accomplished during the fall and winter months, I cannot guarantee a position to you upon completion of our field work. Although I have great plans to establish a botanical research herbarium, these plans are not shared by the college president, who believes the study of botany is somehow in conflict with the educational and agricultural missions of the college. That agriculture is the growing of plants and that botany is the systematic study of those plants seems to have escaped him altogether. He is, you must understand, an historian, and as such more interested in building monuments named after the dead (dead naturalists at that!) than exposing students to living, breathing science in the here and now. But I digress.

  I do hope you will consider my offer. If, under the circumstances, you feel that you are unable to do so, I will understand completely and will continue to hold you in the highest regard for your expressed interest in my work.

  I remain,

  yours most humbly,

  Howard Merriam, Ph.D.

  p.s. I cannot help but remark upon your name. If you are indeed a member of that prestigious family of botany, I can only say how pleased I would be to have you join our group, and I pledge to do my utmost to find an appropriate position for you here at the college. If not, be assured that the offer still stands. HGM

  WESTERN UNION TELEGRAM

  APRIL 16, 1898

  PROFESSOR SORRY TO HEAR ABOUT THE UNFORTUNATE TIMING OF THE MARRIAGE THE DEATH AND THE TRIP TO OUR NATIONS CAPITAL HOPE THESE CALAMITIES DID NOT BEFALL THE SAME PERSON YES I AM A DISTANT BARTRAM BUT CLOSE ENOUGH THAT MY FATHER WANTED TO NAME ME AFTER DARWIN MY MOTHER WISELY DEMURRED NOT YET A PHYSICIAN HOWEVER HAVING ALLOWED MY NATURALIZING TO SUBSUME MY MEDICAL STUDIES WILL MEET YOU AT THE MAMMOTH SPRINGS ON OR ABOUT MAY 1 AGREE TO YOUR TERMS AS STATED YOURS AE BARTRAM

  Howard Merriam

  Bozeman, Mont.

  April 19, 1898

  Dear Mother,

  You said you were praying for me. Well, your prayers have been answered. I have just heard from a medical student and young botanist at Cornell University who is willing to join the expedition, and will do so with little or no financial commitment on my part. And, he is a Bartram at that!

  I may have told you that Miller bailed out. Too many commitments he says, now that he is married. It was a disappointment, but fortunately my work does not depend on a cartographer. That aspect of the Park has been fairly well documented by the government by now. But Gleick has been making similar rumblings, and now informs me that he is off to Washington for a month. I think his reservations are more related to the increasing severity of the president’s highwaymen reports than to any time commitment at the Smithsonian. Gleick lost a friend to some sort of holdup when they were surveying for the railroad, and I do not think he has ever recovered. His lack of interest is a real loss for me. Gleick is a surgeon by training, a crack shot, and he knows the land. Besides, he believes in the value of science and is the only true ally I have on campus.

  There is Peacock, of course, but he will disappear into his private world of beetles once we reach the Park. The only thing I can count on from him will be the occasional fish dinner—he is a superb fisherman. But then he should be. He is on first-name basis with all those bugs!

  Ironically, I find myself now in the position of having to enlist the help of Andrew Rutherford (you remember, the weather man), who represents agriculture in all its glory and could not care less about native species. I so badly need to field a team that I might even be able to put up with that foul-smelling thing he sticks in his mouth. (These days, knowing how I feel about it, he has taken to stuffing the pipe—still burning!—in his pocket whenever he comes upstairs. Better he should catch fire than my office, temporary as it is.)

  Rutherford is ambitious in an off-handed sort of way. I might talk him into giving up his daily beaker of brandy and weather checks if he thought I might name an edible grass or two after him. And back him in his fight against naming the two new buildings after Lewis and Clark. You know how I feel about the significant contributions made by the two explorers, but I am getting desperate. And these days I really do not feel up to the fight.

  One thing I have discovered as I have gotten older is that I do not have the heart, or maybe it is the stomach, to take on these kinds of arguments—particularly with colleagues like Rutherford. He is one of those men you encounter in academia who find it more convenient to champion a single complaint rather than dedicate themselves to any specific field of study. For some con trarian reason known only to Rutherford himself, Lewis and Clark have attracted his particular ire.

  It should be interesting when this man Bartram joins us. He apparently has dedicated his naturalizing career to studying the plants of the expedition. I did not have the heart to tell him that neither Lewis nor Clark ventured anywhere near the Park. If he does not know it now, he will figure it out in time. I hope it is not too much of a disappointment.

  As you can see, I am in the thick of it here. Appreciate your letters and kind thoughts. And yes, these days even your prayers. You have managed to deliver a botanist with medical training. Maybe now you can drum up a new research facility and herbarium—named after Washington and Jefferson, of course. Got to keep Rutherford happy! To be honest, the way it has been snowing this last week I would settle for a sign of spring. See what you can do!

  Love,

  Howard

  A. E. Bartram

  Philadelphia, Penn.

  April 25, 1898

  Dear Jess,

  I have booked passage for Montana, so before I go I would like to arrange for storage of my meagre campus possessions. Can you accommodate them? There is not much. Mostly books, and a small trunk of personal “treasures”—botanical drawings, illustrations, my water colors, &c. There is the collection, of course, but that I am leaving with Lester until my return this fall. In spite of our differences at the moment, he is a good curator and will guard it, I am certain, with his life.

  The visit with my parents, as I should have predicted, has been a mixed blessing. My mother is convinced that if I go to Montana she will never see me again. “Where is Montana?” she keeps muttering. “I don’t even know where Montana is.” Her mournful sighs sound not unlike the last Sialia of summer.

  Father, the great supporter of Indian rights in the West, has kept our conversations focused on Native American vision quests, their use of medicinal plants, inter-tribal rivalries now that they are confined to the reservations, that sort of thing. His inquiries only fuel my mother’s emotional fire, I fear.

  Underneath all his apparent scientific interest in native peoples, and the feigned concern he shows my mother, I am certain my father is pleased about my plans. He has been, after all, supportive of my naturalizing from the very beginning. In fact, at one point he suggested shipping me off to England for schooling, hoping, I suppose, I would become a latter day Franz Bauer, while keeping the Bartram name alive and well in the annals of natural history. Or maybe he did not want to clean up any more of my early, admittedly foul, attempts at taxidermy. Regardless, I wish I would have known then
what I know now. I would have jumped at the chance to study at Kew Gardens, and would have made my mother’s life hell if she refused me the opportunity.

  So, you see, this is my second chance at it. I know you, too, think this trip is foolhardy, and that I am putting my medical career (not to mention my personal life) at risk but, to be honest, I only pursued medicine to please my mother, who always dreamed of having a physician in the family.

  You must believe me when I say that naturalizing is in my blood. I do not want to live—and die—a closet botanist in New York, sneaking out to the field only when it does not interfere with my so-called real work. You, of anyone, should understand that.

  Besides, I want to match the best I have against the best the world has to offer before it is gone. That is what the West is all about, is it not? Why else would Meriwether Lewis have risked his life, and the lives of so many others, if not to be the first to witness—and to understand—that part of the natural world which was unknown at the time? The National Park is still such an enigma—at least in the scientific world. I want to be the one who helps the world better understand it. And understand it in context—not in some book or museum. It will be a true test of my own mettle.

  So please do not think ill of me for taking advantage of this opportunity. I am not deserting my career; I am pursuing my life’s work. Besides, it is only for four months. I can always pick up where I left off if I, too, decide at summer’s end that leaving medicine is a mistake.

  Now that you hopefully understand why it is essential that I “seize the day” as they say on campus, I have to confess that I, too, have my own reservations about the trip. Professor Merriam, the head of the expedition, has written to me making the grossest assumptions about the state of my botanical knowledge. He refers me to F. Pursh as if I have never heard of him and his work; suggests I may have somehow overlooked the Mimulus Lewisii, which he refers to as the monkeyflower. I can only hope that he does not presume to instruct me in the field, he who writes of the “compact petals” and “sensuous corolla lobes.” I fear I may be joining a party of romantic old women revelling in their botanical gardens, rather than an expedition of practicing scientists.