Livingston

Tim Castano: In southwestern Montana, at the northern edge of Paradise Valley, along the Yellowstone River, one will find the town of Livingston. you grew up in Livingston and moved away and eventually came home. Does this dynamic of departure and return influence your perspective on the town? your Jules Clement novels take place in Blue Deer, an analog of Livingston, ⁓ while you set the center of everything in Livingston. ⁓ In both instances, ⁓ what do you wish for your readers to understand? In statement on the organization's literary heritage, ⁓ Elk River Arts and highlights connection literature and place. ⁓ Could you say more about this take very much i mean ⁓ i hadn't left would had a much more in discussing your relationship with Livingston, you have said you can't fire a cannon from a canoe. Could you share more about what the aphorism says about the town? What in Livingston helps shape writers and is it the natural beauty, the culture, the history, probably all of the above? about your hometown. Livingston and Montana life here. ⁓ Stories echo across an ancient landscape, one carved in modern by a railroad ⁓ that brought travelers to trails roamed by legends. ⁓

Jamie Harrison: I think I want to disabuse people of the notion that everybody wears a cowboy hat, you know, that ⁓ this is sort of either the wild west or some cliched version of the west. And I think when I started writing the mysteries, I had moved from New York. I grew up in a rural place in Northern Michigan.

Tim: I am Tim Costano and this is Lit Trip, where we take you on a tour through a location's literary past, present, and future. Writers, scholars, civic leaders, and fans guide us through the history, influences, traditions, and contributions that transform a place into a destination. If you enjoy stories, personalities, and escape, come lose yourself in a Lit Trip.

Yetta Stein: Yeah, it's a great question. And I think it's one we all think about a lot. I think place always shapes writers. And so it isn't just Livingston as a place that shapes the writers who live here. I think anywhere we live, writers are being satiated and fed by those places. And those places seep into our work, whether we like it or not. I think that the natural beauty of Livingston absolutely inspires awe.

Tim Cahill: Well, I see it as a solid base. My work had me traveling all over the world for, you know, for stories. ⁓ And I could always come back to Livingston and expect to be kind of in this ⁓ place where people knew me. wasn't that everybody likes me. Somebody, some people, you know, dislike some of the things I write.

Tim Castano: I away to college. I I thought this was the most incredibly boring and backwards town in the world when I was a kid. I couldn't wait to get out of here. I went away to college and then foundered a bit. Got out of college with a degree in English literature and I thought I'd sort of sign up as a freelance public intellectual. That didn't work. So I did manual labor and then finally got fired from it. With a population totaling just over eight thousand, Livingston lays claim to one of the highest per capita concentrations of writers in the United States, creating a distinctive literary center.

Jamie Harrison: But I had moved from New York and maybe I was trying to explain it to them that it was not what they thought of, that they should put aside their preconceived notions that it was, it's in fact sort of a weirder experience living in a small town so you know everybody and you have to get along with everybody. Your life isn't quite as compartmentalized. You don't only know other people who work at magazines or other people who work in food.

Yetta Stein: ⁓ You know, I think we're all sort of writing odes to the river and the mountains and ⁓ public lands and access and space. But I think my secret opinion is that the wind is really what inspires a lot of us or makes us all feel crazy enough to write, to do this audacious thing, which is storytelling and writing poems. ⁓ Wind is sort of this feature of Livingston. It's one of the windier places in the US. ⁓

Tim Cahill: And we know that. But the cool thing about Livingston is even with the divisive politics, it feels like kind of a fire free zone. go into a bar and you have a drink and there's a guy who's maybe doesn't think the way you do about politics. And ⁓ you're not going to talk about that. You're going to talk about how the fishing was today or something like that.

Tim Castano: you grew up in Michigan, ⁓ traveled extensively and moved to manual labor job and took off to far east ⁓ and i ⁓ got a job teaching there. I lived in the far east for a few years and traveled around ⁓ various in New York. We even lived in Antarctica for a while. Traveled around South America. And you know to come back to Livingston after ⁓ those of trials I saw it through very different eyes. My eyes were changed. Livingston Improper, to borrow your term, in 2011, ⁓ do you feel as if you have become a Livingston writer, so to speak, or is Livingston's literary identity organically a product of those with diverse backgrounds who settle in the town? Here, authors live in relationship with an environment at times beautiful and awe inspiring, as well as harsh and indifferent, engendering profound respect.

Jamie Harrison: ⁓ least when we first moved here, everybody mixed at the same bar. So we were young, we were ⁓ single, but we were ⁓ But we ⁓ moved out and you'd be there with a logger, with a teacher, ⁓ a lawyer, with the secret millionaire from down the valley, with a rancher. It was a mix of people. ⁓ ⁓ sort of what I've tried to bring to the books.

Tim Castano: you a good deal ⁓ with the destinations as the subjects of your and perhaps informing your overall writing. ⁓ Do your travels influence your sense of Livingston ⁓ ⁓ do ⁓ you view the town differently you

Marc Beaudin: Yeah, ⁓ guess I, well, I moved to Montana in 2008, but I was out in what we call Paradise Valley, ⁓ aptly named, or at least it was. And... ⁓

Yetta Stein: just rips and roars year round, but especially in our long, long dark winters. And I think the wind and especially the sound it creates, it rattles houses and you find trash cans sort of thrown about ⁓ when you wake up in the morning. And it's just this place where the wind is sort of a motivating ⁓ and crazying testament to what we do.

Tim Cahill: Livingston is a place that I can always come back to. I know where I am. know where I'm sitting. I grew up in a small town and I guess I'm a small town kind of guy.

Tim Castano: by the travel i think more than the years ⁓ and the town while i was going to i came back with entirely perspective this is my place now ⁓ i find it interesting and attractive and warm i wouldn't want to live anywhere else

Gretel Ehrlich: you

Tim Castano: this respect ⁓ carries over to fellow citizens, with whom authors share in the to day and trials of life in such a location.

Gretel Ehrlich: Well, since I often I'm often in the high Arctic, so I've spent 23 years going to Northwestern Greenland, not lately, but but in earlier days. So, yes. So in Livingston, it's much warmer. And, you know, it is just there's just something about it that is so welcoming. And there's always

Marc Beaudin: you there's a nice cache that comes with being called a Livingston writer or a Montana writer. ⁓ And I've really enjoyed since being here that I get labeled that by, you know, if somebody's doing a promo for an event I've I'm doing, and they say, you know, Montana writer, Mark Boudin. that feels good. You know, there's there's you're in very good company.

Jamie Harrison: ⁓ So my lived experience and what I've observed in town and also that it's not some pastoral dream at all if you my husband's ⁓ Was a defense attorney for years and is now a county attorney and It's a tough place to live in a lot of ways.

Tim Castano: for a lit trip. An authentic community deeply connected to the land and one another, Livingston, Montana calls out is there something ⁓ authentically ⁓ in terms of literary identity? this identity do you think change new writers discover and work in town? Or does ⁓ the identity change the writers who visit reside in Livingston? I don't know that there is a literary identity. ⁓ So you moved to Livingston before the town's as a literary center had taken hold. ⁓ Do you have a on how its identity has evolved over the decades, both as a witness and a contributor?

Gretel Ehrlich: You can always go to the Murray Bar and have a glass of beer or wine and see Francie Jamie Harrison or Maggie McGuane or somebody. I'm always to be back. That's all. Although I don't actually live in Livingston. I live ⁓ about 40 minutes But ⁓ it's my. ⁓

Marc Beaudin: when you're called a Livingston writer for sure. ⁓ I don't know if I personally think of myself as being any type of, ⁓ any In fact, I often kind of rail against any modifier coming before the word poet. when people, rather than being primarily a poet,

Tim Cahill: Thank

Tim Castano: ⁓ You you said tough place to live. So was it like living in a place that you then transform into a fictional world? Does compartmentalization occur in your mind?

Jamie Harrison: course, yeah. I'm pretty careful. I try to be careful. I try, I guess, not to compartmentalize too much and not to be too careful, but obviously I'm careful about legal stuff.

Tim Castano: in the seventies, Tom McGuane, Richard Brodigan, Russell Chatham, Jim Harrison, most of those guys are no longer with us. Livingston's most dominant sound The Wind This force that defies hyperbole has knocked rail cars off the tracks and tested the wills of residents and visitors

Gretel Ehrlich: My town center, yeah. So, you know, I go to kind of extreme places, it's, two, ⁓ places I go either. ⁓

Tim Cahill: When I came out here the first time, which was February of 79, the sun blacked out of the sky and then the light came out and there was that's when I met Russell Chatham and Tom McGuane and William Yardsberg and Richard Brodigan, who had actually known in San Francisco a little bit. When I say the sun blotted out of the sky, it was total solar eclipse of the sun.

Marc Beaudin: They have modifiers in front of the word in their bio. And it feels to me like they're sort of implying that they're a poet to serve some other ends, you know, or some political, you know, agenda you may have, good or bad, usually good. But for me, ⁓ I just being a poet.

Tim Castano: they get looked into the genre of sort of you know manly manly man stuff they wrote a lot about hunting and fishing going outside and did it beautifully but they're not the only ones here one of the writers of very different genres ⁓ have come through ⁓ Christopher Paolini grew up here he writes science fiction fantasy novels

Gretel Ehrlich: Africa or Greenland, really correlate with Livingston or anything in Montana, ⁓ except that, ⁓ it's home. And there's people to talk to who are worldly and been places and understand, whatever it is ⁓ all have to say about our experience. So that's really great.

Tim Castano: Amidst the howls and whoosh, one will hear names, especially those of the Montana gang, the writers who put Livingston on the literary map. McGwane, Broadigan, Yortzburg, and Harrison. In this case, Jamie Harrison, author of The Widow Nash, The Center of Everything, and the Jules Clement novels. Jamie's move to Livingston opened the town to her father, Jim Harrison.

Tim Cahill: in February of 1979. I was working for Outside Magazine at the time, and all of these writers here, Yurtsberg, Brodding, and Chatham, they all working for Outside Magazine and doing a piece for Outside Magazine. I was to be covering the total eclipse, sounded like part of my job was to

Marc Beaudin: That said, I do feel like there is a very strong identity to be a Livingston writer.

Jamie Harrison: I've got a lot of grief the first book about who ⁓ is real and who wasn't real and who I use for a model.

Tim Castano: sells of them. He grew up here in Livingston. There's a lot of here. have, well, off the top of my head. I can think of six or eight published poets living here in town right now. We have two poets laureate in town. There was poetry reading week where there were Author of poetry, nonfiction, novels, and novellas, including one of the more popular titles associated with Montana Legends of the Fall.

Jamie Harrison: and I was able to push back pretty well and people now sort of turn it into a game.

Tim Castano: While Jamie Harrison and Jim Harrison made their way to Livingston from the Midwest, a not uncommon path for many, writer Scott McMillian, born and raised in the town. Following years abroad as a journalist, Scott returned to Livingston, published his work, Mark of the Grizzly, and founded the Montana Quarterly, in the process, gifting his hometown with one of its most valuable cultural assets.

Tim Cahill: be sure we could recruit these guys. after I ⁓ the town and the ⁓ I I would like to move there. And ⁓ worked well. thought that I could see into the futures ⁓ because I move there.

Tim Castano: three poets laureate in the room, current and former. There's a lot of genres, a lot of different types of writing styles. think if a commonality, it's not the towns so much as the landscape around it that shapes people, and it's not just writers that shapes all of us. ⁓ I could be...

Marc Beaudin: A of the writers here ⁓ and it really feels like what a Livingston writer is. Mostly is somebody who sort of blew in from somewhere else. The community of writers. I think part of joins us is that

Tim Castano: do you view Livingston differently depending on your character's points of view? ⁓ Say, Jules Clement or Polly from The Center of Everything. In ⁓ Future of Ice, ⁓ as well as other works, ⁓ explore your relationship with winter ⁓ and you ⁓ winter is refuge and deathbed.

Jamie Harrison: you know, in a way people for a long time asked me who Jules was, you know, who he was modeled on and Jules was just me. If I could be in bar fights and if I were a six foot two man and if I were X years younger. ⁓ So obviously you are your character, but Polly's is much more my experience. It's a fairly accurate experience of living here.

Tim Castano: you

Tim Cahill: And then they had this thing where I could get manuscripts into New York in one day. It's called FedEx. And then after that, there was fax machines and you could almost do them, you know, in a day. And then of course we have the internet, all those kinds of things. And people think, yeah, Tim figured that out in 1979. No, I didn't.

Marc Beaudin: Most of us are from somewhere else. We all kind of have a little bit of that vagrant energy to us. For some reason, a lot of us come from Michigan in the Midwest. know, Jim Harrison and Tom McGuane are Michigan guys, but also myself, my cousin Doug Peacock, Callan Wink, who's a fantastic novelist, ⁓ lives here in town now, but is originally from Michigan. So...

Tim Castano: Monastery and Ivory Tower, Cave and Ghost. Does one need to appreciate the seasons and the surroundings to connect to a location like Livingston? Shifting the link between authors and place to the bond among one another, how might you describe the literary community in Livingston? a harsh environment here. have to adapt or you're not going to make it. Winters can be incredibly brutal here. You have to learn how to endure it and maybe even enjoy it. Summers are nice, but the economy always struggled. It's a hard place to a living. Livingston's legendary authors share the space with new generations of writers, like Yeda Stein. A poet, Yeda leads one of the town's most vital literary resources, Elk River Arts and Lectures, which honors the region's long storied history, while supporting current and emerging writers with workshops, symposia, and solidarity.

Gretel Ehrlich: ⁓ I definitely think so. I mean, ⁓ it's all about being, ⁓ as say, awake and aware. ⁓ yes, Livingston's a little town ⁓ on the Yellowstone ⁓ with mountains in the back ⁓ and a little ski place and, ⁓ a great bookstore a of good restaurants and bars and... ⁓

Yetta Stein: It's such a great community. I would describe it as storied and depthful and it has a very big capacity for newness. It's not a community with a lot of scarcity. I've found as a young person and as a young writer in Livingston, I've found that whatever I start to build and bring energy around, people who have been here 20, 30, 40 years are excited to invest and engage in it.

Marc Beaudin: If there is like a character that one would call that's a Livingston writer, I feel like quite often a big part of that character is something of a vagrant, something of a wandering soul who's ended up here.

Tim Castano: And that physical and economic landscape, I think, shapes people, writers, as much as anything. I wouldn't say there's a Livingston school of but there are a lot of writers here. Livingston's ⁓ Natural Beauty ⁓ is often cited as a for its appeal to authors. ⁓ And you've written about humanity's with the natural world.

Jamie Harrison: I wrote that novel because of events in real life. I wrote it one summer when a friend of ours had drowned. And every morning I would wake up and I'd hear the helicopter going out again to search the river. It was a babysitter of ours, a boy. And

Tim Cahill: I think one of the things you have to remember with ⁓ I thought that, ⁓ there might even be a story here of these literary types and hostile people, some kind of crosscurrent. ⁓ Nothing like that

Tim Castano: Elk River Arts and Lectures receives guidance from its board of directors, an impressive assemblage of writers, artists, and community leaders.

Gretel Ehrlich: But what really holds us or should hold us to a place is what's all around. I mean, the bird life, the fish life, the varying weathers, the capriciousness of spring, the

Yetta Stein: There's not this sort of gripped mentality onto the old ways. The literary community here is welcoming and earnest and excitable and really likes to honor those who made this place sort of a literary haven. So Jim Harrison and Tom McQuain and Gatz Yorkeberg, those writers that were here far before and many that I'm not listing that were here far before us. have a literary community that

Jamie Harrison: You know, I just sort of had to do something with it. I'd just lie there, listen to it, watch the helicopters during the day. People would go out and look for him. And ultimately my mother found him on a dog walk. But in other ways, he probably is lot like me, just like the character Alice is in the Jules books. She's cranky, she cooks, she tries to write. I don't know.

Tim Castano: A member of the advisory board, Gretel Erlich, has paved a noteworthy literary path with nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, along the way garnering such honors as the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Distinguished Prose, and a Whiting Award, among others.

Tim Cahill: nothing at all. what have to remember is after the writers that I talked about, and Harrison was a frequent visitor at that time. I was the next in line. And at that time, the town is basically agriculture and

Tim Castano: you view Livingston's surroundings as a source of ⁓ inspiration, ⁓ lesson in indifference, or something entirely different?

Gretel Ehrlich: heat of because of climate change. The horror of the coal trains going through the middle of town ⁓ carrying coal to, suppose, China. ⁓

Yetta Stein: really wants to continue to celebrate those people and invest in the next generation of those writers.

Tim Castano: do ⁓ inspiration ⁓ i guess that's what we've seen it so clear yeah it does i this this landscape does so cute it's not just the scenery it's it's the wild animals fish wild ecosystems share this with us As Yeta Stein noted, Elk River Arts and Lectures spawn from Elk River Books, one of Livingston's most prominent independent bookstores. The sale of rare and antiquarian publications accounts only for a portion of Elk River's contributions. you've lived in Livingston for over 30 years. Do you ever still feel like a newcomer? ⁓ And ⁓ if so, that give you a perspective on, some of the authors who more recently have settled in the town?

Tim Cahill: That's where the money came from. And the railroad pulled out in about 1984. Huge big shops. The town lost about 5 % of the population in a year or two. I bought my house in Livingston for comically small amount of money. The place was depressed. But that's the kind of place, a beautiful place, a beautiful river, mountains, you know, with the

Gretel Ehrlich: You know, you've got to just dig into everything that comes at you. Otherwise, are you alive? Because I don't live in town, I've always lived really rurally. ⁓ And so each season has its ⁓ deep effect.

Tim Castano: If you're not impressed by those things, probably not going to be impressed with living here or pretty much anywhere in Montana. This is not a place in the world where, until very recently, where people came to make money. They came for the natural surroundings, wildlife, the scenery, elbow room.

Jamie Harrison: I don't feel like a newcomer. This is sort of an argument around here, who's a local and who isn't a local. And my feeling is that if manage to live here for winters, you could stop being an out of towner, especially given that white people really only settled here 150 years ago. So I've always had a bone to pick with the pioneer crowd. ⁓

Tim Castano: The store fills the role of public good, hosting signings, lectures, readings, and performances.

Gretel Ehrlich: on my psyche and my body and the chores I have to do to keep warm or to keep cool or to grow whatever I'm growing that, you know, I custom graze cattle here where I live in. ⁓ I go out every day and look at the grasses and which ones are surviving the drought and which ones aren't and what the ⁓ incoming is and how to, ⁓ kind of ⁓

Tim Cahill: glaciers shining on their shoulders and glittering rivers.

Tim Castano: Elk River Books sinks with Livingston's literary rhythms thanks to its founder, Mark Bodine, a poet, writer, and theater artist. So Elk River Arts and Lectures aspires to honor Livingston's past while dreaming our way into the future. How do your programmatic offerings actualize this mission?

Jamie Harrison: many of whom I love and people who really have led a tough life, who've branched, who've toughed it out. They were not, they're not locals either. The new writers, ⁓ glad they're here. It makes it interesting. ⁓ People like Yetta, I adore Yetta. I work with her at Elk River ⁓

Tim Cahill: and cheap houses, cheap rent, ⁓ and that draws various artists. So ⁓ I came, ⁓ was a guy who made my money from New York and Los Angeles and spent it in Livingston. ⁓ was a welcome addition to the community. And it became very artsy as

Tim Castano: And yeah, I think that that sinks into almost everybody who writes in Montana and larger cultures. Well, I mean, it's part of our part of our culture, ethos, our news. Every newspaper you pick up almost every day has a story about the environment ⁓ on the front ⁓ We don't always on what to do.

Yetta Stein: ⁓ a great question. ⁓ So I think the part of honoring our heritage comes with our lecture series, bringing in writers that are connected to place, ⁓ not our place, but connected to a place of their own and who are connected to our community. So we have a wonderful board of directors that's well connected in the literary world and ⁓ always thinking up new ideas of who to bring to Livingston, who our community needs to hear from or would like to hear from.

Gretel Ehrlich: Think about how many animals you can graze and when to bring them on and when to take them off and where the birds are nesting and what the pronghorn antelope are doing and what the deer are doing and ⁓ great bird life here. Sandhill cranes and geese and...

Tim Cahill: these kind of places do when they're cheap, beautiful. We've got 14 art galleries in Livingston. That's like one art gallery for every 500 people.

Jamie Harrison: doing the arts and lectures thing. Yeah, it's great. It's great to have a young, vital crowd of people around.

Tim Castano: but we do talk about it and care about it.

Gretel Ehrlich: herons and all the songbirds that come through here. I mean, and it doesn't matter if you're in town or not. It's just, it is, we don't go out to nature. We are nature and we are in it all the time. We breathe in weather, we exhale carbon dioxide. We, we're part of the whole thing ⁓ and it's really important to register that.

Yetta Stein: ⁓ And that feels like this way of taking care of the writers who are currently doing the work and then the writers that came before. ⁓ I in terms of honoring the sort of next generation or cultivating that next generation of literary giants, ⁓ we send into the fourth grade classrooms to teach poetry. We reach into the more rural ⁓ corners of Park and Gardner and Willsall ⁓ to get poetry journalism lessons.

Tim Castano: ⁓ you've said of Montana Quarterly that our philosophy is pretty simple. Montana is a cool place that hasn't been screwed up yet. ⁓ We've got a of writers, photographers, and readers that want ⁓ to keep it way. Does that still hold true? And do you think that same philosophy could be applied to Livingston more broadly? ⁓ I think it holds true, you've said that you not necessarily set out to make a career of writing, but life eventually brought you from Livingston, first by way of Michigan and then New York. Do you believe you would have become a writer or at least the writer you would become had you not moved to Livingston?

Tim Cahill: So other writers came out

Tim Castano: your store, Elkripper Books, anchors Livingston's literary community, particularly the events you host. ⁓ Do you view your work less as that of a bookseller and more as the curator of a good or cultural utility?

Jamie Harrison: You know, I did it out of necessity because I lost my job out here and there were no other jobs that were going to pay well enough. had a small child. I don't know. I think in New York I probably would have segued to another magazine job. I would have figured out one thing. No, I wouldn't be the same sort of person. I had

Yetta Stein: even sometimes fiction writing lessons in front of those kids. Supporting our public school teachers is paramount to us. We offer all sorts of free writing workshops. We partner closely with our senior citizen center to do all ages writing workshops. And that's a really lovely intergenerational component that I feel a deep passion around. And then we also have our Elk River Writers Workshop. It's once a year out at Chico Hot Springs. And you apply and we have a wonderful faculty. It's run by a writer named Seemarie Furman.

Tim Castano: ⁓ and i i i guess i sort of directed that way ⁓ you know i make the editorial decisions on what what the pollution what not to publish

Marc Beaudin: I think that's primarily how I view the work we do. You know, that it's, ⁓ is, I like that phrase, a public good and a cultural utility. That's nice. You know, bringing as, as writers, it's always been super important to support writers with our bookstore. ⁓ But also that idea of bringing writers and readers together. These two groups that

Tim Cahill: had the first group, the McGuane, Harrison, Brodigan and Yachtsburg. Then you had me. Then you had bunch of people who were writers who kind of knew that this was going on this town. ⁓

Tim Castano: i guess i gravitate people who think somewhat like i do that ⁓ lucky to be here but this place is kind of fragile as is all the natural world ⁓ and it it needs your caretaking or sometimes best thing we can do is just leave it alone and let nature work it's meant to

Jamie Harrison: sort of tried secretly writing a little bit in my 20s in New York and it was all sort of solipsistic, classic, young suffering person in Greenwich Village No, ⁓ I've a different person by living here

Yetta Stein: And it brings writers of all ages and ilks and sort of professional levels to the same place to engage and discuss and create among these beautiful scenic places, you know, right at the base of Immigrant Peak. So ⁓ think our offerings really work to span all sorts of different writers. You know, just this week, we launched a two-part playwriting workshop with a ⁓ new nonprofit here in Livingston. ⁓

Tim Cahill: and one of our resident writers, Toby Thompson, wrote a story about it. New York Times could have been. So ⁓ pretty the way I see it.

Marc Beaudin: are absolutely dependent upon each other. They have this mutualistic symbiotic relationship. You can't, you know, they can't exist without each other. And so to be able to provide a place where we can bring those groups together and really promote both of them and support both of them is a huge part of what we do and why we have Elk River Books.

Tim Castano: There was a famous of Montana writing. It's about 30 years old now, Montana, the last best place. And that's become a slogan for copy shops and real estate agencies and ⁓ kinds of things ⁓ the last few decades. We ⁓ a congressman, his name was Pat Williams, and I remember watching him stand up on the floor of the U.S. House and he said, in ⁓ Unsollust you Loneliness ended that night, whooshed away by the embrace of strangers. Has the embrace of strangers followed you as your journeys have expanded, and does Livingston allow you to balance solitude with community?

Yetta Stein: that's brought the Fringe Festival model to Park County. So ⁓ new works, plays that are put on once a year, we're partnering closely with that organization to get people writing plays. So I think even thinking beyond our more traditional genre of fiction and nonfiction and poetry, we wanna think about all the ways people are engaging with writing, especially now in this age of ⁓ in this age of kids having AI write their essays. We wanna...

Tim Castano: As evidenced by the variety of titles at Elk River Books, Livingston's writers address many subjects in several genres and styles, some unsurprisingly prominent themes travel and adventure. If ever a place could feed restless souls drawn to challenges and frontiers, Livingston would offer such a home, as it has for Tim Cahill the past several decades.

Gretel Ehrlich: Absolutely. mean, so for much of my adult life, I lived in...

Tim Castano: He was talking about Montana. said Montana is the last best place. truly believe that. But say that a little sadly. Because so much of the rest of the world has been over manipulated and overused. And Montana has freedom of movement, ⁓ freedom for wildlife move. We have clean air. We have clean water.

Marc Beaudin: But also, even with the books, ⁓ the book selling side of it that supposedly ⁓ we to do to stay in business. ⁓ I feel like that's also part of a community service or, you know, preserving and defending the book as an artifact ⁓ and ⁓ the to read and the encouragement to read and to treasure literary productions.

Gretel Ehrlich: rural Wyoming, not too far from here as the Raven flies, but, and it was really loneliness that propelled me here because I was on the phone with Tom McGuane one day and he said, for God's sakes, move to Montana. You've been in Wyoming long enough, you know, like 40 something years, and you need to come up here so you'll have someone to talk to. And so I did. I always do what Tom tells me to do.

Yetta Stein: remind people, even remind myself that creation is an act of God. Creation is the opposite of war. It's the most important thing we can be doing right now.

Tim Castano: We've got some environmental problems and messes, but all in all, it's a pretty good place and it needs conscious thought to keep it that way. As I said a minute ago, think it's reflected in our economy and our politics. We talk about that all the time. We don't always agree, but we do talk about it.

Gretel Ehrlich: ⁓ And so, yeah, it's been incredible. really, mean, yeah, Tom and Laurie McGuane have been friends for a long time. Nan Newton and Dave Grusin, who live nearby, have been friends for a long time. And of course, I knew Jim Harrison. I knew a lot of that old crowd, though I wasn't really a part of how they lived and stuff. ⁓

Marc Beaudin: It's a beautiful thing when you can ⁓ this beautiful book and get it into the right hands, into the hands of someone who's going to treasure it and ⁓ it and pass it down to their children. So do feel everything we do is ⁓ toward more community-based and cultural-based goal, ⁓ which

Tim Castano: what emerging from Livingston would you we keep an eye on? you mentioned your father, your father, James Harrison, ⁓ is one of the authors most associated with Montana, and he called Livingston home at one Founding Editor Outside Magazine, a contributor to National Geographic Magazine, and author of such titles as Road Fever, a high speed travelog, Cahill very much earned his membership ⁓ in the Montana Gang.

Yetta Stein: ⁓ gosh, I just love this question. There are so many that I feel so inspired by. So, Rose Damaris, mean, emerging is such a funny term, but Rose Damaris is a wonderful poet who spends part of her year here. ⁓ I definitely keep an eye on Mallory Rice who, you know, comes from journalism, ⁓ but is of embarking on a journey with fiction and she's just phenomenal. ⁓ Amy Talcott, well, sort of fingers crossed, you'll see more of her in the coming few years. ⁓

Tim Castano: ⁓ To follow in your father's footsteps and to do so in a place where he lived and worked. What does that mean to

Tim Cahill: you people come to Livingston ⁓ ⁓ you might know that it's a very windy town. Very windy. I checked the automatic meteorological ⁓ from 2000 to 2010. Livingston ⁓ the highest wind blast ⁓ in the country. Second only to a place called Guadalupe Peak in New Mexico.

Marc Beaudin: makes sense because neither of us are good capitalists at all. We always joke that anarchists make terrible capitalists.

Gretel Ehrlich: But the Elk River Books was really a meeting place for new friends and old friends and writers that we brought in. And that has been really of life saving for me. Even though you don't have to be around people all the time. You don't have to go for dinner every night. I just know that people are here. ⁓

Jamie Harrison: I don't want to say not a lot. I I adored my father and I obviously wouldn't have become a writer without having grown up around one and knowing how to read, how to edit, how to think that way, thinking that it was just something natural to try to do. But the thing is that I moved to New York kind of to get away from Northern Michigan and I moved to Montana long before my parents moved out here.

Yetta Stein: Tessa Moekell, who's a poet and who is just writing amazing things. Jack Wickham, who is a comedian. He's actually in Bozeman, but he's tied to Livingston through mutual connections and friendships. ⁓ Alex Speed, so many wonderful writers who just inspire me all the time to keep going. And I do want to give a big shout out to my dear friend, Mike Summerby, who in Bozeman started a space called Pulphead.

Tim Cahill: which I looked at and it's just a mountain peak. No, we're a town here that the wind. And the, ⁓ you may have heard, people always like to tell you this, ⁓ has blown railroad cars off the track. We've got gusts of over a hundred miles an hour. It's not unusual. And a lot of people can't take that ⁓ are, as we say, gone with the wind.

Gretel Ehrlich: and we can meet up or not and we respect each other's privacy and solitude but you solitude is overrated you have to understand that Thoreau went to the Emerson's house every night for dinner. mean it's let's get real here ⁓

Jamie Harrison: They visited in summers, but they hadn't lived here until they moved out to join my family, my sister's family. My sister followed me too. So in a sense, we moved out here in the 80s and the whole family followed, which is great. And now he's sort of been adopted out here. But I do still think of him as a Michigan writer,

Tim Castano: Livingston, Montana, a small town large with inspiration, stories, talent, and personalities. A community at the crossroads of the past and the future. A community continuing to lead readers and visitors

Yetta Stein: And he's launching a magazine, an independent magazine called Anenomy. He's a wonderful freelance writer, and he's also working to really cultivate community in these audacious and inspiring ways.

Marc Beaudin: there are magical places in independent bookstores. ⁓ There are, a place where people can gather and celebrate all the things that a book ⁓ is and can be, you know, just our stories and ⁓ passing our stories down and being inspired other people's stories ⁓ to have the courage to write our story or tell our own story.

Tim Castano: since 2014, the Montana Quarterly has administered the Big Snowy Prize, which recognizes

Gretel Ehrlich: It's a great gathering place and, you know, obviously has been for a long time. And although I didn't live here in the sort of heyday of Jim Harrison and that crowd, but I, I visited and I knew ⁓ what going on. And ⁓ so good to be here.

Jamie Harrison: ⁓ And obviously, you know, early on wrote things like Legends of the Fall. It sort of

Tim Castano: to writers from the state under the age of 30. Through the Big Snowy Prize, what impresses you about the upcoming generations of Montana's writers?

Jamie Harrison: put this place on a map ⁓ for reason. I don't know why people connect legends to this area so much because it was built in Canada. You know, he was fascinated with the West and I wouldn't have moved here if he hadn't been friends with Tom McQuane and everybody followed from there.

Tim Castano: along a meaningful lit trip. I'm impressed by their And ⁓ in world, I'm going be 70 years old soon. Technology still drags kicking and screaming. But I look at grandsons and ⁓ how comfortable they with...

Marc Beaudin: That's magical stuff that you don't get at a corporate chain

Tim Castano: in Lost in My Own Backyard, you write, the wilderness that is Yellowstone Park affirms our mortality. That is why walking its trails makes us feel so damn alive. ⁓ Does appeal to you as a writer, especially as an adventure travel writer, lie in that observation?

Yetta Stein: my favorite writer recommend in Livingston is ⁓ Earl Craig, but ⁓ he's our Montana poet ⁓ I don't think we can him emerging, but if ⁓ I were to recommend one Park County poet, it would Earl.

Tim Cahill: you

Tim Castano: what changes have you observed in Livingston's literary scene and its writers, say, over the past 15 years?

Tim Cahill: Yes. It's the beauty is there, but You aren't the apex predator in the Livingston area. There's a few grizzlies around Livingston, but if you go into the park, you have to pay attention. And that

Tim Castano: technology and how absorbed they are ⁓ ⁓ media and that shiny thing in their hands and to young people still appreciated with ⁓ longish of writing What sights and experiences ⁓ you recommend to a literary minded visitor to Livingston?

Marc Beaudin: Yeah, I feel like I arrived at the tail end of, ⁓ you know, the first big wave of people that were called the Montana Gang, you know, Harrison, McGuane, Richard Brautigan, Gatz Yachtsburg, ⁓ and numerous others. And then also a lot of non-writers, other actors, musicians, ⁓ artists, visual artists,

Yetta Stein: Oh, what a beautiful question. So our nonprofit Elk River Arts and Lectures partners closely with a bookstore here in town, Elk River Books, run by Mark Bodine and Andrea Peacock. Andrea Peacock is Doug Peacock's partner. So continuing his literary legacy is very important to our organization. Mark and Andrea actually founded our organization back in 2013, and now we just partner closely with the bookstore. So I would absolutely recommend stopping by Elk River Books.

Gretel Ehrlich: And I could talk also about meeting Jim Harrison.

Tim Castano: and the craft of it and the emotion and sweat goes into doing it well impresses me. That said, some years are better than in the contest. Some years, it's really hard to pick a winner. Some years, the entries just don't flow.

Tim Cahill: that kind of, me it's a focus, is I look at, knowing that ⁓ I not the apex predator here, it seems to have ⁓ sharper and ⁓ ⁓ colors. you can feel that when you're walking around. Does that inform my writing? I don't know, can't say.

Gretel Ehrlich: When Solace came out in 1984, think, or 85, whatever it was, ⁓ I got a call from Jim saying, I'm coming to visit you at your ranch. And Dan Gerber is driving. Thank God he was driving and not Jim. And they drank their way from Michigan to my ranch in Shell, Wyoming, and showed up and stayed for four days. Of course, I was just terrified that my

Yetta Stein: mostly used and rare books. It's fun to get Mark on a podium about the oldest book he has in the shop. He'll give you a tour and sort of show you around. But I think for anyone looking for a literary experience in Livingston, I think you ought to be getting in the river in January. I think there's nothing like the cold Yellowstone River. It's slow and it's icy and

Marc Beaudin: I kind of came in at the tail end of it. Those guys were all kind of aging out. And since I've been here, many of them have died. You know, we've lost all of those, you know, kind of anchors to what the Livingston literary scene meant.

Tim Castano: ⁓ it might be partly because we do it deadlines april fifteenth which is the date that i picked without really thinking about it but i think it's spring break and i think a lot of students don't ⁓ they sort of lose track of the deadline during spring break but ⁓ we've helped launch a couple of careers over the years people who've ⁓

Marc Beaudin: So it's been this big transitional time. Partly it's been great seeing a lot of other writers who maybe were a little in the shade now having some sunlight to flourish. ⁓ And I don't mean that, you know, in terms of like, ⁓ these big famous people who are blocking them, ⁓ I do think like if we're that forest metaphor, you know, the, ⁓

Gretel Ehrlich: food and my cooking and my wine collection was not going to meet their standards. But it didn't matter. Of course, they arrived with their own cases of wine. And we had a fantastic time. And that was the first time I'd met Jim. He liked my book, and he just decided to come visit. And I would say that sort of

Yetta Stein: There's no one else there and there is nothing that will make you feel like a rider in Park County, like getting your body into the cold, cold, longest undammed river in the contiguous United States.

Tim Castano: you'd already mentioned ⁓ some your peers and ⁓ how you had arrived Livingston with a certain generation Montana authors, including Tom McGuane and Jim Harrison and others. ⁓ Has the idea of a Montana author changed in the present day or do certain elements remain universal and intransient?

Tim Cahill: back.

Tim Castano: been courage and emboldened and their voice amplified through winning that prize and having their work published. And it makes happy to ⁓ do that. Several of come back, ⁓ know, I have other for them down the road. We've got... you were in Montana. ⁓ Do you believe Native writers like yourself own a distinct attributed to your origin? ⁓ Is there a discernible difference between an author raised in state and one who migrates to Montana?

Tim Cahill: Well, I think

Gretel Ehrlich: it tells you something about the writing community that is represented in Livingston. It's this kind of really deep respect for each other's work and also a willingness to put yourself out and go meet each other and have some drinks and talk and have fun. Mostly have fun.

Marc Beaudin: The new trees are absolutely dependent on the old trees for, the soil and protect them from storms and all of that. So it's, it's definitely again, a mutualistic relationship. But ⁓ when patches open ⁓ sky open up, your job then to start growing more. ⁓ And we, ⁓ feel like seen that with Jamie Harrison,

Tim Cahill: For Tom, Tom McGuane, got there first ⁓ he for fishing. He said, well, I ⁓ love the and it doesn't have to be an expedition for me. I'm here. ⁓ And Tom may be last of gentlemen outdoor writers, ⁓ courses, ⁓ fishing.

Yetta Stein: That's such an interesting question. I also, I I sort of, bristle at the word native because, you know, there are so many indigenous and capital and native writers who live and are sort of integral to the Montana voice and the Montana experience. So I do just want to acknowledge that piece of it. I was born in Missoula and raised in Missoula. And I think that being from Missoula is a very important part of who I am.

Tim Castano: Just recently I mentioned that poetry reading there were the pack house which is hard to do for poetry reading small town standing room only big audience and ⁓ it's a quick a gallery ⁓ organized collaboration poets and visual artists ⁓ had the the the post would right up about the piece of art

Marc Beaudin: Jamie Potenberg, ⁓ but also, you know, Callum Wink, who I mentioned before is a fantastic novelist. a of other just younger people, Michael Earl Craig is an incredible poet who lives here, but also from Ohio, another Midwestern. ⁓ And there's, there's bunch of younger people who don't have books out yet, first books out, ⁓ but

Tim Cahill: hunting. He writes well about those things. for us, for everybody who reads Tom, it's his sentences ⁓ are, I he's a writer's writer, the sentences just ring. So ⁓ there that gentleman kind of writer. ⁓ And ⁓ no, that's a of that is going on. mean,

Yetta Stein: I love a town with a river in it and that's why I live in Livingston now. ⁓ I don't know that I could sort of do a blind taste test of two writers and tell you one that was born in Montana and one that wasn't. I think being of place and honoring place can be one in the same. I'm always, I sort of, think it's like a defense mechanism of my heart when someone.

Tim Castano: And then they paired them on the wall. And almost all those people were in their 20s and 30s.

Yetta Stein: interesting and fun moves to Livingston, I sort of test them and I'm like, how long are you going to stay? Are you going to leave us behind? And when I feel like they're going to stay and that they're invested in our community, it's so easy to love them and read their work and think about them and what they're doing from an artistic capacity. And so I think that being of a place or being from a place, ⁓ actually think it I think you can fall in love with Livingston really quickly.

Marc Beaudin: I know they will and they're gonna be great because they're just doing really wonderful work and publishing in journals and magazines and maybe working toward a book. But I feel like it's still going strong. It's still a very vibrant community. We probably ⁓ don't party as hard as the old guys did back in the day. ⁓ Things were a little more wild then.

Tim Cahill: Thomas Goldz was in town, or was a writer here, passed away, dear friend. But, you know, he's off in ⁓ Azerbaijan covering the conflict with Armenia. And Marianne Vollers helping Jean King write her book, or Hillary Clinton.

Tim Castano: big snowy prize is part of that. It's acknowledging and encouraging young writers to think hard and write well. Are there any writers coming out of Livingston ⁓ now, younger writers, whom we should an eye out for in the coming years?

Yetta Stein: and ⁓ you can stay here and you can leave and then come back. It's this vortex, it's this black hole that everybody wants to be, everyone I've ever met has wanted to be tethered to and kept within. So I'm not sure that, there's, I'm there is a difference. And I'm sure when I write about places that I don't live or,

Tim Cahill: A local boy, Larry Lahren, a well-known archaeologist, wrote a book called Home Land. John Tolliver is writing about ⁓ John Hay or George Bird Grinnell, ⁓ big things, and doing months worth of research libraries. So ⁓ no.

Marc Beaudin: ⁓ Now a lot of the writers who are around now are balancing their writing with family and careers. ⁓ And that might keep them out of the saloons just a little bit more than the old days.

Tim Castano: ⁓ serve ⁓ as an advisory board member of Elk River Arts and Lectures, an that encapsulates as a community of artists. ⁓ What has that organization in Livingston more widely given you as a writer?

Gretel Ehrlich: Mm-hmm.

Yetta Stein: places that I have lived, but I'm not from, I'm sure that, you it's a different reverence or affection I'm showing to Portland or Washington, DC or Turkey. ⁓ But I do think that anyone can write a love letter to Montana, anyone can write an ode to Park County or Livingston. ⁓ And that those perspectives are actually just as interesting and compelling to me as those of us who were sort of born and raised in Montana.

Tim Castano: you know ⁓ cal and work is one john henry has routine is another

Tim Cahill: The idea that a Montana writer is of a mold doesn't fit here.

Gretel Ehrlich: a place to go to hear amazing writers and some local. I mean, one, was the year before last, I went in, it's usually a Thursday night reading, and Ilya Kaminsky was giving a reading. I mean, he's from the Ukraine. He's just brilliant.

Tim Castano: Adam Baylor. you have written, a good writing prompt is like a radio dial, filtering out the static and tuning in the station of the poem. You also have written about the power of listening and poetry and you fires rish who's now living in portland organ but he grew up here livingston a woman named yetta stein in fact teach a workshop on that topic. So I've heard Livingston admits many distinct sounds, particularly the wind. Do you believe at least some of the town's appeal to writers lies in its natural prompts, music and soundtrack?

Yetta Stein: It's just luck that I arrived here So ⁓ I fault anyone for moving here ⁓ as long as they ⁓ want invest in our community and ⁓ make place sort of better and safer than it has been.

Tim Castano: Yes, several others.

Gretel Ehrlich: poet who teaches at Princeton, who's basically a refugee from the Ukraine and is also deaf. And he just gave this extraordinary performance. And when he walked in, I said, Ilya, what are you doing here? How did you get here? And he said, well, just said they'd send me a plane ticket, so I came.

Marc Beaudin: Sure. No, I really think the key, at least for me, ⁓ is finding the music wherever you are. This music is everywhere. And it's our job as writers to train ourselves to listen. Whenever I talk about listening, because I also do theater, I direct plays.

Tim Castano: one of the most frequently cited lines attributed to you ⁓ as follows. A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles. ⁓ Would the same sentiment apply to your time in Livingston?

Tim Cahill: ⁓ yeah, ⁓ yeah. I mean, I've been there for well over 45 years. got great, great friends that we managed to survive ⁓ 30s. We might've been a little bit... ⁓

Marc Beaudin: And I always talk to my actors about listening and it's always this idea of whole body listening. So it's not just a function of your ears. It's a function of every sense you have and also your imagination and your creativity and your memory and your, you know, fanciful ideas, whatever you can use to bring things in that are happening out in the world. And for me, music is really what it comes down to.

Tim Castano: you have written how a Google search could explain Livingston's background and backstory, but it can't tell you who we are. is this a question that can be answered? Well,

Tim Cahill: But we might have partied a bit, but these are still my friends. These are still people I know. I can trust them. can...

Marc Beaudin: And the other side of that is trusting the music of the poem. The poem knows what it needs to say. And the way that you will find what the poem needs to say is by trusting the music of the poem and following it and getting out of your own way and letting the music of the poem guide things. And then the poem will say what it needs to say, which is

Tim Cahill: I got to tell you about that line of measured and friends that was written in ⁓ the acknowledgments to my book Road Fever in which I drove from the tip of South America to the tip of Alaska in a record amount of time. ⁓ And people always say when they hear the concept of the book, ⁓

Tim Castano: a Google dump will get you news stories and statistics and things like that. It won't tell you what it's like to live here. It won't tell you what like to interact ⁓ with of various ⁓ occupations backgrounds and perspective and how we almost always work together ⁓ when need to. When the floods, somebody's house burns

Marc Beaudin: also what you need to say, because otherwise it wouldn't be your poem. And so on one on one sense, I'd say every place has music ⁓ for poets to listen to. For me personally, Livingston definitely has much more ⁓ music I connect with than, say, some

Tim Cahill: Why don't you stop and smell the roses? Well, there were 70 or 80 people there that I had to thank. You had to actually go down to those countries and the roots and grease waters. And so there a lot of help there. And that's where that line comes from. ⁓ But I'm people it. I'm glad I'm off-coded in that. ⁓

Tim Castano: you It always amazes me how this community comes together and puts aside our differences when something terrible happens.

Marc Beaudin: you know, suburban subdivision somewhere where, you know, life has mostly been commodified out of the area. But in Livingston, you've got this wonderful mix of, you know, these old brick buildings and alleyways. You've got the surrounding mountains. You've got the river, birds and trees and the kind of ever present railroad going through the train coming through.

Tim Castano: we are i don't know if you could we've got eighty five hundred people here i think you'd get eighty five hundred different answers

Tim Cahill: in that line because I hope that helps people travel with right ideas.

Tim Castano: who we are as a community that still functions we've been discovered by hollywood rich people and of digital nomads who've put down roots here or at least rented a house for a while.

Marc Beaudin: And all of that creates its own music, its own rhythms that I have found to be very, you know, it works for me.

Tim Castano: Most of them seem to pretty good people. ⁓ a lot of them become part of the community others are drifters i mean we have is a railroad town it had a transient population for for many years ⁓ remember ⁓ responding challenge from a friend i looked at my high school ⁓ yearbook he said figure out how many of those people you graduated high school with were there all through school and it was really only about half you once wrote, it takes a really long time to find your voice and even longer time to find your people. you edited ⁓ Unearthing Paradise, Montana writers in defense of Greater Yellowstone, an anthology poems and essays and fiction that honors ⁓ Greater Yellowstone's ecosystems, vast natural assets. So does this work speak a broader communal activism among local writers, especially when it relates to protecting an environmental This is a reminder to myself and to you. Has Livingston helped you find your voice and your people?

Yetta Stein: It's so nice. I don't remember writing that. So it's great you found it. Yes, yes, I think an easy answer is yes, Livingston has helped me find my voice and my people. A couple years ago, I was in the middle of finishing my MFA and I was living in Livingston and I was feeling like I need to move to New York City to be a writer. I was feeling this itch. I was in my mid 20s and I think it's an itch a lot of.

Tim Castano: And a lot of us old timers here have, I think, a mistaken assumption that we've all been here all the time and the new people are causing the problems. Well. an environment essential to their craft.

Marc Beaudin: ⁓ yeah. Yeah. ⁓ yeah, that book, I, I, I was one of the co-editors. was with, ⁓ Max Yachtsburg, whose dad Gatz or William Yachtsburg is one of these Montana gang originals. ⁓ and Sebring Davis, ⁓ a journalist and writer here. ⁓ so the three of us put out this book to, stop some gold mines that were trying to come in. ⁓ there's stuff above Chico and, ⁓

Tim Castano: Things have changed in this town. It's hard to buy certain things because Bozeman's just over the hill. People drive over there to shop. But so our retail scene has changed drastically. And a of people complain about that. But the town still works. I mean, I could get a cup of coffee, go to the post office, stop in the bank. I'd probably stop.

Yetta Stein: people feel throughout their life, but especially young people feel. And my partner looked at me and he said, hey, you can move to New York City and moving to New York City will not make you a writer. And so why don't you just try? Why don't you just try while you're here and see what happens? And so it was really good advice. And I did, I emailed the then executive director of Elk River Arts and Lectures named Amy Zanoni, who is now a dear friend.

Marc Beaudin: also right on the border of Yellowstone outside of Gardner. ⁓ And that I, you know, when we put the word out that we were assembling this book, every writer, you know, that we reached out to instantly responded with their support. ⁓ And at first, you know, I was thinking, well,

Tim Castano: for a brief conversation with three or four people and do it all on foot in 15 minutes. it's it's still pretty easy to live in if you can afford the housing gotten tough as it is ⁓ most of the pretty places in the world people moved there it's ⁓ a village in burgundy or a village in montana the problems with with mobile wealth

Yetta Stein: And I still look at the email sometimes with absolute affection for that younger self who is seeking community and voice. And I said, Amy, just want to be involved in the writing community here. Tell me what I can do. ⁓ And Amy is such a good example of how so many people are in Livingston is just operating with an abundant mentality, inviting you to the table and making the table bigger so that we can all sit and eat and nourish one another.

Marc Beaudin: which writers would want to contribute something, your natural thought is like, well, the people who are writing environmental work, know, people who are nature poets or environmental, you know, activist writers or ⁓ and it turned out that every single writer here ⁓ recognized the value of this environment of the wildness of this area. Even if, you know, they wrote murder mysteries or,

Tim Castano: In Island the Universe Home, you write, nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness, I am sure to be filled. At this stage in your career, having achieved so much, are you still able to walk with sufficient carelessness?

Yetta Stein: And that was my first foyer into Elk River Arts and Lectures, which has become integral to my community, know, nourishes me in so many ways and has introduced me to so many writers that have helped me develop my craft and my voice. ⁓ And so I think we're living in a real season of constriction and protecting ourselves and not reaching out to the stranger and not inviting the stranger in. We're on the, we're a few weeks out from Passover. I'm like a.

Tim Castano: have are very similar over the world. But back to earlier question, let's not screw it up. Let's cooperate with each other. Let's figure out a way to keep it at the last best place. And we can do that through cooperation. We can do it by thinking, by writing, by reading, by listening to each other.

Marc Beaudin: things that ⁓ you might never picture having environmental background to or an edge to, it really is, I think, part of what makes the writers here, you know, that idea that the environment is essential to their craft.

Gretel Ehrlich: Yeah, I thought about that as a really bad choice of words because, we know what we mean by carelessness, which means laid back. But when you think about the word, actually, it's sort of awful. Of course, I walk with total care in that I care about everything that I see and is under my feet, et cetera, et cetera. I would change that word to saunter, the sort of Therovian word, saunter.

Yetta Stein: half Jewish girl from Montana. But we need to be inviting the stranger in. Elijah is at the door and I feel that so much in Livingston. The invitation is always there and open. The table is always full and brimming. There's always enough for everyone. In fact, there's more than enough for everyone. And ⁓ I think Livingston and Park County is absolutely a place that's helped me tap into those threads of community and finding my people, which has led me to.

Gretel Ehrlich: I, yes, I still, I walk every day or I hike or I ski around. don't, you know, I don't join hiking groups. don't do, I always do these things alone. And I often go the same routes every day, that take an hour or two. And,

Yetta Stein: to a more literary voice.

Gretel Ehrlich: try to see all the differences from day to day, hour to hour, whether it's morning or evening, or I sometimes take walks at night. ⁓ So yes, I saunter because, yeah, the vacuum that, that the non-existent vacuum is, so ⁓ full. It's of the fullness, emptiness. paradigm, know, everything that's empty is full and everything that's full is empty. there's just so much to see ⁓ everywhere every hour of the day that ⁓ it should be practice, ⁓ if possible, spend some time, ⁓ however time you can give to it, to ⁓ basically nothing. There is a ⁓ wonderful book from ⁓ ⁓ century Japan called Essays Idleness, which I love. ⁓ You know, I just, ⁓ joy of, ⁓ of what I call carelessness, the joy of sauntering, the joy of just looking around, doing nothing is incredibly nourishing and important. it's all about kind of giving yourself over to the other instead of saying, I want to listen to this music now. want to get that sort of the digital me world.

Tim Castano: is there a poem of yours that best captures your relationship with Livingston?

Gretel Ehrlich: where you keep choosing exactly what you want, sort of the menu of life. I say just throw that away

Marc Beaudin: Probably Railroad Doves ⁓ ⁓ my book. It's in Life List, which is a field guide to birds in poetry. It's also on a CD I did called From Coltrane to Coltrane. ⁓ that poem, I don't know if you want to hear it or...

Tim Castano: Yes, please,

Marc Beaudin: Okay, let me do that. I wrote this ⁓ on the back deck of Glenn's Bar, which now it's called The Fainting Goat. ⁓ But when it was Glenn's, it was definitely the writers' hangout. It's where, when Harrison would come into town, ⁓ in the last several years of his life, he would sit out on the deck there and kind of hold court. Railroad doves. One could do worse than spend the day watching them. Not quite rock doves and not quite pigeons. Evolving along the tracks, feeding with each passing grain train, amber and prairie sunlight. The grain is long since gone. And it may be some genetic memory keeps them clustering on these piles of death stone, filling the long line of the coal train. cutting our town in half. The wheeze of air brakes powering, slap of wings like an of spades in the spokes of a bicycle. And the squealing departure begins. Casting off the birds and taking the poison dust to the next town. The wind brings the stench of coal. I take it into my lungs, knock a few seconds off the end of my life, breathe out and in again. out and in again. The railroad doves gather and swirl to a nearby rooftop, await the next train. Late tonight, a dragon will swallow the moon, heedless of the greed that swallows the world one train at a time, and one could do worse than to watch the doves.