Fellow Travelers

by Katherine Paterson

Editors’ Note: Katherine Paterson was the keynote speaker at the Vermont College of Fine Arts’ celebration weekend in October 2008, when VCFA became the first new independent college in Vermont in twenty-five years, incorporating three existing nationally renowned MFA programs into a college focused exclusively on the fine arts.

In Katherine’s speech, adapted below, she speaks of a journey that is both personal to the Vermont College of Fine Arts and relevant to writers and artists everywhere. The story, we’re sure you’ll agree, speaks to all of us.

I’m a storyteller, so I’m going to be telling you stories. I’ll begin with a very old one. Legend has it, that Alexander the Great, fresh from his conquest of Persia, began a march eastward toward the fabled treasures of India.

His army fought their way through what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan moving through the mountain passage in the Hindu Kush into India proper, across the Indus River and the plains, and beyond even the Ganges River, when suddenly, one day his men looked up and saw before them a gigantic wall of snow-capped mountains blocking their path. They consulted their maps. There must be some mistake. There were no mountains on this route. Slowly it dawned on them. They had marched right off the map.

Now whatever you may think of Alexander the Great, it takes a great deal of courage to march off the map. Scarcely two years ago, a few brave folks had the courage, or perhaps I should say audacity, to march off the map, leading us to where we are now—celebrating the establishment of Vermont College of Fine Arts as an independent institution.

Recently my husband and I bought a GPS system, because I don’t like traveling into the unknown without a map. But somehow, once I had met these intrepid explorers, I wrapped my doubts and fears in a kerchief, threw it over my shoulder and, in the company of a great faculty and staff and a growing band of terrific fellow board members, marched off into uncharted territory. The journey is by no means over; indeed, we’d like to think of it as just beginning on a new path. I’m sure there are mountains ahead that none of us have imagined, but for now we get to rest a bit beside the road and give ourselves a cheer, before we have to get up and get moving again.

The first time I was involved in a Vermont College program was in 1990 when a student in the MFA Writing program asked me to come and be a part of his senior presentation. He was working in young adult literature, he told me, and a number of his fellow students didn’t seem to regard that as a legitimate field for a serious writer. So with some trepidation, I joined the student for his presentation.

Well, he didn’t need any help from me. Two years later the book he wrote in the program, Blue Skin of the Sea, earned Graham Salisbury the PEN/Norma Klein award given to an emerging voice among American writers of children’s fiction and he has since become a truly respected voice in our field.

When the program in writing for children and young adults was being launched in 1997, I was invited to join the faculty. I immediately declined, knowing all too well how much work would be involved in such a commitment.

Besides, and even more importantly, I am not a teacher. Thus my admiration is boundless for the faculties of all three programs who have been willing to devote the time and energy, not to mention the necessary skills that being a faculty member of this institution demands. So until I joined the Board of Trustees I’d remained on the fringes–giving a reading when asked, coming to hear other writers speak, and occasionally sharing the joys of graduation.

This past July I was able to hear some of the seniors in the Writing for Children and Young Adults program reading from their own work. I was blown away–theirs were voices we will be honoring in the years to come.

I had a very special interest in one of those graduates. It’s a long story and a very personal one. I think all writers understand how miraculous it is when something we have written deeply affects another person. And we are acutely aware how much depends on the heart and mind of the reader.

This story begins with a letter I received in the fall of 2004. The letter had been mailed the August before. It had no stamp and the return address was an APO number. Now, I am a peace loving children’s writer, so most of my mail comes from children, not soldiers. But as I read this letter, I was, as any writer would be, overwhelmed with awe and gratitude.

Dear Ms. Paterson,
I apologize for not typing this letter, but I send you greetings from Farah City, Afghanistan where I am deployed with my Army National Guard unit in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. I am, consequently, without access to printers.
Yesterday, we were blessed with the very rare occasion of receiving mail at our remote desert outpost. With my letters was a copy of Bridge to Terabithia. I was unfamiliar with this book but the title sounded interesting and it had clearly won the Newbery, so I gave it a try. And on one of those very rare occasions where I have time between missions and guard duty, I read the entire novel.
I was mesmerized. You wrote an absolutely beautiful novel and I, like Jessie Aarons, fell in love with Leslie Burke. Maybe it was because you made it so easy to see things from Jessie’s perspective. Maybe it was because Leslie reminded me of a girl I once knew. Maybe it was because she was a spark of beauty in a land and a war where beauty is of so little importance.
That night, after finishing Bridge to Terabithia, my squad left our compound for a mission. Yet, even while I drove through a strange foreign city with body armor and a fully loaded M-16 assault rifle, all I could think about was the beauty and richness of your novel.
Before the army yanked me out of the real world for this war, I was a high school English teacher. Before that I studied English at the University of Iowa. I have, therefore, read many novels. But of all those novels I have awarded only five books with my own personal five star rating system. Bridge to Terabithia is unquestionably a five star novel. It amazed me for its beauty.
Thank you, Ms. Paterson, for bringing such joy to this lonely teacher-made-soldier in this long tour in this bleak desert country. I have sent instructions home to my wife, asking her to secure a hardcover, and my future students will be highly encouraged to read your brilliant novel.
Once again, thank you for the joy you brought me. Thank you for Leslie Burke.
Sincerely,
Corporal Trent D. Reedy
United States Army

Of course, I answered his letter and in February received a long, also handwritten letter from the young man I was beginning to think of as “my soldier.”

He had, since he last wrote, gotten hold of several of my books and was commenting on them.

In this letter, he quotes my first letter:

You write, ‘Do you have any idea what it means to have a reader respond so powerfully to something that, when you wrote it, seemed too personal for sharing?’ For me, that is a powerful question and it is one I have given some thought about as to how I should answer. But a few days ago they found a homemade bomb here in Farah City. Today they found rockets aimed at our compound. The terrorists have raised the reward for dead Americans and these people are poor with many children. I could be killed any day, so it seems to me I should just be honest.

And so, he confesses that he, too, is a writer, though not yet published. He says:

So perhaps I should ask you: Do you have any idea what it is like to so desperately want to let your characters in[to] the heart of a reader and then get a letter from one who has so wonderfully achieved that dream? Thank you for your kindness. You have restored the fire of the dream.
But please, I need you to understand that my sole intention in writing to you was to thank you for the comfort and joy you gave me in Bridge to Terabithia.
I’m just happy to know my letter reached you.

A few letters later he is looking forward to returning to his wife, finding a job as a high school English teacher, and continuing to write. Could I recommend a graduate program in writing for young adults? I could and did.

Dear Ms. Paterson,
It is my extreme pleasure to report the fact that after fifteen long months, I am at last a free man. . . [He speaks of the joy of having time with his wife and of having time absolutely alone, of being able to read without interruption, and about his hopes for the next phase of his life.] I wish you could understand the sheer number of lonely hours on the guard towers I have spent staring at an empty dead desert and dreaming of studying at Vermont and at my home in that MFA program. [He expresses gratitude for my willingness to write a recommendation for him, thanks me for our correspondence, and hopes I’ll find time in my busy life to continue our conversation.]

In August of 2005, he tells me that he has mailed in his application and sealed it with a prayer. In that same letter he reports that he is reading a book of my essays.

I had to fight to overcome my tendency to do all that I can to leave my books in as good a condition after reading them as they were before I read them.
Tonight I was forced to fold the corners of not one but two pages . . . I was struck by a line on page 58. . . ‘If we cannot defeat despair–sometimes we can interrupt it.’ I know you are quoting someone here, but I want to thank you for including this brilliant motto. For surely this, if anything, was our motto, though we did not know it at the time, when we were handing out toys to those poor little children in Afghanistan. Someone would always say, ‘How is that possibly going to make a difference?’ To which I would reply, ‘Maybe Al Queda is not going to collapse after we hand out these toys, but isn’t it worth it if just one little girl can be happy for just a little bit? If she is reminded in this horribly unfair society of hers that she’s a person too?’ Then we’d go to work.
Then, as though you’d been in Afghanistan with me (and in some respects you were) you go on to comment further about a valuable lesson I learned over there. You also touch on what I confessed to the Vermont College admissions people was a major reason for my desire to learn in their program. On page 66 you write, ‘We often fail to realize our need for books from other countries–that we must give our children friends in Iran and Korea and South Africa and Serbia and Colombia and Chile and Iraq, indeed in every country.
Did I remember to send you the photos of Zaleikha, the Afghan girl with the cleft palate for whom we were able to secure corrective surgery? She was a remarkable girl, and I told Vermont College that as we rode out through our gates for the last time, I shouted a promise to her. I told her I would tell her story to American children. . . I want to give American children an Afghan friend. They need to know Zaleikha, and Zaleikha with all her beautiful timid courage, deserves to be known. . . . Inshallah (Farsi or Arabic for ‘God Willing’) I will soon be able to join the writer’s community at Vermont College. Should that happen, I hope you’ll consent to allowing me to buy you a cup of coffee.

An email:

Sent: October 7, 2005 6:29pm
Subject: From that Iowa soldier
I am pleased to report that the word came from Vermont today. The word was “yes.” I am extraordinarily happy. I’ve been dreaming of Vermont College since about half way through my time in the war . . .

Almost exactly two years after his first letter, and after many cups of coffee, Chinese dumplings, letters and emails, Trent sent me a report on his second residency at Vermont College.

The . . .Rez at Vermont was great! I was somewhat stuck with my Afghan ‘novel’ going into workshop, but I found the suggestions of the group even more helpful than I thought I would. This sounds like I’m gushing–like I’m trying to get you to plug the college everywhere you go. But truly, I was a bit troubled as to what to do with this project in terms of trying to write a protagonist who was an Afghan girl and who somehow took an active role in facing her problems instead of simply reacting to what was happening to her. . . . However, my group offered several useful ideas that have enabled me to slowly begin to rewrite.

So last July I sat in the audience and listened as Trent read from his book. “I don’t know if I can write from the point of view of an Afghan girl,” he had said to me once. “I think you should try,” I said. And thanks to the teachers and classmates he has met and worked with through this wonderful program, he just may have succeeded.

When I sent the first draft of this speech to Trent to get his permission to use all these quotes from his letters, he wrote back:

You know, when our correspondence is reconstructed in that way, it has a powerful way of pulling me back to those days. Especially that first letter…. I have a tendency to look back on the whole war experience much as we as adults may look back on our time in junior high or high school, making light of problems which seemed big at the time but which don’t bother us nearly as much now.
But that first letter… I have detailed journals from my war time. July 31 records that our first mail in Afghanistan finally reached us, on a truck that had also been carrying meat, on which the refrigerator had been shut off. Terrible meat. But man does not live on meat alone. Your novel which changed my life was on that very first mail load. My notebook entry for July 8th includes a detailed account of how, after a brutal night cycle of three hours on guard duty, three hours off, an attack came for us, very nearly reaching our base, the day I had to scramble to the roof of our little rented Afghan house with a rocket launcher and my rifle. The day I had to aim my rifle at a little kid to get him to get down off a nearby roof so that he wouldn’t get caught in any possible crossfire.
What I’m trying to say is that every time I read that first letter I find it inadequate. I never know how to say what I think I need to say. Katherine, I thought I was going to die. I mean, we were exhausted and filthy and nearly starving and I was already sick of guns and I thought they were going to kill us. They tried. And I was so sick of guns and guard duty and everything else, and out of nowhere came this story about this girl and this boy and it was just so beautiful. And nothing else was. I didn’t know if I would ever see anything beautiful again. Thank you so much, for everything. I’ll never stop thanking you.
But…if I can pull myself away from the awesome pull of emotion that your speech brings out in me, I would like to echo Mr. Paterson’s suggestion.
One of the things I remember about our correspondence was a time when I was getting ready to go to Vermont College for the first time. The more I was learning about the college, the more intimidated I felt. I wrote to you and expressed some of these feelings, ripping off Emily Dickinson, saying something like, “I’m nobody.” You have claimed that you’re not a teacher, but I will never forget the way you answered. You, with all of your well deserved awards and beautiful books answered with something like, “I’m nobody too. If I ever forget that, I’ll be in trouble.”
So you know, I was feeling pretty outclassed, and I thought I was wrong to even try to find my place among all these incredibly talented people. THEN, I was amazed at how these wonderful people welcomed me into their family. Amazed at how close the whole incredibly diverse group was and remains.
I think Mr. Paterson is right in that the magic of that community needs to be recognized.

Trent describes elsewhere some of his favorite times at VC.

. . . many late nights, spinning stories and talking about everything. People from everywhere with their own perspectives and experiences. The very best resource to have when it is necessary to find some obscure detail about a character’s background or environment.

The last few years at Vermont College have not been easy ones. Indeed, Trent’s class call themselves the “Cliff Hangers,” which gives you some hint as to how they felt, wondering what the fate of the school would be, fearing that everything they valued might be lost.

Among the intrepid Cliff-Hangers was Andy, the pecan farmer from Texas; Mari who was working simultaneously on a PhD and her MFA while being a wife and mother; Jill who edits for a New York publisher; Jandy, who is a literary agent; Patti, a nurse; Rebecca, a second grade teacher, and the amazing Carol who has already published 20 books and has seven children.

The Cliff-hangers not only endured the uncertainties of their time in our midst, they prospered. A number of them graduated with a diploma in one hand and a book contract in the other. You’ll be hearing a lot about the Class of July 2008, I can promise you.

Trent’s July thank you note for his “magic time” at Vermont College is written on a card he bought at The Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire to which he and his wife Amanda made a pilgrimage after graduation. There is a poem on the card. Those who have ever ventured off the map might guess how that poem ends:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Friends, we have surely taken the road less traveled by, we have marched off the map–choose whichever image you like. It has made, and will continue to make, all the difference.

 

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