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Let these rather modest
snowdrifts underscore a key transformational difference between Garland’s time
and ours. In Garland’s years, man
defended himself against nature, including blizzards that howled across the
prairie, figuratively and literally, bringing life to a standstill.
At some point since Garland’s Iowa years, these roles reversed;
the greater concern today is man threatening nature.
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#13 Tree with snow drifts
“Along the iridescent billows of the snow
The sun-god shot his golden beams,
Like flaming arrows from the bow.
He broke on every crest, and gleams
Of radiant fire
Alit on every spire…”
[“Lost in the Norther,” 1887]
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#14 Road to Cedar River
“The main-travelled
road in the West (as everywhere) is hot and dusty in summer, and desolate and
drear with mud in fall and spring, and in winter the winds sweep the snow across
it. . . . Follow it far enough, it may lead past a bend in the river where the
water laughs eternally over its shallows.” [Main-Travelled Roads, 1891] |
This Mitchell County road leading down to the Cedar River looks here much
like it would have in Garland’s day. It
left an indelible impression, for as Robert Gish observed, “The stock metaphor
of life's ‘journey’ sees extra duty in Garland's writing.”26
Garland’s titles frequently employ words like roads and roadside, trail
and trailers. All of which is to
say that if this presentation required a poster -- if Garland’s life required
a poster -- this is it, a choice made indirectly by the author himself during
more than 50 years of writing. |
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#15 Cedar River waterfall
"These prairies were intersected
by beautiful streams, belted in splendid groves of oaks and maples and basswood
trees. The prairies were generally level, with long swells like a quiet
sea, but in the neighborhood of streams they grew more varied and wooded."
(Foreword, Prairie Songs, 1893) |
To Garland, the Cedar River, three miles west of the family homestead, meant
a cool respite from sweaty toil. As he recalled in Boy Life on the Prairie,
"To go from the dusty field of the prairie farm to the wood shadows and to
the cool murmuring of water, to strip stark to the caressing winds, and to
plunge in the deeps of the dappled pools, was like being born again."27
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#16 Cedar Valley Seminary
“The
school was in truth a very primitive institution, hardly more than a high
school, but it served its purpose. . . . [E]very day was to me like turning a
fresh and delightful page in a story book.” [A Son of the Middle Border,
1917] |
This was once the primary building of Cedar Valley Seminary, in Osage, county
seat of Mitchell County, approximately four miles away from the Garland
homestead. Hamlin graduated from
this institution in 1881. Doors
open today to visitors of the Mitchell County Historical Society, which displays
its collection to the public during the summer months.
A fictional description of this building and its setting is in Garland’s
short story “Upon Impulse,” published in 1897:
“The seminary buildings stood not far from the low, lodgelike railway
station, and a path led through a gap in the fence across the meadow.
People were soberly converging toward its central building, as if
proceeding to church. . . . A broad path led up to the central building, whose
double doors were swung wide with most hospitable intent.”28
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In 1888, an anxious young author named Garland, then living in Ordway, Dakota
Territory, sent a poem about his horse to a friend named James Whitcomb Riley,
noting that “the enclosed poem . . . has value because of its pictures rather
than the story.”29 Our
purpose in this photo-essay is similar -- that you might find value in pictures
rather than in story. But then, as
we examine these photographs more closely, slowly our perspective starts to
shift and eventually a simple story does emerge.
It’s the story of a boy who came of age in rural Iowa and the setting
that was imprinted deeply on his psyche and on his soul -- a setting that stayed
with Hamlin Garland for the rest of his productive life.
We see a small part of the world much as Garland saw it, and as he himself
wanted, “from the working side of the fence.”
The value of this perspective lies in the fact that almost a century and
a quarter after Hamlin Garland left Dry Run prairie, Burr Oak Township, Mitchell
County, Iowa, readers throughout the world visit these same sites in the pages
of Garland books . . . to better understand rural life in the 19th century, to
better understand America.
