Narrow River, Wide Sky Quotes

“I wrote against the loneliness of three people becoming one each. I wrote about the high desert and the mountains and alpine meadows while I listened to the rain and drank coffee and lived among wide rivers and Douglas-fir and hawthorn trees. I wrote about motherhood and not spanking and trying not to yell. I wrote bigger things about being free and saying no and about god as something other than stained glass, robe-shrouded men, sin listing, and forgiveness on knees. I wrote about the matriarchy Mom whispered in my ear in the red dust about being in charge of the food source, seeking other gods, and then seeking nothing and untying the knots in my mind, pulling out poetic threads, removing what wasn’t needed.”
― Jenny Forrester, Narrow River, Wide Sky: A Memoir

“Whatever holds our grief is massive. It’s big enough and wide enough to hold the ocean.”
― Jenny Forrester, Narrow River, Wide Sky: A Memoir

“When we got to Mom’s casket in that small, wood-paneled room filled with caskets at 10,000 feet in elevation, I saw her surrounded by pioneer ghosts sitting on their haunches, too exhausted to look up from under their bonnets, dead babies in their arms. I heard the swishing of pebbles in hopeful mining pans –Leadville, the home of gold hunters. The mountains made of stone and money.”
― Jenny Forrester, Narrow River, Wide Sky: A Memoir

“We belonged to the sandstone and snow created by change. The sands of ancient water bodies and high deserts settled and compacted by other minerals and colored by iron oxide. People traveled there to the sculpted sandstone to see it, to be changed by it, made more serene. We told stories about the place to find our place in it and grew possessive and protective, wary of too many tourists, too many hiking feet, too many souls seeking quiet salvation, adding noise with their footfalls.”
― Jenny Forrester, Narrow River, Wide Sky: A Memoir