Remembering Bill

Remarks by Sandy Caskey ’64 at Bill’s Celebration of Life in Seattle on July 21, 2012.

When I think about all the time I’ve had to share with Bill, over the course of the last 53 years, one of the first things that comes to mind is a series of names, names of places that we’ve been to, climbed up to, or canoed down. In memory, they read like almost like a litany, or perhaps, as more recently experienced, like a mantra.

Here are some of these names: Sourdnahunk, Ripogenus, Chesuncook, Piscataquis, Pemigewasset, Kancamagus, and of course Katahdin.

To me, these are magic sounds and they encode an entire expanse of experience that I would not have had without the generous and enthusiastic outdoor teaching that Bill gave to me and to a number of others really from his heart.

There was no contract that required Bill to create and lead the outing club at the school in Massachusetts where he taught and I studied. This was a labor of pure love. I am just one of many who still thank him (and will always thank him) for introducing us to the mountains and rivers of New England, and teaching us the skills and rigor necessary to be at peace in that environment and inviting us, not so much with words as by example, to be constantly entranced by it. I take that as an act of pure generosity, a gesture of caring and love.

In my memory, the classroom and the outdoors were in harmony. In Bill’s classroom, Thoreau’s Walden (which no one else at our school could ever have taught as well) came alive, and we match quotes as we headed up the trail to Tuckerman’s Ravine or Crag Camp. He did such a good job that when the poet Gary Snyder in a 2009 Seattle reading finished his reading by quoting the final sentence from Walden (The sun is but a morning star) and then asked the audience if they could identify the source, two hands shot up immediately with the correct answer: Bill’s and mine.

Parallel, then convergence: I think it was 2005 or maybe 2004 when I discovered that Bill was here in Seattle with Barbara. I hadn’t seen him since early 1972 when he was teaching in New Hampshire, and hadn’t really spent time with him since the mid sixties. We caught up quickly and soon created a new rhythm, discovering in the meantime that we had each independently discovered and been attracted to similar art. Gordon Bok, the musician and fisherman from Camden Maine, the poet Gary Snyder. And Seattle itself, with mountains and ocean so close together, a magic place to be. New poetry to explore and read to each other. A shared passion for Greece and Greek cuisine. So it all seemed to come together.

No uncertain amount of flamboyance. At Peet’s Coffee, on the corner of 34th and Fremont avenue, where you could often catch Bill with his trademark Carhartt bandana, Jeep packed with books parked close by, and Bill often being served by one the several baristas whose attentions, Bill knew how to cultivate with with grace and ease of manner, just the right touch. Style all his own. No one can touch him in that department.

The last time I saw Bill was the day before he died. I brought along the Bible, which, perhaps coincidentally, he had also taught us, the Bible as Literature, and read favorite passages. Bill was resting peacefully and at times appeared to be asleep so I thought I might pause a bit. But then came that energetic voice which I will always hear and he said: Keep on reading. Not bad advice at all.

I’d like to close by reading a poem by one of the several poets that Bill and I jointly discovered and talked about in these past few years. It’s called The Promise by Jane Hirshfield:

The Promise

Stay, I said
to the cut flowers.
They bowed
their heads lower.

Stay, I said to the spider,
who fled.

Stay, I said to my body.
It sat as a dog does,
obedient for a moment,
soon starting to tremble.
Stay, to the earth
of riverine valley meadows,
of fossiled escarpments,
of limestone and sandstone.
It looked back
with a changing expression, in silence.
Stay, I said to my loves.
Each answered,
Always.

– Jane Hirshfield
from her collection, Come, Thief
Knopf, New York, 2011