I’ve been a fan of Gilda Trillim for years. Her minimalist book A Coven of Pines is in my top ten list of favorite books ever. As an ex-war correspondent, I think her status as a POW in Southeast Asia first endeared her to me, but then her book’s strange beauty soon compelled me to love her writing for its own sake.
When allegations surfaced that she had betrayed her fellow captives by playing the whore to our then enemies, and rumors floated that she was a Russian spy and that she was an ‘enemy of the people’ as it were, I was stunned. Truth in war, they say is the first casualty, and the same is true when the vivid signs of wear in a public figure’s reputation start to show, so I decided to investigate the matter myself.
Tracking down Trillim’s whereabouts was no easy romp in the park. She was known to be in southeastern Utah. I had little to go on. I knew that after her father’s death, Trillim’s mother, Maggie Trillim sold their farm and bought property somewhere in that region of the West. Sleuthing out where required visiting the county tax records in nearly every city of that arid region (and is a tale, which surely will win me a Pulitzer Prize for heroics should I ever write it up). The property turned out to be in the La Sal Mountains, east of Moab on the Utah side of the Buckeye Reservoir area, adjacent to the western border of Colorado.
I decided to backpack there, thinking (not incorrectly) that if I came bounding up there in a truck, I would frighten her off. Something about the immediacy of the lone walker I thought would grant me a moment of her time that would be denied someone who could just hop back in the truck and drive away.
The hike was magnificent. I thought should I fail in obtaining the interview, the trek alone was worth the effort. Under a late summer sky, I walked up from a little dying mining settlement called La Sal, a lonely outpost, less a town than a collection of trailers with a post office and a small store. The journey began in the low sagebrush hills foregrounding the magnificent La Sal Mountains, a chain of snowcapped laccoliths that erupt from the canyon lands like the Moai of Easter Island—seemingly placed there to inspire awe by ancient Gods.
It was warmer than I like, but not awful. I followed a gravel road for many miles. My frame pack swayed to a rhythm that I’ve come to associate with many pleasant memories. The sage turned to scattered Gambel Oak and the land seemed inhabited only by jackrabbits and large drooling cows which would stand and stare stupidly until, after realizing I was not giving up in my resolve to continue down the road, they would bolt in a noisy burst of lumbering motion.
As the road switched from gravel to a two-track dirt track, the scrub oak turned into gorgeous, shady, aspen stands mixed with scattered patches of fragrant Ponderosa pines. Among these I spent a night under stars with the Milky Way burning across the sky like a pale fire. The magnificence of those heavens defies description.
In the morning after an agreeable breakfast of instant coffee and ash biscuits I continued up the road now twisting beneath a dark canopy. I did not hurry—I was within five miles or so, and I didn’t want to arrive too early. The presence of the cows never abated and provided an audience that watched me pass with a lazy, hollow gaze.
At last after wandering through a sere meadow of grass harboring large old and stately tan colored pines, I descended a hill beside a small creek that laughingly led me into a narrow valley. Just before the road crossed into Colorado (marked by a barbed wire fence and cattle guard) I came to a small homey cabin sitting serenely under the protection of mature Ponderosa pines. It was rung on all sides by a full porch. The home (for such is a better description than cabin) was walled with tight raw timber boles.
Three women were sitting on the porch rocking contentedly in the morning air all dressed in jeans and T-shirts. All three were easy to identify. Gilda Trillim: dark, unruly, ruddy hair, pretty, stark face, missing hand. Her mother Maggie: much the same in aspect, but heavier, white-haired, strong and fierce—knitting. Babs Lake: athletic, dark hair and complexion, taller than the other two, an SLR camera sitting open on her lap and film being loaded onto the spool—radiating a calm protective air. An ancient white-muzzled black lab was lying under the door mantle.
I waved at them from the road, then strolled the seventy-five yards or so over toward them. As I approached, the old dog raised his head for a second then laid it back down keeping a single eye trained on me. They were calm and unafraid. I was glad I had not come in a truck; they seemed unperturbed by my presence. We chatted a while about the area, about the animals I had seen. I complained about the cows and their effect on the ecosystem, praised the cabin, and complemented their cozy space.
Then Babs asked, “So what brings you this part of the world?”
This was the moment. Now or never.
“I’m looking for Gilda Trillim.”
The group froze. Babs reached down and grabbed a .22 rifle that had been laying there unnoticed and laid it across her lap in a calm confident manner. No one said a word, so I continued in a mad-dash-get-it-all-out-there verbal blitz that was at the same time overly formal while simultaneously said in almost a single breath.
“I’m a fan, a big one, and I’ve read almost everything you’ve written, and I’m now a freelance reporter and did a lot of work in Nam and more recently covering the literary scene and looking behind the scenes at writers and poets and their lives because I myself love the written word and anyway with all the idiots out there saying bad things about Gilda … er … Miss Trillim, I wanted to set the record straight and tell her side of the story, so I backpacked all the way out from La Sal hoping to do an interview and clean this mess up that I don’t believe anyway, the mess that is, but people do, and well I just want to know ‘cause I, having been in Nam and all, know things aren’t as they seem and you, well, haven’t said much about what happened over there, and well, there are crazy stories.”
Babs looked at Gilda, who gave her a slight nod that I don’t think I was supposed to notice. She went into the cabin and I was afraid she might be going after ammo. But she came back out with a kitchen chair and sat it down and signaled with her eyes that I should take it. I did. A little breathless. I almost tipped it over in my anxiousness.
We talked all the rest of the afternoon. All three women were engaging and lively conversationalists. Topics ranged from the life of the frisky squirrels found abundantly in the trees, to the writings of Hildegard von Bingen. For dinner Maggie cooked up a pile of Swedish pancakes, served with fresh butter, homemade blackberry jam, and tall glasses of milk. We had gotten lost in conversation since I arrived and other than some peanuts we had eaten nothing so the meal was rare ambrosia. I fear I embarrassed myself by the sheer quantity that found its way past my lips. They invited me to pitch my tent or sleep under the stars outside their cabin and after another long conversation we retired. But not before Gilda agreed to an interview.
“I cannot promise to tell you anything,” she said, “but if I like the question I’ll answer it.” It was more than I had dared hope.
The following is a cleaned up version of three days of conversation. I agreed to allow Gilda to edit this final version for content and so it is published with her approval. She could be both frustratingly elusive and intensely profound. And sometimes banal to the point I could not keep my eyes open. Still it left me with the feeling that there is much we will never know about this author. However, she is neither the monster claimed by some, nor the fool championed by others—yet there is something otherworldly about her that draws me to believing she sees things others do not.
I recorded the conversations on my cassette tape recorder and they were transcribed by my assistant Mary Dent.
DK: Tell me about your life here. How did you come to settle in these mountains? What is your day-to-day life like?
GT: After Vietnam I drifted quite a bit preferring to be alone. I found the cheerfulness of others unbearable and I wanted to sort things out.
DK: Excuse me, sort what things out?
GT: The nature of things. What are we? Why are we here and how did we come to be. The usual questions. What are these relationships that all things share—living and non-living?
DK: OK.
GT: I went through a bad spell after a trip to visit an old friend in New York. My friend Babs came to my rescue. … Let me back up. My father had died a few years ago and she and my mother had conceived this plan to buy some property near Atlantic City, Wyoming and move in with me there, but they had trouble finding a place isolated enough, but then found this lovely spot here where we had vacationed a few times when I was young. So about three years ago my mother sold our farm and bought eighty acres up here and a place down in Moab for the winters.
DK: And this is where you write? What is your typical day like?
GT: Right before dawn we arise. Babs and I go for a walk around the lake …
DK: How far?
GT: About four miles, give or take. There is a path around the lake that winds its way around the marsh that gathers around the southern shore. There is an owl’s nest near the eastern side of the lake and we often stop and converse with the owl—inquiring about her hunt. About once a week we stop to gather owl pellets, if any are to be had, and dissect them and write down in a logbook what she has been eating.
When we return mother usually has made a light breakfast often of either mush with raisins or biscuits. Then I sit at this table and write.
<Note DK: The table is an old solid oak table. On it lay words written in pencil and cut from an artist’s drawing pad and cut into strips and arranged in combinations and patterns.>
DK: Is this how you write by choosing, cutting out the words and then arranging them into your books?
GT: Yes. Mostly. The patterns seem to arrange themselves, with me acting more as mere facilitator.
DK: OK, so how long do you write and arrange?
GT: About three or four hours.
DK: What do the others do?
GT: Mother often paints. Babs writes about the land here. She is working on a book of short stories and a book of essays. Sometimes she fishes or draws. We all read a great deal.
DK: What sort of books do you read?
GT: It’s all over the map. We all like the classics. Babs adores Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury. Mother likes Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. I like Thoreau and Emerson. But we often read each other’s latest discovery. Our only trip down to Moab is often to visit the library.
DK: It sounds wonderful.
GT: It is. At night Babs has a large ten inch Dobsonian she pulls out …
DK: Dobsonian?
GT: A large telescope. She ground the mirror herself. We call it the ‘beast.’ We’ll pull it out tonight if the clouds retreat.
DK: I’d like that.
GT: After a few hours or so of watching the stars, or knitting, or talking about the day, mother reads us the scriptures and we go to bed.
DK: Mormon scriptures?
GT: Yes, The Book of Mormon or Bible usually.
DK. And in winter you relocate to Moab?
GT: Yes.
DK: OK. To move on I’m going to read you something that I think you will find painful. But I think it is important to clear this up. This is from one of your fellow prisoners, Silke Peeters. She has been fairly vocal in her condemnation of you.
GT: I know.
DK: I should tell you I don’t believe her. Or at least I don’t want to.
GT: It doesn’t matter to me if anyone believes her or not. What she says is not true.
DK: OK, but let me read what she said and we can go from there.
GT: If we must.
DK: She says in this translation of an interview in the German magazine, Der Stern:
She arrived with two others. The rest of us had been there about three months. We noticed she got special treatment from the very beginning and we suspected almost immediately that there was something odd going on. Our cells were in a long cement block building. Her cell was near one end, so that she could come and go without being seen by the rest of us. It was also the largest and had the best ventilation. While we would spend every day laboring in the fields doing backbreaking work she always stayed behind fucking the guards and giving sexual favors to the camp officers in horrible and unspeakable ways. She was paid well for it. While we were nearly starving she was well fed until in the end she was as fat as a pig. There was a squeaky mattress in her cell and on rainy days when we all stayed behind because it was too muddy to work, she would still be working the bedroll with whatever Cong wished it. She had no shame. Although she spent the day nibbling on delicacies and the fine food the officers ate, she would still line up with us and take a portion of what little food we were offered. One year there was a terrible famine and several prisoners died. We were like bones walking. All except Gilda, who was as plump as a Christmas goose. She claimed she was eating rats, as were many of us, but they gave little nutrition and were wily and hard to catch. An obvious lie.
When the Russians arrived they were so enamored with her sexual tricks they demanded of the Vietcong that she be allowed to go with them. She did not even hesitate. No one was sorry to see her go. She was a constant reminder that there are those in war who lose all their morals and turn into a corrupt and fetid shadow of what humans are supposed to be. She was a whore and now that she is some big deal novelist I find my mind even more disturbed about the attention she is getting. I find it disgusting that anyone can praise the work of such a vile creature.
GT: Sad. None of it’s true of course.
DK: Why do you think she is lying about you?
GT: I don’t think she is lying. I think she is mistaken. I did not work in the field because my missing hand kept me from handling tools. I suspect that because I was not there helping with the labor, resentment built and these are stories that came to them as a way to feed these resentments. My last year there I was treated very badly by my fellow prisoners. In the morning they would often be grouped together and some of the more vulgar soldiers grab their crotch and yell things like, “Hey, Trillim how about a piece of real meat rather than Gook sausages?” or “I’d offer you mine but I know you only eat Cong cock.” The major would tell them to knock it off but he did it in a voice that let everyone know including me that I deserved it, but he was of a more chivalrous bent, and as such was against their lower standards. I laughed because I did not know what to do. After they left I would cry and wish myself dead.
DK: What did you do during the day?
GT: I sat in my cell.
DK: And did you grow fat?
GT: By camp standards I did not lose as much as they did. To them I likely did appear fat, but I was much thinner than you now see me. But I found a source of food that they did not enjoy.
DK: So you never slept with any of the guards?
≪Here she became very uncomfortable, agitated, and asked to be excused. She literally ran from the room. She did not return for several minutes, but when she returned she seemed composed. ≫
GT: Where were we?
DK: I asked if you slept with your captors.
GT: No.
DK: OK. Did you have a mattress in your cell while they slept in straw?
GT: I slept as they did on a bamboo mat.
DK: If you did not work in the fields how did you spend your days?
GT: Largely bored almost out of existence.
DK: You’ve intimated that you had some life-changing experience. There are rumors from your stay in New York that you claimed that you trained rats.
GT: I will not say anything about that.
DK: Won’t you tell me what happened?
GT: No. It was holy. Sacred.
DK: Shouldn’t it be shared then? At least to dispel the claims by Silke Peeters?
GT: No, I will not share them.
DK: We could all use more stories of encounters with the sacred. Don’t you think?
GT: The holy must be experienced. I stood alone. A single individual in awe of what had unfolded into the world. To try to share it would cheapen it. Only two things could happen. One, you might believe me and take my experience and embrace it. Appropriate it. But you could only do so intellectually. It could only become another fact in the world. You might make rituals of it, or art, but eventually it would become codified, institutionalized, there would be authorized and unauthorized forms, sects.
DK: Wait. Are you saying that your experience was so profound that in hearing it I might start a new religion based on it?
GT: Maybe. But not likely. Let me give you the second scenario, which I think is what would actually happen. If I were to tell you, you would not believe me. You would strip it of awe and wonder. You would fossilize it. Solidify it into a mere supposed fact of a world that is subject to analysis, such that it might be accepted or rejected. But this happening was born into a world into which it will not easily fit, therefore by your lights it would have to be rejected. You would strip it of possibility and of actuality. Your only response could be to mock it. To ignore it. To declare me mad or simply a liar. All my experiences then would have to be reinterpreted to fit in this sterile world.
What scares me most is perhaps even I could be convinced by your dismissal. Maybe I could be brought to forget the wonder born in those soggy afternoons in a prison in Southeast Asia. Memory is a fickle thing. What if I tell the world and teams of psychologists and philosophers all agree that I am mad and proclaim it with such force and conviction that I cannot bear the weight of their wagging fingers at my story’s impossibility? What if under their therapeutic eye they lead me away from my experience and clothe me in the garments of their skepticism? They might declare my memories the imaginations of a mind oppressed with the terror of my captivity. They might say it is a brain breaking under the strain of torture, malnutrition, degradation, filth, disease. Which is more likely, that Gilda Trillim lost her mind in a place where anyone would lose their mind, or that Gilda Trillim experienced a thing of such beauty and magnificence and breathtaking awe that it cannot be understood by the mortal mind? No, I will not tell you. To tell you will be to make it impossible. I know what I experienced and to lose that would be to lose everything. Do not cast pearls before swine and all that.
DK: So when others are presented with Peeters’s story they must believe either your fellow prisoner’s detailed accounts or believe you were engaged in activities so sacred and awesome and holy that in a filthy cinderblock prison, suffering the most humiliating and awful of conditions, that to tell them of it would strip it of meaning? Should we just trust you on this?
GT: Trust me? Heavens no. All I can do is encourage you to enter into the world with open and daring eyes and see how the wonder and grandeur of this world manifests itself to you. To trust me would be absurd.
DK: What is behind these manifestations? Is it God?
GT: Who cares? I see a thousand experiences that get co-opted as explanations for a thousand gods. I don’t know what is behind them. I cannot even guess. Is it a person? Is it a force? Is it a mystery? Well certainly that, but of what kind? I don’t care a lick for these metaphysics, proofs, and formal arguments. I like the way Wittgenstein said it, I’m paraphrasing, but it was along the lines: “There are many things in the world that cannot be said in words, of these things we must remain silent.” I cannot tell you what happened because there are no words to describe them adequately. You would have to experience it yourself. If I used libraries upon libraries of words and descriptions, I would still be without the means to instantiate within you the awe, wonder, and beauty that attended the experience. Maybe poetry could draw it forth, but if so it would be by creating the experience in you anew, not by describing it. Scripture does this. I think that is what ritual does too. It does not describe, but instantiates. If done right. It draws forth the possible. It enrighteousizes and sanctifies the memory of the experiential event. Allows the holy to reaffirm its original presence and establish its sanction.
DK: There are hints that it had something to do with rats?
GT: (laughing) You won’t give up will you. Next topic.
DK: Last night while we were sitting on the porch talking about the night sky, your mother said at a comment you made about evolution, “Oh she’s an atheist.” You countered, “Mom, I am as Mormon as you are.” Tell me about your Mormonism.
GT: As I said above. I’m not interested in figuring out God. There are those who pencil in long lists of their attributes. …
DK: (interrupting) Their?
GT: Mormons believe in a father and mother.
DK: OK.
GT: So anyway, there’s the standard tags we hang on our God concepts: omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, full of love, on and on. We even make lists of things they are not. It’s all nonsense. I don’t care. I don’t feel like I need to know about the Gods. I know them. My mother thinks I need to embrace claims about them, like that they have bodies, or they know everything, and are timeless. Not me. To me whatever they are, they are. I just know them through encounters. Claiming that I have to know about them before I know them is like saying I have to be able to know what your liver is like to genuinely know you. That I have to get inside your intestine and visit the inside of your digestive track to know the real you. He may be the lovely Caucasian bearded fellow my mother believes in or an advanced interdimensional space alien who has been around the block a few times. It doesn’t matter. I know them. I’ve experienced something. I think Joseph Smith experienced them too and gave us some rituals that remember that event. But the thing we really need to draw from them is that we too can encounter the Gods. Rituals remind us to seek similar things. I love so much about my faith. I love that it insists that we find our own experiences with God. Or at least it used to.
DK: You attend church in Moab in the winter?
GT: Yes. I don’t think they like me and don’t welcome me much. But my Mom needs it and I suppose so do I.
DK: Let me ask you about your books.
GT: OK.
DK: Your books all embrace a technique where you make lists of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. How should we read them?
GT: Any way you want. The world is made of objects and connections of objects all the way down. There is nothing more. Nothing less. Relationships of relationships all the way down. My books are explorations of that realization.
DK: I’m a huge fan. I use them as a meditative device …
GT: I cannot think of a better use.
DK: … but they are cheered as works of genius or panned as pure nonsense. How do you handle the critics’ harsh dismissals?
GT: I just don’t care.
DK: You don’t care about God or critics. You are a brave woman.
GT: ≪laughs≫ Well, it’s not like I’m trying to sell the film rights.
DK: So let me just ask some random questions I know people are curious about.
GT: Oh boy.
DK: How did you lose your hand?
GT: I was in South America and took a drug to participate in a vision quest. While my mind was roaming the universe, I fell into a fire and burned it off.
DK: Really? Wow that must have been some vision.
GT: The world is not ready for it ≪She laughs as she says it in a mystical voice indicating she’s not serious≫. I’ve written it up for Look Magazine. That is all I want to say about it. But in that vision I lost my hand. It’s a bother mostly. Sometimes I ask myself that if the cost of my vision was my hand, was it worth it? No. Not really. I miss badminton. I miss the feel of my fingers in someone’s hair. I miss playing the piano. I miss picking my nose with accuracy ≪laughing≫, but we don’t get to make these choices do we? We take what we are handed, or dehanded in this case ≪laughs≫, and build our world from them. Right? What else can we do?
DK: Is there anyone special in your life? I know you are not married, but have you found your soul mate?
GT: Answering that would steal my mystique, wouldn’t it? Besides, soul mates are a dime a dozen. Since shoveling shit is the main task in life, the real gift is finding someone who will muck out the stables with you.
The conversation roamed all over and held more profundity, and pathos, but this is what Gilda agreed to allow for publication and I honor her choices. Let me just finish with this. Gilda Trillim is one of the most intriguing people I’ve ever met. I will continue to read her books, and anything she writes. On my backpack home I pondered our days of conversations and am still thinking about them. And I want to close with this.
After our interviews I stayed two more days. On the morning before I left, I went fishing with the three women. Babs and Maggie had waded into the shallows and were fly-fishing, without much success despite the fish rising to midges all around them.
Suddenly, Gilda began pointing to things and naming them, randomly, haphazardly, without rhyme or reason. The particulars began to mount as she pointed at and named them or named something of which they were apart, e.g., “Knot from dead bole, part of a pine; antennal segment, part of the sensory organ of a Cerambycid beetle; #5 weight line, part of a fly-fishing pole; cloud, part of a system of atmospheric moisture; Soil fragment, part of a dirt clod; …” on and on she went. I thought she would tire, but she went for nearly half an hour.
Suddenly, she turned to me and asked, “How long do you think I could go on with this?”
I gave her a long incredulous look and said, “Well, forever by the look of things.”
She laughed, put the long shaft of a seedy grass stalk in her mouth and leaned back onto her back and staring into the high mountain blue sky. She placed her hand and arm behind her head as a pillow and smiling said, “Oh, I could go on longer than that.”