by Rich Wandschneider, Fishtrap co-founder and founding Executive Director
Bill Kittredge passed away peacefully in Montana on December 4. He was 88. The news of Bill’s passing sent me back to the old A-frame lodge at the Methodist Camp at Wallowa Lake, July,1988.
That was the first Fishtrap Gathering. We called it a gathering because Kim Stafford and Peter Sears had hosted a Northwest Writers Gathering at Lewis & Clark College, and we hijacked the name and their mailing list. We called it Fishtrap because a local group had begun meeting to take up Kim’s challenge—“let’s move the gathering to the Wallowa”—and we gave ourselves a week to come back with names. Marilyn Krueger’s “Fishtrap” was an instant and unanimous choice.
It’s hard now to pull all the strands of people and ideas that brought Bill Kittredge, Kim Stafford, Alvin Josephy, Craig Lesley, George Venn, Jim Welch, and Ursula LeGuin together as our first faculty. Hard to imagine how we got away with one woman on that faculty. (In those pre-email days, I spent days composing an invitation letter to Ursula, and when she said yes and I wrote Alvin on the East Coast, he called to say that everyone in New York but him knew who Ursula LeGuin was.)
As I recall, we charged fifty bucks for the Gathering—and that included some of the meals. And we crammed 140 people into that A-frame!
I’d never been to a writers conference, let alone put one on. So I thought I’d do a brief intro, have Alvin welcome all to the Wallowas, and then give each of the six writers a half hour to read! We’d take a break in the middle somewhere. I think George Venn sang a song to break up what became a four-hour marathon.
The readings—the words—are all dull in memory now, but I can remember the enthusiasm of the crowd and the sound of every voice. Bill Kittredge’s voice and cadence were so strong that night that dozens of published writers and open mike readers have unconsciously imitated it over the decades. Welch’s voice was high, not strong, but almost a whisper you didn’t want to miss. Wracked I guess by the cigarettes that would kill him way too young. And Ursula—how to describe Ursula, who said that first Fishtrap that we should keep her stipend if she could have another t-shirt; and taught her last, week-long Fishtrap workshop on punctuation years later. That face and voice—and giggle—that could go from serious to jocular and back in a minute.
The crowd came back. All of those writers came back, some many times. And three decades of great friendships grew out of that room. Kim became my city-cousin as we visited back and forth with personal stories and dreamed new programs. Most of them worked—he brought Terry Tempest Williams to the first Winter Fishtrap; he started Outpost…
Craig Lesley’s been back many times, and we kind of raised our kids together—at least traded stories of the ups and downs. Welch’s time with us was short—his days were numbered even then, but at the second Fishtrap Gathering I remember him reading from Indian Lawyer, because we’d been a good audience the year before, and he wanted us and the world to hear an “urban Indian” novel.
It’s hard to stop, but now’s not the time for long memories, but for strong ones, memories of a time that changed my life—and those of many others. Anyone can read the books, but many of us have autographed copies of Ursula’s Searoad and Bill’s Hole in the Sky, and, more importantly, can hear their words and voices still.
When I got the news of Bill’s passing I did some quick math. There were seven at the podium that first Fishtrap night, eight if you count me. Four are gone now. Jim Welch died too young in 2003. Alvin, the elder even then, left in 2005. And Ursula, the queen of Fishtrap if we’d had royalty, passed just yesterday, in 2018—Fishtrap already honored her with an Ursula Year. And now Bill and his booming baritone are gone.
Hundreds of new writers have come—some many times—to Fishtrap. It’s tempting to start naming them, but now’s not that time. Time now to pluck the Wizard of Earthsea, Fools Crow, Now That the Buffalo’s Gone, and Owning it All off the shelf, and hear in our minds again the words of Ursula LeGuin, James Welch, Alvin Josephy, and Bill Kittredge as we were once lucky enough to hear them at Fishtrap.