Once In a Blue Residency

Cam Scott is Contributing Editor to Cheek Teeth. Learn more on his website.

Among the myriad of things consuming me this July, one thing in particular has worked its way under my skin like a cactus thorn, pussed me up something fierce, got me thinking outside of my already outside the box thinking. And that one thing is Chiloquin, Oregon.  Population 734. Number of churches: 7.  Median household income: $23,174. To reiterate, that’s HOUSEHOLD income. As in a household of people, diapers, bratwursts, televisions, etc. Of those 734 residents, 344 of them are American Indian, 283 of them are white, and another hundred or so fall into different racial categories (thank you U.S. Census Bureau).

In one of my life’s great Hail Marys, I found myself driving into Chiloquin last fall to serve as the Sprague/Williamson Writer-in-Residence. What this entailed in my contract was eight hours of classroom time a week at the local Jr/Sr High School; a once a week community workshop; a field trip to Bend, OR and bringing students to participate in The Nature of Words Conference; an opening and closing reading; and also if I so chose, a return trip in the spring to launch a literary journal that the students and I would put together.

To go into all the things not entailed in my contract, the actual life things, like the shady van that followed me one day after a run, the look of hunger in someone’s eyes that doesn’t have to do with food, the local economization of substances not dictated by law to be legal, the messy survival of students day by day whose writing I took home with me each night to read and comment on, the local law enforcement thirty miles down the road. The actual life things threw me into red alert--maximum unrelaximum, a far cry from the white curtained and fluffy pillowed existence of previous and latter residencies I’ve participated in.

Little does Gavin Moon Brown know, but I’ve got his thank you note pinned up on the cork board beside my writing desk. I’ve got Raymond Dartannon Cole’s twisted tercets pinned up beside my writing desk, too. And I’ve got Ezra, Justin, Kate, Alena, etc. all pinned permanently in the cork board of my mind. Meaning I can’t quit thinking about the students at Chiloquin Jr/Sr High, as much as I’d like to forget the actual place. There are about one hundred and twenty of them. I bet if I saw them I could nail more than half of their names on the first try. Which isn’t too shabby. This time of year I’m a fly-fishing guide and I’m lucky to be able to tell you who I guided two days ago on the river.

I’m all pussed up at the moment because I’m hard pressed to make a choice. Funding has been pulled (although more grants have been written). The two adults (the program coordinator and the teacher) who were the most supportive of me have stepped down or have left. The community is disinterested (at times last fall I wondered if a community that is fighting for its survival can be all that interested in creative writing in the first place, although I think the answer is yes, especially if stories are all we have, and sometimes they are).

Nothing in my instincts wants to live in a place where I’m looked at like ground beef instead of a living-breathing life-loving human being. But those kids. They live there. Maybe it’s that they don’t feel like anybody owes them anything as they try to keep from getting caught in the meat grinder themselves. And some of them have been ground. Multiple times. And wake up in the morning and still drag themselves to school. And have the courage to put their thoughts, sometimes innermost, onto the page. And in the form of creative expression. Mentorship. Burger sharing friendship.

I hope you are serving your Chiloquin, even as, this July, I’m trying to figure out how to serve mine. Keep on keeping on. Thank you Curtis Mayfield.