Celebrating the Coyote by Barbara Waters

Abstract

122 WAL 37.1 SPRING 2002 (98). And in yet other essays, Williams pays tribute to voices that have informed her own— particularly Mary Austin’s and Aldo Leopold’s. Through chronology and collage, this varied collection of writings shows connections among the natural, spiritual, poetic, and political. Those who have read Williams’s previous books will find the themes and story-essays in RED familiar. Much of this book has been published before in Coyote’s Canyon (1989), Desert Quartet (1995), and various literary journals. However, the echo of familiar words— this time published without accompany­ ing art work— in the context of newer essays, a politically timely and candid introduction, and informative appendices take on a new urgency, becoming a tribute to beauty and a call to action. While many have heard these stories and themes before, they’re worth hearing again— and worth acting upon. Celebrating the Coyote. By Barbara Waters. Denver, Colo.: MacMurray & Beck, 1999. 320 pages, $20.00/$ 16.00. Reviewed by Frances M . Malpezzi Arkansas State University, State University Barbara Waters’s memoir is a celebration of her husband, author Frank Waters, who had been an honorary member of the Hopi Coyote Clan, and a celebration of that inner coyote that sustains us as we endure and cope with the loss of a loved one. With degrees in psychotherapy and journalism, she presents a highly readable introspective account of life with and without her husband. As Frank Waters’s fourth wife, Barbara Waters shares the story of their life together, a relationship that began when they met in 1970. They married in 1979. While her commitment to and love for her husband are always evident in the book, she never glosses over the difficulties of living with his artistic tem­ perament. Often referring to her husband as Dr. No, Barbara Waters proved her­ self a strong, independent, and assertive woman, who would not be subsumed into his dominant personality; yet, the book, dedicated “To our Oneness / — and our Otherness,” testifies to a mutual respect for difference that sustained their union. The life they shared, like Frank Waters’s best writing, was also rooted in a strong sense of place, especially their homes in Arroyo Seco and in Tucson. Moreover, she provides a human as well as geographic context for locating her husband, detailing his relationships with the famous and the little known: D. H. and Freida Lawrence, Dorothy Brett, his previous wives, his niece, their friends, neighbors. She celebrates too another coyote, Trickster, the half-coyote dog who wandered into their lives and continues to sustain her. Drawing us into this circle, she constantly demonstrates that their marriage was enriched because they both inhabited the same sacred space and time; and in their jour­ neys together they traversed more than the geographic. Waters’s memoir is also the story of her grieving process after her hus­ band’s death in June of 1999. While we are always aware of the sharp sense of B o o k R eviews 123 her loss as she recounts the tears she shed over the “firsts” she experienced without her husband— the first trip alone, the first birthday, snow, picnic— most poignant is her regret that she could not save him in the end. We are cog­ nizant, too, of her determination to endure. She has channeled her energy into the creative process of writing her memoir, and her work with the Frank Waters Foundation, of which she is president, has clearly imbued her widow­ hood with a sense of purpose. As it fosters and supports artists and writers, that foundation is an important tribute to Frank Waters’s creativity and to Barbara Waters’s support for her husband. Most significant, through the memoir we come to recognize that Frank and Barbara Waters continue to inhabit the same sacred space and sacred time. Whether interpreting a fallen eagle feather as a caress from her husband or describing the visions of his spirit she has had since his death, she reminds us how strongly they are in touch. Celebrating the Coyote is enhanced by John Nichols’s brief but insightful foreword and by the appended bibliography. The Void, the Grid...