A4
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2019
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
Founded in 1873
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
SOUTHERN EXPOSURE
Wyn Berry
Author Don Berry.
Capturing the essence of the land
A
midst an abundance of quality
Pacifi c Northwest fi ction, Don
Berry presents the most vivid
naturalism — bringing to mind the scent
of the woods, the hollow of a log or the
whisper of a dream.
The writer lived in Gearhart in the
1950s and 1960s and managed to cap-
ture the essence of the land and water
around him, along with the heritage of
the Nehalem, Clatsop and Killamook
people.
The story of “Trask” is almost crude
in its overt simplicity — Elbridge Trask,
a settler on the Clatsop Plains with his
wife Hannah — wants to settle on farm-
land to the south by what we now know
as Tillamook Bay — then uncharted
territory.
Not a trip to be undertaken lightly,
considered the densely packed forests,
deep crevasses and tides breaking across
the rock.
Trask’s quixotic
mission is abetted by
two Native Ameri-
cans — a holy man or
“tanawanis,” and the
ne’er-do-well Wahila
R.J.
who signs on as guide.
MARX
“It is my goal,” Trask
tells the Native Amer-
ican Chief Kilchis, “to
make of this bay one house, of which we
can all live in peace.”
Berry’s descriptions are magnifi -
cent, painting word images of the dizzy-
ing heights of Neahkahnie Mountain to
Manzanita and beyond.
“Five hundred feet below,” Berry
writes, “the surf crashed against the
base of the cliffs with a thunderous roar,
throwing white water slowly up the
side.”
“Jagged spires of rock” point upward,
and the “base of the sheer slab was a
jumble of sharp and angular pinna-
cles around which the surf surged and
churned.”
Of the elk who wander the moun-
tains, “they traveled in amiable compan-
ionship, a stark contrast to the mating
season in the fall, when the bulls would
be trumpeting their wild challenges and
fi ghting for harems.”
Tillamook Bay is rendered in its prim-
itive isolation: “There was a quietness in
the air, and the distant thin screaming of
seabirds could be heard clearly. Flights
of gulls began to wheel over the fl at
waters of the bay in long fl oating arcs.”
Such descriptive prose is worthy of a
thousand pictures.
The narrative is never predictable,
never a “gee-whiz” Western — although
this was marketed as a paperback pulp
novel in the 1960s, followed by “Moon-
trap” and “To Build a Ship.”
A North Coast heritage
In Jeff Baker’s introduction to the
Oregon State University republish-
ing of the books in 2004, he describes
how Berry wrote the trilogy published
between 1960 and 1963 “in a spasm of
sustained creativity unequaled in Ore-
The last chapter of ‘Trask’
yn Berry, the former wife of
that every beginning writer dreams
Don Berry, lives on Vashon
of. With high hopes, I took him to the
Island, Washington. She looks airport. He was back the next day.
back on the writing of “Trask,” and the
“Well, what did she say? Will she
shaping of its emotional conclusion.
take it?” I pressed, the moment he got
In the late fall of 1958, we were liv- into the car.
ing at Peach Cove on the Willamette
“No, she said I had not completed
River, south of Portland. We were man- the story. She wanted me to add a
aging fi nancially, but
chapter,” he said
barely. Three kids in
tersely, “I refused.
the same independent
I’ll not change my
school, Catlin Gabel,
writing for anyone.
where I taught, 40
It is as it stands.”
miles away, my salary
My heart sank,
our only income. Berry
even though I
wrote obsessively in
respected his stand-
those years, on a por-
ing up for his prin-
table Olivetti type-
ciples. So that was
Wyn Berry that. Quietly, we
writer in the old red
barn across the garden Wyn Berry at Little Beach in drove home.
from the Red House in Gearhart in the 1960s.
But almost a
which we lived.
year later, Berry
While preparations were underway reread his manuscript, went out to
at Viking Press for Berry’s fi rst novel, the barn, and all through the night,
“Trask,” to be published, his agent,
bombarded by nesting peregrine fal-
Barthold Fles, sent a copy to Read-
cons and a young barn owl, he wrote
ers Digest owner-editor Lila Wallace.
the glorious last chapter. “Trask”
One day, Berry received an amaz-
was in galleys by that time, so he
ing letter from her saying she would
had to talk Viking into adding it, but
fl y him to San Francisco if he’d come they did.
and talk with her about the book. The
“Trask,” in the timeless, profound,
possibility of a lucrative publica-
popular book it has become, was pub-
tion with the popular Digest was truly lished in 1960. Berry refused to send
exciting!
this fi nal version to Mrs. Wallace. He
Needless to say, Berry decided to
could not admit to being wrong, but
go and hear what Mrs. Wallace had
he had realized it, and completed the
in mind. This could be the big break
book after all.
W
gon literature. … Berry
while restaurant server.
believed fi ction could
Wyn, reached via
tell larger truths as
email from her home in
effectively as history.”
Vashon Island, Wash-
Cannon Beach art-
ington, recalled a
ist Rex Amos knew
happy time in Gearhart
Berry as a colleague
with family and friends
and friend. “Don was a
in the early 1960s.
painter before becom-
Don Berry met
ing a writer,” Amos
Gearhart’s Graham and
said.
Bunny Doar while at
Berry lived in a
college at Reed, and
cabin in Gearhart, then
the Doars introduced
had a log cabin on the
him to the North Coast.
Nehalem River, Amos
(Graham Doar was a
recalled. “One day I
recognized TV and sci-
Wyn Berry ence-fi ction author
dropped in on him and
Don Berry in Gearhart after a trip whose short story “The
he came to the door
with a bloody apron on. to France, New Zealand and Hong Outer Limit” — a
He had just shot a bear Kong. One of his sumi drawings is “close-encounter” story
in the background.
and was making bear
written in 1949 — was
jerky. Long story there;
rewritten and readapted
sort of Hemingwayish.”
throughout the 1950s.)
Their acquaintance was launched in
Graham’s daughter, also at Reed,
the 1960s, set up by a mutual friend,
Wyn Berry said, met Don at the Reed
Friedrich Peters, fi rst director of Deut-
Bookstore where he was working, heard
sche Sommerschule am Pazifi k — a Ger-
him talk about wishing he could talk to
man summer program then in Manzanita
a published writer, and Jane said, ‘Pops
and now offered from Lewis and Clark
writes for Saturday Evening Post and
College.
Esquire — why don’t you go to Gearhart
John Allen of the Pacifi c Way Cafe
and talk to him?’ He did, and thus began
recalled Berry as a legend in Gearhart.
a long friendship, quickly followed by
While he never met Berry, he knew Ber-
the addition of (the Berrys’ children)
ry’s wife, Wyn, as a journalist and erst-
David, Bonny, Duncan and myself. Both
A 1960s paperback
cover
of
Don
Berry’s ‘Trask.’
An entry in the
Western trilogy with
‘Trask’ and ‘To Build
a Ship.’
Graham and Bunny considered the kids
to be their own grandkids.”
The Northwest’s rainy glory
“Trask” was researched at the Tilla-
mook County Museum and written in
a barn on a farm in Peach Cove on the
Willamette River, Wyn Berry recalled.
The last chapter was written in a cabin
built in the Coast Range forest.
Berry loved the Northwest in all its
rainy glory. He spent many days wander-
ing or hunting all over Clatsop County.
He was one-eighth Native American —
Fox — and always had an affi nity for
“wildness.”
Berry walked every step of whatever
way he wrote about, from Hug Point, in
“Trask,” to Sawtooth Mountain past the
Lewis and Clark River, she said.
He was lucky enough to have an
agent, based on his years of award-win-
ning science fi ction, who took “Trask” to
publishers.
Trask’s contract asked for and got fi rst
refusal on any subsequent book, and “off
he went,” Wyn Berry said. “He wrote
‘Moontrap’ in southern France, collected
the galleys in New Zealand, and proofed
them in Hong Kong. Then (he) came
home, went to the cabin, and wrote ‘To
Build A Ship,’ again based on early jour-
nals. Last time I looked, his cedar cabin
was still there.”
Don Berry’s books earned immedi-
ate recognition by the public and crit-
ics quickly, she added, and the author
enjoyed the accoutrements of success:
glowing reviews, writers workshops and
travel.
“Trask” won a Library Guild Award;
“Moontrap” was nominated for a
National Book Award and won the
Golden Spur Award, given by the West-
ern Writers of America for best historical
novel that year.
Berry moved on from the area to
develop a long career in Portland, San
Francisco, the Caribbean and Vashon
Island, in a career that is exotic as it
sounds.
Berry eventually gave up writing
except on the internet, Amos said, of
which Berry was considered (appropri-
ately) “a pioneer.”
R.J. Marx is editor of the Seaside
Signal and Cannon Beach Gazette,
and covers South County for The Daily
Astorian.