October 17, 2008

The Meadowville Road

Margarite Schutt Gordon, my wife Kathie's great grandmother (also known as Pansy or GG) lead a remarkable life. Born in England, raised in British Columbia among the coastal Indians where her parents were Anglican missionaries and educated in a private school in Salt Lake City. Pansy was a multi-lingual, well traveled and well educated young woman of her time. She lived to be 100 years passing away in San Francisco in the mid 1960's. Imagine her despair when as a young woman in the flower of youth and eligibility her parents moved the family to a remote settlement on the southern reaches of Bear Lake, Utah called Meadowville. Still, Pansy bloomed where she was planted and made a place for herself in this remote corner of the west, discovering horses, cowboys and her life's love and companion - a simple farm boy, cowboy and rustic James Gordon, who's skills as he recalled were breaking horses, fencing and making hay. As Pansy wrote in her memoirs - "Meadowville - I have not the language to describe!" This poem is dedicated to her. The photo is of Meadowville the way we found it a couple of years ago. It is largely a ghost town now. Margarite Schutt Gordon was a remarkable woman of the west.


The Meadowville Road
by Paul Kern

Meadowville - I have not the language to describe,
The high-country cow-country hills of dun,
The desolation and distance too far to drive.
When we came by train and then by stage –
With double-treed horses on a steady run.
There on the Meadowville Road.

Meadowville – I have not the language to describe,
The high-speed break-neck high loping game,
The horse off the track I used to ride,
Over gully and wash and hill and rise –
With scent from the sagebrush just after rain,
Along the Meadowville Road.

Meadowville – I have not the language to describe,
The eight saddled horses tied up outside,
The pick of the litter for a day was mine,
Of cowboy or wrangler or country boy –
And I would make up my mind despite my pride,
Beside the Meadowville Road.

Meadowville - I have not the language to describe,
The high-country lake-country fields of hay,
The high-pitched fiddlers and a French Quadrille.
When I came around and I chose my love –
In the high-stepping glide of a one-horse sleigh,
There on the Meadowville Road.

Meadowville – I have not the language to describe,
The high-flying high-riding years slipped by,
The new ways they came and then we left,
Headed north ‘cross the border and made our lives –
And times changed and we changed and so did I,
Far from the Meadowville Road.

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