On Meeting Ellen by Kathryn Wilder

When I first met Ellen Meloy, Raven’s Exile had just come out. We all knew of Ellen and her book about Deso-Gray, but as I sat at a book fair in Denver I did not yet know the willowy, sun-touched blond who walked up to introduce herself and ask about my book. At a gala event for authors that evening, we surprised each other by both wearing black. “It’s the only dress I own,” Ellen whispered. I held out my forearm, showing her a long, blistering welt. “I burned myself with the iron.” Two fish out of water.

After sampling fancy hors d’oeuvres we escaped with friends to a quiet diner. Ellen complained about wearing shoes for the first time in months—it was October and she and Mark had been more on the river than off since April. As we walked along the Denver sidewalk, Ellen’s black flats swung from her hand. I had worn Tevas with my dress and my feet were fine.

Mark and Ellen moved to Bluff and I visited when possible as they built their house. One day Ellen hustled me inside. “I just found this,” she said, pointing to a metal Kokopelli light switch cover. “Turn it on.” I flipped the switch. Kokopelli responded appropriately.

We each came from California ranching families and Ellen called me her California sister. We shared laughter, stories, and desert love, and like a big sister she mentored me and supported my writing endeavors in huge ways. 

To honor Ellen’s legacy and to perpetuate desert writing, I have entered the EMF Desert Writer’s Award competition. My mustang proposal was a 2016 finalist, a validation that encouraged me to keep paying attention, to keep writing down the details as Ellen did. The result is Desert Chrome: Water, a Woman, and Wild Horses in the West (Torrey House Press, May 2021). 

Thank you, Ellen.  

Kathryn Wilder’s work, cited in Best American Essays and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, has appeared in such publications as High Desert Journal, River Teeth, Fourth Genre, Sierra, and elsewhere. A past finalist for the Ellen Meloy Fund Desert Writers Award and the Waterston Desert Writing Prize, Wilder holds an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Her memoir, Desert Chrome: Water, a Woman, and Wild Horses in the West, tracks her struggles as she finds her way out of lost by following mustangs. 

“Desert Chrome journeys through parched valleys, on wild rivers, and into deep rock canyons on a unique quest. In this authentic, hard-won account of her life, Kathryn Wilder finds the warm, true hearts she’s been seeking and that deserve our humanity, healing, and a hell of a lot better future than they’ve been dealt.”—Rebecca Lawton, author of The Oasis This Time and the inaugural winner of the Ellen Meloy Fund Desert Writer’s Award

“Testimony to the healing power of wildness”—Kirkus Reviews