GIRL ON 9 ACRES

The fall of 1987 found me in the front row of a Psych 101 class at Walla Walla College.

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The first assignment prompted us to interview our mothers about our birth story. The interview with my mother was not the expected sweet tale of a rush to the hospital surrounded by loving friends and doting family. Instead, I learned of bravery, grief, and desperation. In the month before my birth, the airplane my father piloted over the mountains of Montana, including four passengers, mysteriously disappeared. After a week of searching by air and on the ground, the wreckage was spotted. It took another week to locate and transport bodies by horseback into town. There were no survivors. My father's body was the last to be found.

Two weeks later, I was born.

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This is the beginning of my story, a compilation of prose, picture and song, as true to the facts as any poem might be and dedicated to my mother, Corleen.