I mentioned to Gregory that Brokenback Mountain is just a few miles from Crazy Woman Creek, and that several of us have been to the creek and canyon.
his reply:
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I'm very, very touched by your first note. It was my brother's birthday yesterday. We were very close.
I spent a month at the Ucross Foundation (an arts retreat) near Sheridan last February. Annie Proulx is on the board and wrote portions of Close Range and Shipping News there.
The first day, they took us into the hills on what I now call "The Brokeback Tour." Our guide pointed out a forlorn cabin owned by someone named Childress, which is where she got the name of Jack Twist's town in Texas.
She also told us that Ang Lee scouted locations here at Proulx's request. This may be folklore, but he apparently stopped at a bar down the road from Ucross, and got thrown out by the owner who did not like Asians or Gays and that's why he took his business to Canada.
It rattled me. It changed the dynamic of the entire retreat, which was already charged with the fact that I was doing research about my wonderful dad and had the ashes of my brother and his lover in my studio.
When I scattered them in the creek on a clear, cold February morning, they were reunited forever.