Dear Gypsum, this is a love letter, Brennecke Gale

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2021

Dear Gypsum, this is a love letter

Brennecke Gale

because tonight it rained for the first time in a month. Just for a few minutes, it never stays long, but afterwards the brand new baby leaves on our front yard aspens glittered like polished emeralds pulled from a late summer afternoon. The birds got louder, maybe to sing of rain-rebirth or perhaps the new crop of worms, or maybe the world just stopped for a second to listen.

In Gypsum, rain is a gift. The Ute people call the town the hole in the sky because bad weather always seems to skirt right around it. I think Gypsum got missed by other things, too, the future drove right past on I-70 without looking to the right. It’s easy, I know, but if you glance out the passenger window and the sun is just right you’ll see green, emerald green, aspen green, green, green, green, all the way up the dirt road valley to the top of Red Hill. Gypsum is painted into colors and the world whips by at 60 miles an hour.

Up in the hills above the highway there are the gypsum mines. I’m shit at geology but I could pick some gypsum out of a hat blindfolded if I had to, soft, flaky,

Dear Gypsum, this is a love letter | Brennecke Gale

barely even a rock. The breakfast table in my old house had a telescope view of the mine roads and I’d watch the trucks collect dust over my soggy oatmeal. In third grade we went to the factory for a field trip. We walked there from the school. They gave us a piece of drywall and promised that their polluting smokestacks were only steam, like cloud memories of the mines.

Gypsum is not a water town, but a creek has snuck its way into the wrinkles of our lives. Softly, like a gentle reminder that we are not all rock. It feels like an afterthought compared to the respect commanded by the Colorado just a few miles away, but in the spring rainbow trout spawn and melted snow rushes over river rocks smoothed by seasons and time and the sunset’s reflection dances through the neighborhood.

In Gypsum, all roads lead to dirt. Fifteen minutes out and you’ll forget about the mines and the cookie-cutter houses painted puke green and the air will tug on your lungs like wildflowers on the wind and the scent of sage burns in your memory and all you can see is rock and dirt and life and death and somewhere, a car is passing the exit and a fish is stuck in the stream and the birds are singing and wondering if it will rain again.

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2021

Contributing Artists & Writers

Sophie Boyd-Fliegel (Poetry & Prose) is a senior from Seattle, studying English and Human Biology. She likes to write and satisfice.

Peter Caroline (Poetry & Prose) was born and raised in North Caroline, and the experiences and people from back home inspire much of his writing. He shares a lot of his work on his show at Stanford’s radio station, and can be found there listening in to music or writing in one of the studios.

Gabe Dinette (Art) is a junior studying product design. He is from Colorado and is a wrestler at Stanford. Gabe enjoys art, creating, and using his talents for expression through visuals.

Jessica Femenias (Poetry) thinks that good writers are the most special people in the universe. She tries to escape fortuity with philosophy and history.

Lilith Frakes (Art) is a senior majoring in Anthropology and Comparative Literature, studying primate behavior, anthropogeny, ritual, decolonization, and psychoanalysis.

Brennecke Gale (Poetry) is a current junior studying Human Biology and Creative Writing. She’s from a small rural town in the Colorado Rockies and can’t seem to stop writing and thinking about where she’s from, why it matters, and what it means to carry different people and places with you.

Roodolphe Gouin (Art) is a photographer and filmmaker from Central Florida.

Elizabeth Grant (Poetry) is a junior studying English with a Creative Writing concentration in poetry.

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2021

Cat Harbour (Prose) is a frosh originating from New Jersey. She has always had an interest in expressing herself through writing but had trouble exploring it until her time in a THINK course during her first quarter. She plans to continue to develop her interest in using short stories to comment on social issues.

Jiyoung Jeong (Poetry) is a senior majoring in History. Born in Seoul, Korea, she currently lives in the Boston area. Her favorite poet is Sharon Olds.

Nadia Jo (Prose) is a sophomore majoring in Political Science and minoring in Creative Writing. She has also written for The Stanford Daily and The Interlochen Review. Read her movie reviews at https:// letterboxd.com/nadiajo/.

Ryder Kimball (Art) is a photographer, storyteller, and digital designer from New York City. He is currently completing his graduate degree in Environmental Communication. His photos in this issue were all taken in the past few months and were shot on 35mm film.

Via Lamberti (Poetry) is a sophomore studying History. In her free time, she reads contemporary weird fiction and stares at walls.

Miranda Li (Art) is two quarters deep into a yearlong purgatory between her second and third years of Stanford. She is studying Computer Science, so most of the time her hands are either asleep or typing, but when they are not she asks them to please draw things and sometimes they comply.

Aditi Limaye (Poetry) is a goofball who is always looking for new ways to funnel that goofiness. She happens to, unfortunately, be a STEM major, but really enjoys writing to express the things that sometimes get lost in the nitty, gritty, detail-oriented mess that is life.

Justin Portela (Poetry & Prose) is an undergrad from New Jersey. He is desperate for your approval.

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2021

Danny Ritz (Poetry), ‘23, is a sophomore majoring in English and minoring in Music and TAPS. He enjoys writing, performing, making music, cooking, the sport of basketball, and watching The Sopranos with his parents.

Nur Shelton (Poetry) is an English major stuck somewhere between junior and senior year. Time at home has gradually turned into a gap year, and when Nur is not working at a tea house in Ashland, Oregon, he’s playing the same three songs on guitar and taking long walks in the woods.

Clara Spars (Prose & Art) is a senior majoring in English with a focus in Creative Writing. She is also a an artist and the owner of a small business called KITA.

Angeline Truong (Poetry) is a senior majoring in Human Biology. She is interested in the intersection of storytelling and refugee health.

Melina Walling (Art) is a coterm pursuing her M.A. in Earth Systems with a focus on multimedia environmental journalism. She earned her B.A. in English with an interdisciplinary concentration in photography. She enjoys hiking, yoga, swimming, loose leaf tea, writing letters, and anything involving animals.

Angela Yang (Art) is a junior still trying to figure out her place in the world while studying Psychology and Asian American studies. She writes fiction in her free time, as well as the occasional cathartic poem. 3.10.2020 is a self portrait of her driving home from campus when the pandemic began.

Cathy Yang (Art) is a super-senior studying Art Practice and coterming in CS. She’s interested in creating compelling images in both traditional and digital media. When she’s not doodling, she’s probably petting cats.