WWAD: Teresa Jordan

Teresa Jordan
Riding the White Horse Home:
A Western Family Album
(New York: Vintage, 1994)

Teresa Jordan was born on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. This text tells of her life growing up in this setting. Does this sound interesting? You would probably say not really. If you thought this way, you would certainly be missing out on meeting one of the fine authors of this era. By reading Teresa Jordan, you can bring some down-home western spirit into your life. Teresa Jordan has helped us to understand western rural life, culture, and its environment for over 20 years. It is through these writings that we are allowed to visit these wonderful western sanctuaries and see them for all their beauty and grandeur, while not actually being there. In her works we are a passenger on a roller coaster ride of emotions as we learn of the harsh realities and miracles which nature brings to the lives of the ranchers of the west.

Teresa Marie Jordan was born in 1955 in the Iron Mountain country of southeastern Wyoming. She is the daughter of Lawrence William Jordan and Mary Jo Steele. She is the sister of L. W. Jordan Jr. Teresa grew up during a period where cattle ranching was still a way of life in the southwestern region of the United States. These lands were large expanses of land where a young girl could allow her mind to wander and dream of many things while looking out over many acres of land. "As a young girl, Teresa enjoyed taking long walks with her Nana, (great grandmother) to collect fossils and arrowheads."¹ She also spent countless hours listening to her grandfather tell stories of how his family came to own the ranch which became the lifeblood of her family. The ranch is where Teresa developed her imaginative skills and mental images which have helped her to become the great writer she is today.

As a young girl, Teresa's parents guided her to pursue her education. While it may be assumed that her parents were low intelligence farmhands, this is not the case. Both her parents were college educated and her father was a skilled businessman handling all financial aspects of the ranch. He was wise enough to realize that the ranching industry was not going to be around in its present state much longer. "At sixth grade, Teresa outgrew her one room schoolhouse and moved into town with a different family,"² and was thrust into a whole different life setting. She had a roommate who while her age, seemed much more sophiticated and cooler than anyone Teresa had met. Teresa soon came to feel ashamed of her simple, unsophisticated life. She relates to her roomate that she knows nothing of top 40 music or things that a sixth grader might find important. This is an interesting event since it is that same unsophisticated lifestyle which she comes to miss dearly later in life.

In her writings Teresa gives great descriptions of the people and the roles they play in these large ranches. She explains to us how workers on her ranch often became extensions of her family and that everyone knew about each others faults and unique personality traits. She has great respect for the jobs and lives of all the people working a ranch. Teresa Jordan seems to have come up with three stories for how a woman could be in this time. She uses her mother, aunt, and great grandmother as examples. They could be strong and powerful and put themselves before their partners and be in control of their own lives. This was the story of her great grandmother. "They could be a full fledged family partner solely involved in the husband's enterprise."³ The third story was to meet a man who could create a life which would make a woman happy. A life which meant taking care of all ranch dealings.

While away at college prior to her senior year, Teresa's mother, Mary, passed away. She suffered from a brain aneurysm. This loss was a serious blow to Teresa. Life on the ranch was filled with serious injury and sometimes death. These events were often related to the difficult ranch life. This type of death was unfamiliar to Teresa and thus she had a hard time dealing with it. That summer her family sold the ranch which had become synonomous with her life. When her grandfather passed away, the estate taxes were too expensive and the role of ranchers was changing. Technology had replaced the need for many of the workers which had previously inhabited the ranch.

Teresa loves to travel and has been all over the western United States. She has visited the Grand Canyon, Yosemite Park, Montana, Salt Lake City, Texas, etc. During this time she has written other books and poetry. She has also created a sketchbook of the Grand Canyon. It is clear that Teresa Jordan has great admiration for the western portion of this country and all of the people who inhabit it.

In 1991 at age thirty-six, she married Hal Cannon, sixteen years after her mother passed away. She wore the dress she and her mother had picked out years before. She intended to be married on the piece of land which she grew up on. That land had been sold to an oil company. This fact, as well as the inclement weather, forced her to be married a short distance away but still close enough to the place she would never forget. She lives with Hal and his daughter, Annelise Cannon.

Teresa Jordan is an award winning photographer and documentary script writer. She has been recognized with literature fellowships from the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts, The Nevada State Council on the Arts, and The National Endowment for the Arts. She has also recieved the Silver Pen award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.

Notes:

¹ Teresa Jordan, Riding the White Horse Home (New York: Vintage Books,
1993)p.75

² Ibid., p.76

³ Ibid., p.180