Kith and Kin

“Because we have not made our lives to fit
our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
the streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope
then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
of what it is that no other place is, and by
your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
place that you belong to though it is not yours,
for it was from the beginning and will be to the end.”

(from This Place That You Belong To by Wendell Berry)

We gathered, “kith and kin” of Dr. Rosemary Smith, in the Weldon and Rosalie Weekley Visitor’s Center, in Gothic, Colorado, a gathering that resonated on many levels.

RMBL has weekly summer gatherings for members of our Explorer’s Club. These are opportunities to thank our major supporters, and for them to learn more about RMBL science and education, and by extension, better understand their impact on individuals, RMBL, and the larger world.

This gathering featured Rosemary. Her brothers and sisters, her “kin”, gathered in Crested Butte, joining us. Rosemary oversees RMBL’s undergraduate research programs, but her ties to RMBL and Gothic are much deeper. She started working at RMBL, or more accurately, she started climbing the peaks as well as doing research at RMBL, as an undergraduate 40+ years ago. She returned to Gothic yearly, meeting her husband, Dr. Rick Williams on one of the peaks. After retiring from Idaho State University, she began running our undergraduate research program. See the adjoining article for a more in-depth biography of Rosemary!

This spring Rosemary’s family surprised her by endowing the Rosemary Smith Scholarship. Having seen her passion for place and students, and the difference that summers in Gothic had made on so many lives, they decided there was no better gift for Rosemary than to provide financial support for future students. So, there we stood, some of Rosemary’s “kith”, or extended community, joining her “kin”, in honoring, her commitment to a place and a community, a place that in Wendell Berry’s words, she “made her life to fit”.

Having studied bugs, I’m more of an entomologist than an etymologist, or professional wordsmith. But narrowly, and in its modern sense, “kith” refers to the community of individuals that surround and extend beyond family. Taking license to project, there is (limited) evidence that the term “kith” meant something much more in Old English. It was potentially rooted in a concept that stood between both knowledge and attachment, bringing together community and place. In the Middle Ages, before cars, jets, and economic mobility allowed freedom of movement, community and place would have been more tightly integrated. Before modern media and the internet, knowledge would have emerged from the communities and places to which we were attached. So, the archaic use of “kith” may have captured something much deeper about a person’s connection to place and community.

I recently attended a gala at the Center for the Arts (CFA), at which David and Bonnie Weekley were given the Steddy Award. The award, in addition to recognizing supporters of the CFA, honors a demonstrated profound charitable commitment to Crested Butte. Across generations, the Weekley Family’s engagement with our community writ large, and this place, the upper East River Valley and the surrounding watersheds also embodied for me, this old (or new), concept of “kith”. As such, it was fitting to stand with Rosemary’s kith and kin, in a Visitor’s Center made possible by the Weekley Family.

We are fortunate that so many people, each in their own way, are part of our “kith”. In the Middle Ages, we would have developed “kith” because, except for a few nobleman, mobility, whether physical, financial, or community, was not possible. Today, “kith” is a choice.

Thank you, Rosemary, and all others that have made that choice, shaping your lives to this place, and in doing so, strengthening our communities and generating love, knowledge, and stewardship! Thank you to Rosemary’s “kin” in supporting future generations of students who will now have the opportunity to be part of our “kith”.