Obituary: Edmund Gareth Plank

Edmund Gareth Plank, born October 1st, 1957, a Paulding on his mother’s side.

Master of the vigilant glance, you must have already been looking when the lead-elk appeared while I gazed at something else, my beloved polkadot hills, smoking my pipe contentedly in the late afternoon. “You might want to check out the elk,” you said, breaking into my reverie. And so I followed where you pointed high on the mountain slope, as two, then three, then four more elk emerged from their stand of trees. “Wow,” I exclaimed, “It’s a herd of six!” “Not exactly,” said you, “I expect you’ll see some more.” And off you went on your ATV.

I watched patiently as the herd swelled, in the end all eighty-five of them, slowly spreading out and grazing down to the richest green as gathering dusk first came then went, blending to black and they finally disappeared in the fully-fathered dark. Off in the distance I could hear you, still on your ATV, buzzing with purpose.

Perhaps we thought your boundless energy and strength would carry you forever; I know I did. But now I’m pondering on your loss twenty years too soon. Complicated man, you are what you’ve always been, a real handful.

There were easy times— working together, sharing tobacco and a beer, eating good food, listening to music, haranguing each other like self-made millionaires, swapping notes, sharing stories of the present and the past, quoting philosophers.

And hard ones, locked in obstinacy, dancing with lightning bolts, dodging fusillades of metaphor as talk fell through into tingling stern silence. And then there was watching a three-year-old placed high up on a saddle horse, awakening as the king or queen of kids, eyes ablaze with wonderment and awe, the world bursting with smile, the sky with possibility. It’s times like those one knows forgiveness is everything.

You were the guy who once rolled into camp with a three-burner stove and a propane tank, “because” you said, “nobody wants to huddle in the cold, clinging to a paper plate, waiting for eggs.” I asked you once which dress shoes I should buy. “The ones that make you feel the most confident and at ease.”

And now you’re gone, not gone. Here, not here, leaving us to make some sense of it.

We’ll have tea parties (the kind you never liked) and discuss it at great length from time to time. You can depend on it. After all, you were always yours, but you are also ours and mine.

Saturday, April 26th, 2025 from 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm at the Scott River Ranch in Etna.

sourced: Girdner Funeral Chapel