From The Petrified Forest to Poet of the West: A note to Stephen Mather from Norman Wicklund Macleod

In February 1929, Stephen Mather received a note from Norman Macleod, thanking Mather for his “kindness and courtesy.”   Macleod was Custodian of the Petrified Forest National Monument, the equivalent to Superin-tendent at a National Park.    At that point and in charge of a national monument, Macleod was only twenty-two years old.

Macleod’s son, Norman Jr., would later say, “My dad burned the candle at both ends with a blowtorch in the middle.”   Indeed, if you looked up  “peripatetic” in the dictionary, you’d probably find a picture of Macleod.

Not only was he monument custodian from February 1928 to July 1929, “Mr. Macleod…[crossed] the Atlantic 12 times before he was six, once aboard the Lusitania …While a foreign correspondent for the Federated Press, he traveled through England, France, Germany, Holland, and the Soviet Union. Some of his other jobs included: ranger in Glacier National Park, checker for the United States Bureau of Public Roads… work on cattle and sheep ranches in the west, and acting in movies…” 

His lasting fame however was as a poet, novelist, editor and educator.  An editor at various magazines and journals, including Pembroke Magazine, Macleod was instrumental in establishing the Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. He taught at numerous institutions, including San Francisco State College, the University of Baghdad in Iraq, and Pembroke State University. He had long friendships with poets such as William Carlos Williams and W.S. Graham, both of whom dedicated poems to him. In 1973, Macleod was awarded the Horace Gregory Award for his work as a poet, an editor, and a teacher.

His time at the Petrified Forest did give inspiration for one of his more famous poems, Coniferous, printed here in its entirety.

Norman Macleod 1906-1985