Swain Wolfe

Swain Wolfe

On March 14th, Swain Wolfe left this world, he was 82 years old. Swain was a unique and gifted man, always curious, and always consumed with projects. He was a writer, filmmaker, painter, poet, and clay sculptor. He was passionate about understanding the world, and he took great pleasure in art, literature, film, archaeology, and science. Swain had a unique sense of aesthetics and found beauty in strange and unusual objects, as well as in the more common things-a bird's nest, a special stone, and a comfortable old chair.

Born Adam Michalo in Denver, Colorado, in 1939, Swain's mother was Icelandic and his father either Russian or Slavic, depending on which family member you asked. Both worked at the Woodman Tuberculosis Sanitarium near Colorado Springs where his mother was the superintendent and father was the medical director. When a cure for TB became available in 1947, the sanitarium closed, and his mother and father separated. His father started a medical practice in Gunnison, CO, and his mother, little sister, Vicky, and he moved twenty miles north to the Spring Creek Resort. His mother kept horses for the overdressed dudes from the East Coast who came out West on vacation. In the fall, she guided hunters who came, primarily, to drink. They lived in an Army Surplus tent with barely room enough for the three of them and their seven or eight horses. At night Swain could feel the horses breathing on his neck as he slept.

He moved to Missoula in the early fifties, after his mother married Sam Wolfe. With the family name change, he also changed his first name to Swain, after his grandfather. During high school, he got a night job stacking boards off the chain at Delaney's Lumber Mill, also working the log pond at Hamilton Lumber, where Missoula's South Gate Mall sits today. After high school, he spent the fall and winter in the Lolo Forest, setting tongs for Cameron's gypo logging outfit.

Swain later moved to Butte and worked a series of jobs for the Anaconda Copper Mining Company in the Badger Mine east of Walkerville. While in Butte, the Junior League began a foreign film series on the works of Bergman, Resnais, Antonioni, and Fellini. Those screenings, coupled with the mines-the sounds, images, men, and stories-inspired Swain to make films.

His first films were surreal arthouse projects, including The Bowler Hat and The Violin People. He went on to make a wide variety of movies, from the life of migrant Mexican children in the fields of Eastern Montana to a film about the effects of logging and mining in the state. Various projects took him to the American Southwest, Cairo, Japan, and even a Bedouin shantytown on the Gulf of Aqaba. Two of his films showed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and his work twice represented the United States in international film festivals. Two of his other films were presented at the Sundance Festival.

After thirty years as an independent filmmaker, he decided to go into the publishing business. As a test twenty-five years ago he self-published his first book, The Woman Who Lives in the Earth, based on a script he'd written a decade earlier. The book was much more successful than he'd anticipated. Harper Collins bought it and gave him a contract for three more books: The Lake Dreams the Sky; The Parrot Trainer; and a memoir, The Boy Who Invented Skiing. The Harper Collins edition of The Woman Who Lives in the Earth was translated into fourteen languages and a 25th anniversary edition with updated text was published last year. In the months before he passed, he was working on a fourth novel and a second memoir.

A fascinating life of hard work gave Swain incredible stories, and his natural gifts made him a storyteller like few others. A survivor of unbearable working conditions above and below ground, Swain shaped-for good and ill-the land. Swain was also himself shaped by those labors, often leaving him in tremendous physical and even psychic pain. His stories were so often about that experience, and he leaves behind a body of work that is a testament to his generation's effect on the land, waterways, and culture of Montana.

Swain lived an amazing life and, in the end, his chronic pain was so intense that he took his own life. He had always said, if his body failed him, he would take care of it himself. He never wanted to live a life where he could not continue his creative work. Swain was a wonderful partner, friend, artist and so much more.

Swain leaves behind so many dear friends and relatives. Among the people who were special to him were Laurie Urfer, his partner of 35 years. Their lives were intricately interwoven in love and admiration. His former wife, Lynne Wolfe, with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship. His nieces Prairie Wolfe and Laurie Ferrari, and his great nephew Adam Viray.

A gathering to celebrate his life will be held in the months to come.

If you wish to contact the family you may write to laurie.urfer@gmail.com