Robert Cabot, born in 1924, has lived a colorful and exciting life, pursuing his love for writing since the late 1960’s. He has lived part-time in Patagonia, just outside of town limits, since 2011, where he spends much of his time writing. The rest of the year Cabot and his wife Penny live in Seattle, Washington.
On January 20, Cabot launched his first memoir, Time’s Up!: A Memoir of the 20th Century, in Seattle. Cabot said that writing a memoir was “not as much fun” as writing novels for him. “It was fraught with all kinds of dangers,” he said, because in telling the story of his life he had to write about secrets to get to the truth. He also had to weigh what was necessary to share, and consider the feelings of those he wrote about, and the damage or hurt revealing secrets may cause.
In writing his memoir, Cabot came to realize the malleable nature of memory. As he looked back, at age 94, on his life, and on the United States, he realized that he had rebelled against his privileged upbringing. The maldistribution of wealth always felt wrong to him, and he devoted himself to fighting against social injustices.
Cabot’s memoir includes descriptions of his time in the Army as a private during World War II, graduating from Yale Law School, and working for the U.S Government. He worked in the executive office during Truman’s and Eisenhower’s presidencies, and spent many years in Europe, as well, working with the Marshall Plan.
After a decade in government work, he quit and decided to pursue his writing. He returned to the United States at the peak of the counter-culture movement in the 1970’s. He sailed solo across the Atlantic in his thirty-foot sloop in 1976. Since 1976, he and his wife Penny have lived in various places, traveling in a motor home until they settled and founded an intentional community in Cortez Island, British Columbia, Canada. Though they left the intentional community a few years after it formed, it still continues to exist today. The Cabots were also deeply involved with social justice movements for indigenous communities and for conservation of land.
Cabot first came to Arizona, to Mesa and the Superstition Mountains, when he was a young boy in the early 1930’s with his father. He fell in love with the Southwest region of the United States and has a particular attraction and connection to this landscape. Cabot returned to the south to spend winters away from Seattle in 2000, spending months in Alamos, Sonora.
However, Penny did not enjoy living there. In 2011 they were driving through Sonoita. Penny was very hungry, but they could not find a place that was open in Sonoita. He suggested driving to Patagonia, and as soon as they came to the town, they instantly fell in love with it, and became winter residents. Cabot continues his love affair with this particular area of the Southwest, appreciating its unique beauty.
Cabot is a fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, the McDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Ucross Foundation. His books are available at the Patagonia Public Library.
His first published book is titled, “The Joshua Tree”, published in 1970 followed by “That Sweetest Wine: Three Novellas” published in 2000 and “The Isle of Kheria” published in 2012. Cabot will do a book launch on March 16 at 2 p.m of his memoir, “Time’s Up”, at the Patagonia Public Library. Copies of his book will be available for purchase. For more information, visit his website: robertcabot.com