Of course, I was coming back. Everyone waved cheerfully as I drove off, canoe
strapped to the roof of what I privately called Grandpa's Ghost.
The questions started a year later. "When are you coming home?" my father
asked, his voice echoing over the satellite phone. A retired career diplomat,
he could fathom the lure of distant places, but not the idea of his son pricing
canned beans in an Eskimo village store. My mother, intuitive and theatrical,
came closer to understanding. But she wanted to know when, too.
"I don't know. Next year," I said, believing the sound of my own voice. But a
year became five, then ten. Even though I was now teaching English, history,
and math in the Ambler school, putting my education to good use and getting
paid for it, my parents' questions never quite stopped. What was I doing up
there, hauling water in buckets and peeing in an outhouse? When was I going to
get on with my life?
The real question, though, wasn't what or when, but why. I knew they didn't
quite understand what held me here. If only they could sit with me and watch
the caribou flowing south down the Redstone valley, or smell the tundra after a
late spring rain. Come up, I told them, and I'll show you.
Two summers ago, my mother, father, and sister-in-law Kate stood outside my boarded-up cabin as I fumbled with the padlock. The late July day was warm and still;
mosquitoes buzzed lazily in the fireweed. We'd been traveling together for
three weeks, driving from Oregon to Prince Rupert, then the ferry to Skagway,
on to Whitehorse, and up the highway to Anchorage and Fairbanks--two thousand
miles and change. We'd done all the usual tourist drill: sea otters and eagles
. . . check; cheap souvenirs . . . check; Alaska Railroad . . . check,
grizzlies, moose, and mountains . . . check. The postcard version of Alaska,
most of which I'd never seen, was all interesting and pretty enough.
Okay, spectacular at times. I was just as excited as anyone when a whale rolled
fifty yards off the ferry's bow. Resurrection Bay was good, too. At Denali
Park, we spotted more critters out of a bus window than I'd be likely to see in
a week up north. But all the time I was restless, and my parents felt it. All
this scenery, grand as it was, explained nothing about where I lived, or why.
Now we were home, three hundred miles from the nearest Princess Tour. "There's
the outhouse behind that tree," I pointed. "And this bucket here is for
drinking water." The familiar, comforting shapes of the Jade Mountains shone
blue in the evening sun. Crossbills twittered in the trees.
My mother and father nodded quietly. There in the path lay a caribou leg bone,
hoof and all. A four-wheeler
roared by, trailing dust. "Tell me," my father said, "why you live in the
middle of all this trash." He gestured toward the oil barrels, the snowmobile
carcasses behind the woodpile. I tried to explain. Tight, clean fuel drums were
a commodity and there were good parts on those machines. Trash? This was
wealth.
Kate and Mom cleaned while I unboarded windows, split wood. There were dozens of
small chores, and everyone pitched in. It felt good to be working with my hands
again. This was more like it, I thought. They're smiling. They like it here.
Later on, my neighbors Lynn and Carol told me how Mom and Dad had confided in
them. Though they found everyone here more than friendly, they thought my cabin
was filthy and cluttered, the bed 1umpy, my lifestyle primitive. What had gone
wrong? They hadn't raised their son to live this way.
So much for the village. Out in the country, things would be different. I'd
envisioned all of us soaring up the Ambler River in my new jetboat--just us,
the caribou, and the Brooks Range. No crowds of New York tourists looking over
our shoulders, no bogus guide chattering away. We'd camp on a gravel bar forty
miles from anyone, catch grayling from water clear as air, hear wolves howling
at twilight. Then they'd understand.
My new boat, however, bought and paid for months ago, hadn't arrived in
Kotzebue yet. I'd figured to fly down and drive it back the first day. Instead,
we were stuck in Ambler, waiting. The week we'd planned up here was melting
away. It wasn't supposed to go like this.
We never did make it back into the mountains. Instead, we settled for a day
trip to Minnie Gray's fish camp in a borrowed boat, thirty miles up the broad,
dull Kobuk. A nice enough outing, but hardly what I'd pictured. We caught a few
hammer-handle pike, drank coffee with Minnie and Sarah, and watched them cut
fish. On the ride home, my parents shivered in the wind. Though they didn't
complain once, I knew they were ready to go home.
I ended up spending the next two days in Kotzebue, waiting for my boat.
Meanwhile, my parents were back in Ambler, meeting my friends, both white and
Eskimo, telling them stories of their son's childhood, reliving a time when we
knew each other.
The two-hundred-mile ride upriver to Ambler took another day, and I walked in
the door just in time to wave good-bye.
We smiled and hugged at the gravel airstrip; Kate, who'd spent three days
working at Minnie's fish camp, was radiant. My parents looked tired.
As I watched, the little plane faded into the sky, headed toward Fairbanks,
where fifteen years ago I'd parked Grandpa's Ghost on a back road, put it up on
blocks, and walked off into a new life. I'd like to think the car's still
there; I suspect someone hauled it off for junk. But if Grandpa could see where
his ghost carried me, maybe he'd smile and nod.Excerpted from A Place Beyond, published by Alaska Northwest Books, 0-88240-477-6.