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Adventurer in life's bewilderness

Monday, March 26, 2012

Alaskan Winter Remembrance

A slight movement catches my eye and draws a startled response, “Bear, what are you doing here?” The Bruin's auburn coat shimmers as he arches over the porcelain rim of the claw foot bathtub as if to catch his reflection in the discarded fixture. Ambling to the edge of the clearing, he stands on hind legs, grasps an alder branch, rippping off a mouthful of leaves and bark before plunging into the brush. A towering hemlock grove and the hundred feet between us dwarf the scene, yet my heart pounds and images from last winter heighten my sense that wilderness spirits own this land.

First snow at Mud Bay casts an orange mystic glow over the seaweed strewn garden. Moderated by the warming effect of tidal waters, our snowfalls are lighter than in town. My car’s in the shop, almost a month waiting for a part, so I walk the long driveway to the road and hitch a ride to town. Returning late I don my headlamp at the top of the drive and ease my way along the steep incline, retracing my morning steps. After a few feet I stop to cast the light further down the drive and scan the shadowed tangle of naked alder branches on either side before resuming my descent. An unfathomable blackness encloses me in a tunnel of light. A deep breath brings in the slightest scent of salt and pine; exhaling, a tingle of repose flows through me.

My thoughts wander to my good fortune. Tomorrow morning I return to a well-lit home with Internet and an indoor toilet, less than a mile from the homestead. For two years I’ll have a view of Rainbow Glacier from a tiny office adjoining a welcoming kitchen where I can cook up plans for the homestead with friends and neighbors. 

Tonight I will light candles and build a roaring fire in a badly rusted barrel stove, too far from the bedroom to bring the temperature above freezing. Now I understand. The trailer house Mom and Dad lived in during the early homesteading years would be reason enough for Mom to move into town. As I take another step my eye catches the imprint of a large moose hoof in my morning tracks. Likely the handsome bull that most autumn days before hunting season silently strides the old logging road from the uplands to the flats, pausing now and then to grasp tender alder branches in his massive bite and skim the leaves with a twist of his nozzle. Confident of his authority he allows me to watch him from a distance. If I stir, he turns full face toward me and continues munching.

Soon after settling in my Rainbow Glacier hideaway I discover that a cow moose and her calf frequently cut across the clearing by the abandoned claw foot tub.  No more sightings of the bear.  

The morning of the first heavy snow I post hole my way to the road. That night trudging back to the house in the hemlock grove, the cow’s hooves follow my deep impressions; the calf’s trail breaking virgin snow alongside, until the pair veer into the woods.

1 comment:

cradlemountain said...

Carol,

J.R.Myers says we need to meet. I am a visiting artist from Tasmania, Australia. You may reach me at 303-0627.
Sarah King,
Conservationist and Glass Artist
glass.artasmania@gmail.com