Wild West Alaska
The trail kisses my feet. Its dark earth tender, its twist of roots rough, and its pine cones springing as I run. When I meander off the trail, sometimes the damp mosses are deep enough to cover most of my body. That’s all right with me. I like to hide.
When my mom steps on a pine cone, it crunches. To call her “mom” may seem sentimental, but I can’t think of a better title. She takes care of me. Gives me food, a place to sleep, tells me which things aren’t good to eat, cleans up after me when I don’t listen and eat the wrong things. And she cried that time I thought it would be fun to hide and she thought I was lost. Silly mom. I always know exactly where I am.
She’s my adopted mom. I was born under a truck next to a little float-plane lake, the one where Rocket Ron parks his black bat plane. One of eleven. We lived outside in a junk yard competing with each other for every scrap of food we could get. My birth mother was beautiful; she had sky blue eyes I’m told. My birth father was called Charlie, which suited him, he was the guy you’d hang out with who was everyone’s friend. I like to think I have some of the best of my birth parents.
My adopted parents quickly taught me the ways of the tundra. They took me on walks by the sea. The waves were a little intimidating, so I stayed close. I liked the feel of that wet sand under my feet and the heady smell of the fish. Not just any fish. Salmon. Sockeye salmon. Wild and vibrant, the best smell in the world. My parents don’t like me to eat it right on the beach, but we have it sometimes at home. Salmon and bacon are my favorite foods. Oh, and barbecue chips.
After the time of the thousands and millions of salmon, there’s a time for blueberries. My mom is a great blueberry picker. She picks them carefully, keeping leaves and twigs out of the container. I try to do the same, carefully culling a berry or two gently with my mouth. About a month later, the time to pick cranberries begins. Mom likes them when they are juicy, so she’ll wait a long time. I don’t like the taste of cranberries as much as blueberries, but I’ll pull a couple off the bushes in the spirit of togetherness. I’m all about doing things together as a family.
When the salmon are here, the days are long. There’s almost no darkness at all. I don’t like darkness very much, so that’s my favorite time.
Sometimes, out on the tundra trail, we’ll find very large animals in the brush, so large that they are about twenty or thirty of me combined. A little unsettling. My dad taught me not to bark when there’s a very large animal, but instead to come to him and sit. We’re usually at a distance from them and they usually smell us, so they don’t come near. Some look like giant dogs except they have really long claws. Those are bears. Some large animals have antlers coming out of their heads, sometimes in big thick branches. Odd, awkward creatures, the moose have long, round stubby noses, yet elegant, long legs more like horses.
I love horses. I haven’t met any yet, because there aren’t any where I live, but I’ve seen horses on the programs my parents watch. I love their speed and grace.
I also love birds. Watching them fly is mesmerizing. I would like to soar like that. Sometimes I feel like I’m flying for just a second when I leap out with all my legs extended.
The light is always changing in my tundra home. Once the cranberries are picked, there’s darkness at night and the air is colder, sometimes cold enough to put a white frost over the berries and tiny green leaves and the tree branches. Leaves turn yellow and orange and fall from the trees. Fierce winds rake through the branches leaving them bare pretty quickly.
Snow is refreshing. I enjoy eating snow and chewing on ice. Plunging down into the sandy coolness feels great.
The only problem with the snow time is that we don’t seem to go outside as much. For some reason, I’m never cold outside, but my parents get cold. And it takes them forever to get ready to go out. Sometimes I feel like I could have knitted my own coat for them in the time that they ponder over whether or not they need thicker pants.
They take me on rides in the FJ and the Subaru. The FJ is more adventurous and dirtier. The Subaru is clean and it’s easier to see out. My dad loves the post office; he goes there just about every day and jokes around with the workers or the people who come in to get mail. He also loves Eddie’s, the only restaurant in town in the winter. My parents come back from there smelling like grilled burgers, fried potatoes, chili, biscuits and gravy, eggs and bacon, cranberry juice, and occasionally coronas.
Longer drives take us to the beach with its wet sand, waves, stones and fish carcasses. Or to the school where dad makes photographs of just about everyone who lives in the area. He sets up light stands and umbrellas and usually pins up an enormous cloth so that people can pose in front of it. The flash is bright. I know because my dad has asked me to sit still and point my nose a certain way so that he can photograph me, too. Both of my parents photograph me all the time. I’ve gotten pretty used to standing still and looking at them meaningfully when they hold up a camera.
It gets dark enough that there’s only about seven hours of light everyday, so I’m glad when the light starts coming back. Pretty soon, the birds start squawking so loud that it sounds like they’re having a party on the river: long, sleek swans, always in pairs, squabbling ducks, leggy godwits, and those small, black birds that skim always brush the water and make a whirring sound when they fly off. The bald eagles are so majestic, floating on the air with immense wings. They are beautiful, but they make me nervous. Sometimes one eye-balls me like dinner. I move closer to my parents as we walk along the tundra trail heading home where we’ll curl up on the couch, the spicy pine scent of labrador tea we’d stirred up with our fingers and paws lingering around us as we sleep.
