River Passage

by Susan Pope

Hockey posters—two walls’ worth. A row of ball caps slung on hooks. The requisite electronics—TV, computer, smartphone. Dishes caked with dried food. And over every inch of floor space, camping gear, some with price tags still attached.

Perched on the bed in my fifteen-year-old grandson Cason’s bedroom, I watch him pack. Tomorrow we leave for a raft trip, on a river we’ve never seen with people we’ve never before met. He’s had five months to get ready. His mom—my daughter—has quit nagging. He could have recruited his grandpa, my husband, to help. But he knows that Papa—the name Cason calls him—would just say you’ve got the list, check it off, pack it up. That leaves me, the organizer, explainer, and most of all, the soft touch.

I miss talking with Cason. We used to have moments of conversation in the car, on the way to hockey practice, when his sister and parents weren’t around. Little things: How he hated math. Liked his new hockey team. Hoped to catch a king salmon this summer. Now he rides with his buddies who drive, so the two of us rarely speak except in passing.

Cason asked for the trip. Not this trip specifically, but any river trip. I’m not sure why. “Sounds like fun,” is all he said when I asked.

His family—my daughter’s—does not camp or fish or hike. “Roughing it” is a cabin with running water on a lake surrounded by all the mechanized toys an American family could desire. To Cason and his pickup-driving, four-wheeling, dirt-biking friends, my husband Jim and I are the quaint old bird watchers, nature lovers, greenies.

But something made him curious, made him want to find out for himself if our stories were true—the river journeys that changed our lives, the adventures, mishaps, near disasters. Maybe it was the passion in our voices or the faraway looks in our eyes as we sat around a family dinner while Cason half-listened to us reminisce about running rapids through the Grand Canyon or dodging ice on an Arctic river. Maybe he just wanted a way to impress his friends. Whatever his reasons, here was this boy turning sixteen asking to spend time with his grandparents—on a river, no less.

As his life is opening up, our lives are narrowing down. We have this brief moment in time when the dreams of the old and the young intersect, while Jim and I are still hardy enough in mind and body to give him this gift. Of course, we said yes.

Pen poised to mark off items as he packs them, I read from the gear list.

First aid kit. He unzips the small nylon bag with the Cabela’s tag still on it. Band-aides, gauze, alcohol swab, tweezers, eye drops, Neosporin ointment.

Check.

Socks. Two pair.

Check.

Bandana.

“Why do I need one?” He asks.

“To keep the sun off your neck, wipe the sweat off your face. We’re going into the desert in summer.”

 “I’ve got one, but you won’t like it,” he says.

“What’s not to like about a bandana?”

He ducks into his closet and retrieves a neatly folded blue and red piece of cloth. With a flip of his wrist he opens it out. It’s a Confederate flag.

“Not appropriate. Not anywhere.” I’m about to launch into a lecture and history lesson when I notice the half-smile on his face. He’s baiting me. Of course I won’t approve. He knows that. I remember doing this with my father, but not until I had left home and was in college. It’s called breaking away.

What I can’t stand is Cason’s sullen, sarcastic, and disrespectful side. Screaming and door slamming are easier for me to handle than silence or outright refusal to help with something so simple as carrying groceries up the steps.

Yet just a few weeks ago, at a Father’s Day barbeque, he was the perfect son and grandson, serving food, cleaning up, smiling. Which person will he be when we’re out in the wilds without his parents as the enforcers?

As for me, I’ve taken a silent vow to be the warm, relaxed grandmother who lets Cason experience the river in his own way, enjoying the terrain and our companions, taking responsibility for himself. No nagging, no hovering, no treating him like the four-year-old he sometimes seems to be.

But I draw a line at the Confederate flag. “Dump it,” I say. “If you don’t have another, I’ve got an extra.”

Cason shrugs, then drops the bandana back in his closet. We return to the last few items on the packing list. He starts pulling knives out of drawers, off his desk, from his closet. “I’m not sure which ones to take.”

“No knives on the list.”

“But I’ve got to take one.”

He lays them out on the bed. A small stainless-steel pocket knife, a bigger one with a bone handle, a sleek silver one that when he hits a button pops out a long, menacing blade. We used to call it that a switchblade, the kind used by gang members and criminals in the movies I watched as a kid.

“What are you doing with so many knives?”

“I collect them. I buy them with my own money.”

I’ve known this kid all his life—changed his diapers, cradled him when he was sick, comforted him when he was hurt—and these are the tools he shows me to prove he’s grown up. Inhaling slowly, I hit the pause on my internal alarm and point to the plain silver knife on the bed, the kind that unfolds into a pocket tool kit—knife, screw driver, pliers, everything you could need to repair anything. “Take that one.”

He slips the knife into a small nylon bag with his first aid kit and resumes packing from the list. Broad-brimmed hat, camping towel, long sleeve shirt. With each item he grills me. “Why do I need this?”

I should be more patient, relishing this rare opportunity for conversation, but there’s only so much you can explain about a raft trip through the desert Southwest to someone who’s never been there. Besides, I have to get home to my own packing.

“Trust me,” I say. “If it’s on the list, you need it.”

***

1:00 a.m., Vernal, Utah. In our motel room, a pale blue light radiates from the next bed. Cason’s face is aglow with flashing images from his cell phone screen.

          “Cason,” I whisper. “Shut that thing off.”

          A grunt. Covers rustling. The flashing glow shifts from one side of the bed to the other.

          “We have to get up early.”

Another grunt.

Beside me, my husband kicks the covers, mumbles, and turns over.

No electronics on the river. No cell phone coverage there, so that’s our deal. Cason said he was fine with that. Later, I’ll find out he’s loaded his phone with an entire season of Grey’s Anatomy and brought a solar charger.

I want Cason to find life more compelling than images on his screen. I want this trip to be successful, memorable, even life-changing for him. I want him to fall in love with rivers, canyons, the desert, a world beyond.

I believe one journey can change a person’s life. The Grand Canyon changed mine. I was fresh out of college, traveling with my then-husband, backpacking with cheap equipment and ill-fitting shoes. We descended from the rim in February to two nights of camping in single-digit temperatures, hiking the trail beside the river, then trekking ten miles back up, icy trail beneath our feet, stars scattered extravagantly across the ink-black sky. Every step was agony but also triumph. For two Alaskan kids on their first traverse of the United States, the world opened up, the map of the country becoming more than just abstract shapes on the pages of our social studies books. More than that, I discovered a person could strike out into unknown territory for no reason other than to find out what the rest of the world looks like.

Sluggish here at our put-in, the Yampa River, which straddles Utah and Colorado, will gather speed until it merges with the swifter, bigger Green. At the end of the trip, we’ll run a long string of rapids as the Green rushes to join the Colorado.

Helmets on, life jackets zipped and buckled, paddles raised, the two men I love most in the world are poised to shove off into the brown water on this first day of our journey. Grandpa and grandson. They’ve never kayaked together, and Cason has never floated a river. Yet without hesitation, he slips into the inflatable double kayak in front of Jim. A few moments of circling, drifting, bickering, swearing, and they float away. I’ll see them—hopefully—at our first camp. 

          This is what I wanted, grandpa and grandson working together, sharing an adventure. As I snap their picture, I’m proud but also a bit jealous. They’re off without me.

I find an empty space on one of the blue rubber rafts and hop in. Together, we are twenty-two guests and six guides in a flotilla of six rowing rafts, one paddle raft, one double kayak and three single kayaks, all traveling at different speeds but never out of sight of each other. With the exception of our guides and two sisters ages thirteen and ten, everyone in the group but Cason is over fifty.

In early evening, we dock our boats on a hard-packed river bank. Jim and Cason—wet but intact—have managed to propel themselves successfully down the river. Together with our group, we haul the rafts and kayaks up on shore and tether them, then form fire lines to unload gear—folding tables, chairs, stoves, pots, pans, dishes, coolers of food, and waterproof bags containing tents, sleeping bags, and personal gear. A pattern we will repeat at each new camp on our five days along the river.

When the boats have been emptied, Deja, our trip leader, yells, “Campers: Set up your tents.” 

We each grab our two waterproof bags and scurry to find shady camp spots. After surveying our options, Jim picks out a flat space big enough to pitch two tents and far enough away from any snoring neighbor. Working together, we three assemble the tents we’ve rented from the guiding company. When we’ve mastered the mechanics of poles and pegs and our two identical tents are pitched within a few feet of each other, Cason throws his gear into his tent, then stands beside me while I pull out clean clothes to replace my smudged and sweaty ones. I hold back a barrage of questions I want to ask—about the river, the guides, our fellow travelers, and most of all about whether he’s having fun.

“What do we do now?” he asks.

I’m not sure what to say. The options seem obvious. “Sit, watch the water, swim, take a nap, go for a walk, take pictures,” I tell him. “I’m going to wash up in the river.”

He wanders off to sit by himself in the crescent of canvas chairs facing the river. I stifle an impulse to rush over and sit beside him so he doesn’t feel lonely. This is the empty space I wanted him to experience. 

Day two. Cason tries out his skills in the paddle raft with some of the seasoned river runners in our group while Jim and I split up into separate rowing rafts. Our journey takes us through narrow canyons, sweeping meadows, abandoned ranches, and old outlaw hideouts. We tie up in early afternoon and make camp on a floodplain at a curve in the river.

When we’ve pitched our tents, the group scatters to find patches of shade, awaiting a hike that will start when the heat of the day has passed. An hour later, we fill our water bottles and pull on day packs.

Cason remains in his canvass camp chair in the shade. “Hiking is boring,” he’s declared repeatedly whenever I’ve invited him to join me for a walk at home. The truth is that hockey has made him a sprinter, not an endurance athlete.

Bross, our wiry, twenty-something guide, will lead the hike. With his rumpled brown hair, big sunglasses and gray hoody, he could be one of Cason’s high school buddies. “You coming?” he asks Cason.

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you are. Get going.”

Bross grabs a pack, tucks in a first aid kit and a bag of granola bars, slings a jug with extra water over his shoulder, and starts walking.

Cason jumps up, fills his water bottle, and hurries to catch up with Bross.

The trail that begins behind our camp switchbacks up the canyon wall. At the top, we’ve been promised a vista of the river, where we’ve traveled and where we’re headed. As our group of twenty snakes up the hill, Jim dallies to take pictures, while I fall behind trying to spot birds with my binoculars. Cason takes the lead with Bross.

At a fork in the trail some forty-five minutes into our climb, Bross and Cason pause in the shade of some thorny bushes while we stragglers catch up. I sip from my half-empty water bottle, feeling light-headed. Even now, in late afternoon, the air feels no cooler than when we made camp. Alaskans, we’re not used to this desert heat. I worry that Cason’s not drinking enough water.

As I weigh whether to express my concern, Bross articulates it. “Drink water,” he commands, and Cason obliges with a big swig out of his red bottle.

From here the trail is not as steep, but now we labor in soft sand, so the way is no easier. Where we reach solid rock, the trail levels off, ending abruptly at the canyon rim. I peer over the edge at the brown river curving gently below, bright yellow pods of our tents spread out along the bank. I’m dizzy—the heat, the height, the edge—so I step back while others pose for pictures against a backdrop of unobstructed sky. I take pictures of the guides, the other hikers, and Cason, slightly apart from the group, at the rim’s edge, smiling back at me in his red Oklahoma Sooners tee shirt, blue ball cap with American flag on the front, red water bottle in hand.

While I fill my bottle with the extra water Bross has carried all this way, Cason wanders off. When I turn back, he is sitting by himself on an overhanging ledge, feet dangling into oblivion, gazing over the canyon. My brain yells get back, stay away from the edge, you’ll fall off, while my stomach flips and lurches in its own panic dance.

Even if I yelled, he’s too far away to hear my pleas, so I motion for him to get back, but he doesn’t see me or pretends not to. I wave again. He lies back on the flat rock and stares at the cloudless sky. In my mind, the ledge cracks, gives way, and his body hurtles to the valley floor.

I turn away. He’s showing off, testing his limits, feeling the power of his own body.

When I turn back, my husband is approaching the ledge. He’s talking some sense into Cason, I think. But no, they’re both leaning over to watch something below the precipice. I gesture at the two of them, but they pretend not to see.

I rush to Bross and point to the two crazy guys on the brink. Bross shakes his head and waves them back. Moving slowly, Cason pulls in his feet, takes a swig from his water bottle, leans over for a final look, then rises and rejoins us. Jim follows.

***

Day three. I join five other women in the paddle raft with Travis, one of the guides. We’re at his command, relying on his well-timed directions and expert rudder skills to pivot us from lethal boulders and rubber-piercing logs. The afternoon heat beats down on my bare legs. Even though slathered in sunscreen, they feel as if they’ve been basted in olive oil and roasted in the oven. Whenever we have a few seconds’ break in paddling, I unzip the mesh bag strapped to the pontoon in front of me and gulp water from the bottle within, only to be put back to work by Travis’ sometimes frantic orders to forward left, right, back paddle, stop.

In my peripheral vision, a shape drifts past. It’s a big rowing raft with Cason at the oars. Bross stands behind him, ready to avert a disaster if necessary. Cason flashes a quick smile and continues rowing. I grab my camera from its waterproof case and snap his picture. Broad-brimmed hat, orange-framed mirrored sunglasses, faded red life jacket, blue tee shirt, yellow and blue and orange gear bags lashed behind him. Facing forward, he’s leaning into the oars, propelling his raft through the riffles.

How different we are. My life has been careful, measured as I’ve mustered the courage to take risks, unsure in my body, while Cason is confident, competent, a risk-taker. In another culture, he’d have harpooned his first whale by now, shot his first seal, killed his first caribou. Instead he’s here, learning to master the art of reading a river.

Later, as we sit next to each other watching the river at sunset, Cason says, “I wish my family could be here.”

“Your sister hates bugs and your parents don’t like to camp. They’d hate it.” 

I catch myself before blathering on, realizing I’ve cut off a chance to find out what the trip means to him, and to say what it means to me.

 “You’d like to share this with them,” is what I finally blurt out.

 “Yeah.”

Day four. The Yampa, the last undammed tributary of the Colorado, has merged with the broader, more powerful Green River. We’re camped near a wide, grassy valley just past Jones Hole Creek, a clear, swift stream that empties into the Green.

Cason is now Bross’ sidekick. “Guide in training,” Bross calls him. Bross has mastered the unique set of skills essential to a good river guide—river running, local knowledge, yarn-telling, bravado, and above all, patience. Not a bad role model for a teenage boy.

We ready ourselves to hike a trail that follows the creek. The guides promise opportunities to cool off with plunges into the cascades and to view rock pictographs and petroglyphs left by the Freemont people who lived in this country long before the first Spanish explorers.

Bross will stay behind, on dinner duty with Deja and Bob, another guide. I call out to Cason who has slipped into his tent to take a nap.

A muffled moan.

I call again.

“Uh, uh,” he mumbles.

I want him to have this experience. But I want him to choose it.

We leave without him. When we return hours later, bringing stories of still-vibrant drawings by ancient people, immersions in icy water, and encounters with snakes, Cason greets us with a slight nod from a chair in the shade. Hair combed, clothes changed, he looks fresh and clean, his red shirt drying on a tree limb above his tent.

“Bross and I floated down the river,” he says.

The logistics elude me. After floating the river, they’d have to paddle back upstream to return to camp. “How’d you manage that?”

 “We hiked up to the creek, put on our helmets and life jackets, floated down the creek, then down the river and back to camp.”

Slowly, I comprehend their feat, undertaken without boats. Frigid water, bouncing over boulders, dodging sweepers, dog-paddling like mad to reach camp before being swept down the mighty Green. “Wow, that’s quite a trick.”

What I don’t say is What were you thinking? What was Bross thinking? I wanted Cason to discover a sense of himself on this trip, but letting go is harder than I imagined.

It’s our last night of camping. Exhausted hikers leave the campfire one by one, saying goodnight before they slip into bed.

Cason sticks with the guides at the fire. I take toothbrush and water bottle down to the river. On the way back to the tent, I contemplate nudging Cason out of the circle, allowing the guides their night to kick back and drink a few beers, sparing Cason the inevitable foul language and stupid tourist stories. But, as I catch his face in the glow of the fire, he looks older, like a taller, leaner version of someone I once knew. So I duck into my tent, slip into my sleeping bag next to Jim, and leave Cason and the river crew laughing around the fire. 

The next day we face the biggest whitewater on the river. One long intense stretch that must be scouted, pondered over, strategized by the guides. They’ve done it before, many times. But each run is different. The river never stays the same.

I decide to ride with Garth. Measured, cautious, conservative, college math teacher in his other life. Jim chooses a different raft, while Cason of course rides with Bross, who takes the most aggressive run through the rapids, drenching everyone in his boat. When we reunite at the take-out, Cason’s grinning, eyes wide, wet clothes clinging to his body. 
          “That was so much fun. I want to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Be a river guide.”

          This is what I wanted: For him to fall in love with rivers, to find a world beyond cell phones, hockey, and pick-up trucks. And for me: To step aside and let him.

Back at the Microtel in Vernal, I awake to a familiar blue glow in the bed next to me. I get up and gently tug the cell phone from Cason’s sleeping grasp. He jerks awake and snatches it back. Doctors and nurses flicker on the screen. He’s back to Grey’s Anatomy.

          “Cason, we have to get up early.”

          “I don’t care.”

          I climb back in bed and think how nothing has changed. And how everything has.

Susan Pope writes nonfiction from her home in Anchorage, Alaska. Her work has appeared in Pilgrimage, Damselfly Press, The Southeast Review Online, Cirque: A Literary Journal of the Pacific Rim, Hippocampus, Under the Gum Tree, among others. Her writing reflects intimate connections to home and family in Alaska as well as a restless wandering in faraway places. Throughout her career as counselor, teacher, and researcher, she has continued to pursue her first true love, writing. Her essay entitled, “Canyon,” which appeared in Bluestem, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. 

Wild Cherry Tree

by Gabriella Brand

Mother hated that tree. The messy wild cherries that fell over our bluestone patio, the undisciplined way that the thin branches spread out like unkempt hair, the crookedness of the limbs.

“We should just chop it down,” she’d say every spring when yellow-white tentacles of blossoms appeared, then gave way to small, pea-sized fruit.

“But it’s beautiful,” I’d say.

“We have other trees,” Mother would insist.

It was the 1950’s. We were living in a historic valley in New Jersey, settled by Dutch colonists in the 17^th century, rapidly becoming suburban. Our yard was full of mature maples and oaks, a solid hickory, a couple of weeping willows down by the shallow drainage brook that bordered our property.

In August, when the small reddish-purple cherries ripened, Mother would repeat her threat.

“This year,” she’d say, “we’re going to get rid of that monstrosity.”

Mother liked order. Precision. Cleanliness. Everything that the Prunus Serotia was not.

As the wild cherries fell, the air around the tree would smell slightly sour and fermented, like a child’s lunch bag left behind in a school locker.

 “Couldn’t we eat the cherries?” I once asked.

“Of course not,” said Mother. “They’re barely fit for birds. It’s a totally useless tree.”

I found that hard to believe. The cherries looked perfectly delicious. Besides, wasn’t Mother always talking about how people back in Europe, starving during World War II, had eaten shoe leather and bread made from cellulose? Animal carcasses?  Cats, even?

It was odd that she considered wild cherries to have no value.

But Mother had her firm opinions. I knew better than to try to sway her mind. She could give the impression of being steely or cold, but underneath, she was sensitive and emotional, largely ruled by melancholy, not meanness.

Even as a child, I knew that she struggled with inner ghosts. She was estranged from her far-away family of origin, with its traditional codes of honor and shame. Clearly something had happened, maybe during her childhood. There was the uncle whose name she refused to say, the distant cousin whose letters she destroyed.

Nor did her marriage seem to bring her happiness. Although she tried hard to be a dutiful mid-20^th century American homemaker, collecting recipes from Good Housekeeping, decorating the house for Christmas, her heart clearly wasn’t in it.

“I don’t belong here,” she’d say.

But where was here? In suburban America? In the comfortable house with the cherry tree? In the big double bed she shared with my father, although she never spoke of loving him.

“If it weren’t for you kids,” she would say, but she would never finish the sentence.

She had lost one of us. One of her children. A little boy, my baby brother. I vaguely remembered his tiny coffin, fitted with brass handles like two half moons and a smooth satin pillow. Perhaps, because of that loss, she held a personal grudge against the wild cherry tree, so prolific and careless with its bounty.

Fortunately, Mother would always forget about chopping down the tree by the time autumn came around and the leaves had turned a lovely, benign shade of yellow. With the arrival of cold weather and the diminishing light, she would no longer go outside. Like a bear, she would hibernate within the thick walls of the house.

I, on the other hand, loved the outdoors in all kinds of weather, even in the grayness of a late winter afternoon. Out in the fresh air, I could breathe freely and sing silly songs and make snow angels and lie on by back looking up at bare branches creaking in the wind.

In summertime, I remember climbing up that wild cherry tree with a cloth bag slung over my shoulder. The pink bag was supposed to hold ballet shoes, toes shoes actually, the kind with small tufts of rabbit fur inside. A delicate, girly-girly bag, it was. But I preferred using it as a mountaineer’s back pack. I’d twist the bag around, depending on how I needed to maneuver as I climbed. Inside the bag would be a few books, maybe some colored pencils, a sketchpad, and contraband candy such as Necco Wafers or a Bonomo Turkish Taffy. About half-way up the tree, maybe ten feet or so, after scraping my knee against the coarse bark a couple of times, I’d stop and settle into a sort of seat that my older brother had helped me fashion out of hemp lashed between two limbs.

All morning long, I’d keep my nose in the silence of The Betsy-Tacy Stories, but I’d be serenaded by chickadees and warblers. They’d grab the purplish fruit and fly off. Sunlight would dapple the oblong leaves. I’d run my fingers along their fine, serrated edges. The cherry tree was my own cathedral, my sanctuary. Solid, tall, sheltering. Like a protective parent.

Did Mother, burdened with grief and memories, really know where I was? I don’t think so. Back in those days, most kids in small towns were largely unsupervised. When I wasn’t with friends or at summer camp, I left the house after breakfast and showed up at lunch time. I’d take long bike rides by myself, sometimes stopping at the candy store for fresh supplies of forbidden sweets. Sometimes I’d walk along the brook that bordered our property. But I always made time to sit in the tree, invisible to the rest of the world.

Every day our town blew a whistle at the fire station at twelve noon sharp. The siren would crank up and the German Shepherd who belonged to the neighbors on the other side of the creek would start to howl. That’s how I knew to get down from the tree and show up at the lunch table, wiping the traces of Necco Wafers and wild cherries off my lips. By then I had discovered, through my own experimentation, that the fruit of the Prunus Serotia was perfectly edible.

One night, the year I was eleven, a particularly heavy summer storm blew through our valley. When I woke up in the morning, Mother began talking about storm damage. She had been worried about the brook overflowing and heading towards our house, but now the rain had stopped. I ran outside to explore.

Almost immediately, I saw what was left of my tree.

Lightning had sliced the graceful wild cherry down the middle, leaving a black slash in its wake, like the old movie character, Zorro. Higher limbs had fallen onto lower limbs. Branches had flown off, torpedo-like, across the lawn, and ripe cherries had bombed the patio, like small red grenades.

I came rushing back in, breathless.

“But you didn’t tell me about the tree!” I said. “The wild cherry tree!”

Mother shrugged. “Nature accomplished what I had meant to do years ago.”

I could feel myself on the verge of tears, but I didn’t want Mother to see me crying. I ran back outside and stared in shock at the destruction.

In those days our family had a book called Life’s Picture History of World War II. Black and white photographs of Normandy beaches. Dunkirk. The London Blitz. I sometimes would take down that book and leaf through it. Mother usually discouraged me from staring too long at the wreckage of war.

“It was a horrible time,” she’d say.

Now I knew, even as an eleven-year old, that a tree struck by lightning was not in the same league as the bombing of Dresden. I knew that I shouldn’t be crying over a tree. A wild cherry tree was not a human being. The loss of one tree was not the same as the loss of a baby or the devastation of an entire city. I wiped my tears and went down to the brook to calm myself down.

A couple of men with chainsaws arrived later that day. They clumped around in their heavy work boots and discussed the best way to clean up the heap of ripped greenery and split bark. Then they started cutting until only a stump remained.

Mother and I never talked about the tree. Eventually she planted herbs where the cherry tree had stood, and the smell of mint and tarragon and rosemary seemed to give her pleasure, but it was hard to tell for sure.

Gabriella Brand’s writing has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, The First Line, Room Magazine, The Citron Review, and dozens of other publications. Her poetry has been featured in the series “District Lines” from the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington D.C. One of her short stories was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2014. Gabriella divides her time between Connecticut, where she teaches foreign languages, and the Eastern Townships of Quebec, where she is learning to paddle board on Lac Massawippi.

Taking Refuge

by Marjorie Maddox

          The sixty-year-old volunteer in a coyote T-shirt wipes the sweat from her brow with a brown bandana and then turns to us. “This morning at 10:00 am,” she says, “there were fifty people on this tour.” 

          It is almost 2:00 pm and nearing 100 degrees. There are only four of us waiting on two paint-peeling benches. My daughter and I look around at the large, faded sign and near-empty lot, which we passed twice before deciding we had reached the entrance to our destination. “I guess this is it,” I said just fifteen minutes earlier, as I pulled alongside a still-locked gate. A smaller sign read, “Tour starts here.” A minute later, an elderly man in jeans had strolled out, smiled, unlocked the padlock, and swung wide the gate.

          Since my eighteen-year-old had slept until noon, we would have to suffer the hot sun for the second and last tour of the day. We are joined only by a sporty grandmother and her pre-teen grandson, who is visiting her from California. They have hit the local amusement park they tell us, and tomorrow they will hike under the waterfalls in the nearby state park. Today, though, today is animal refuge day. The grandmother, who is younger than I am, shields her eyes from the sun and nods towards us. “Want some cold water?” she offers.

          “Yeah, sure!” I exclaim, and she retrieves a bottle from the cooler in her nearby SUV.

          “To Cats of the World!” we toast.

          In a sense, my daughter is on vacation as well. At home for a week from her pre-college summer job a few hours away, she has been joining me for day excursions, impromptu adventures in between medical appointments that brought her back to our suburban Pennsylvania home before she begins college classes. “This will be great, Mom,” she says as we pull away from the dentist’s office, the GPS on her iPhone now set to “T & D’s Cats of the World: Animal Refuge Specializing in Exotic Felines and Wildlife.”

          And so she and I, the animal lovers in the family, are off on a last hurrah to explore a thirty-five-acre wild animal refuge way off the beaten path. The site has been open since 1985, but we only just learned of this place, and—although we have ventured out as tourists—we are surprised to find we are not at a tourist attraction, but at someone’s expanded home, a home that has been opened to over 200 abused, rejected, abandoned, or otherwise mistreated animals.

          The elderly owners’ adult daughter, one of the children who has taken over the day-to-day management of the refuge, appears with feed bucket in hand, quickly introduces herself, then turns back to her chores. She nods goodbye to the guide.

I look at my daughter, who is looking at me. “Kinda cool,” I tilt my head and whisper, “It’s just you, me, and them.

          The animals come from circuses, zoos, government agencies, people’s apartments—these lions, tigers, bobcats, but also bear, fox, lemurs, monkeys, parrots, and other creatures. Almost immediately, our guide tears up. She has been driving here twice a week from the next town over for twenty years. Her tears show the volunteer work continues to change her life. As she points out the spider monkeys, she tells us about the pet primate that was dressed up and treated like a baby, the raccoon that was fed primarily candy, and the black bear that was chained for years in a man’s front yard. “What’s the matter with people?” my daughter leans over and asks. What, indeed?

          Near each animal is a sign that lists its donors, who are contributing to that animal’s food and care. “If it could,” I ask my daughter, “what would that otter write on the sign about its own life?”

          My daughter counters, “What, if it could talk, would that skunk tell us?” We giggle, but our questions also are serious. What, we wonder, have the rescued animals learned from the strict teacher of experience?

          While we stare in the eyes of a particularly mischievous monkey, I think of the TV commercials for sponsoring wide-eyed, thin-boned orphans. Yet, though many of this refuges’ animals arrived scared, malnourished, often with bones broken, today they are lazing in the sun, scurrying up and down ramps, swinging from tires, or hiding in the vast expanse of tall grasses. Our guide looks on admiringly. I don’t ask if she has children of her own; clearly she has “adopted” several of the “grown-up kids” at Cats of the World.

          It is the hottest day of the summer, but my daughter, who hated any family vacations that forced her too long in the sun for “educational” tours, is mesmerized. She squints in the bright light to read each creature’s story. The names, we learn, are only known by the owners and volunteers, whose relationship with each allows them to best care for their adopted clan. They, alone, have earned this communication. Visitors calling out bears’ monikers, whistling loudly to the Macaws, throwing bread at the coatis—none of this is allowed, and for good reason, the guide explains. Animals’ well-being over entertainment is the mantra. Diverse places to hide from spectators allow animals the choice of whether or not to be “on display.”

          “These animals are wild, wild, wild,” the volunteer reminds us again and again. She waves her arms for emphasis. “They are not—and never should be—“pets.”” I think of our local SPCA and, even there, of all the returned Christmas presents of rabbits, cats, and dogs—animals that turned out to be too much work for a young child or a busy family. But here, on this family plot turned sanctuary, over 200 creatures leap or growl or splash in a safe environment. If we listen closely to their healing, what will we hear about ourselves?

          On our windy path down dirt roads and around wooded bends, it becomes increasingly obvious that such consistent and safe care of so many is a lifetime of hard work. “Whoa,” the grandmother walking alongside us jokes when she sees the expanse of the property, “What kind of allowance did their kids earn growing up?”

          My daughter rolls her eyes. “Nothing, I’m sure.”

          I wonder at what moment the owners decided to commit their lives, and in turn, their family’s lives, to the nurture not of a few goldfish, guinea pigs, or hamsters, but to this diverse fur-and-feather community. Some parrots, we’re told by the tall and rather cute grandson, live sixty to eighty years. “Eighty years!” my daughter and I exclaim in unison. Eighteen years of raising my daughter zoom past. Eighteen years of preparing her to “fly the nest.” Multiply that by almost four and a half—not exactly a passing fancy.

          Soon, however, we find out that Cats of the World wasn’t a one-moment decision at all. Instead, it was a series of small choices that snowballed. It began, the volunteer tells us, when the father, Terry (the “T” in “T and D’s Cats of the World”) took in injured wildlife discovered by locals. An avid animal lover, he nursed the creatures back to health, then returned them to the wild. Later, when he rescued cougars and bobcats from illegal sales, the word spread. Here was an individual helping abandoned and abused animals. Calls came in from around Pennsylvania, from neighboring states, and then from even farther away. Cats of the World, which started out with wild cats but now hosts much more, unfurled into the homegrown refuge that it is today.

           As we walk along, my daughter and I talk about how—day in and day out— the owners communicate to the animals through action. The fox darting in and out of its man-made den doesn’t bark its gratitude, but it knows its food comes on a long pole through the fence. The brown bear scratching against a tree knows that someone will clean and refill the small swimming pool of water he uses on especially hot days. What really grips us is how many of the animals were captives their entire lives; they can survive no longer on their own in the wild. Others are too weak. Some are rescued birthday entertainment, “photo animals” that were too expensive to keep and would otherwise be put to sleep. We try to look in their eyes, but they are too quick, too busy with their animal lives to heed us. Their communication is made of furtive stuff.

          The owners’ wooded trail provides respite from the heat, so we take another gulp of water and continue with our five-some past wolves, coyotes, lions, and leopards. Our companions, the grandmother and grandson point at a yawning tiger and share a joke about an uncle. My daughter and I marvel at the lanky and beautiful servals, which pay us no mind. They are too busy slinking past each other, communicating in some way with their own family.

          What we also see throughout our trek is the owners’ family. In the background or off to the side, they are sloshing out food, cleaning pens, mowing fields, repairing animal “playgrounds,” and building new shelters. Like their charges, they also pay us no mind—that is, until we ask about the animals. The creatures’ habits, food source, life span: the owner’s daughter is an especially rich source of information.

          The last time I see her, I have one more question. “How,” I ask her as she refills a water trough for the Binturong, “do you ever go on vacation?”  

          She looks at me as if the idea has never occurred to her. “Well,” she says, continuing on with her work, “we don’t.” Then she heads back to a small cart for a shovel. “If I have to be away for a day, I just call my brother. He knows all our routines. But I don’t need to call him often.”

          On the last leg of our educational hike, we stop to see the parrots—all sixty or so. In huge cages, some are huddled together in twos or threes as if conspiring ways to save the world. Others flap from one branch to another in great paintbrush strokes of reds, greens, blues, and yellows. A few, perched alone and aloof, peer out at us: the families displayed on the other side of the bars.

          Social creatures, almost all of the birds are singing. Some are even talking. A Blue Fronted Amazon blurts out what could be “What’s up, pussycat?” but sounds more like “Wasp at?” My daughter takes out her iPhone and begins filming.

          As we finish our journey, my daughter and I bid adieu to the birds and thanks and farewell to our traveling companions. We toss our water bottle in the supplied bin, thank the grandmother again for the drink, and—for the drive home—buy another bottle from the small but well-stocked gift store. Cranking up the air conditioning in our Elantra, we head back to our almost-quiet and cooler home an hour away.

          There Gizmo, the lineolated parakeet that has traveled home with my daughter while her boyfriend vacations with his extended family, whistles his loud Welcome Home song. Automatically, my daughter translates: “I missed you! I missed you!”

          We do our best to whistle back: short, loud bursts, then quiet, breathy ones. It is the rhythm of our communication. After a few minutes, we open the cage and let him fly around the room. When he settles on my daughter’s head, we take turns telling Gizmo the tale of our day. I wonder what, in his smart bird brain, he will think. I wonder what he already knows. About us. About the world. About cats.

Sage Graduate Fellow of Cornell University (MFA) and Director of Creative Writing and Professor of English at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, Marjorie Maddox has published eleven collections of poetry—including True, False, None of the Above; Local News from Someplace Else; Transplant, Transplant, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); Perpendicular As I (Sandstone Book Award). Another collection, Wives’ Tales, is forthcoming in 2016, and the short story collection What She Was Saying is forthcoming in 2017. She has published over 450 stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. Co-editor of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, she also has published four children’s books. For more information, please visit www.marjoriemaddox.com

Just One Summer

by Adrienne Lindholm

 

I was 26 when I came to Alaska. For just one summer I wanted to be part of something noble that would help preserve one of the wildest places on earth. Though I carried only a backpack and a duffle bag, my confidence was buoyed by a set of life skills I’d acquired in suburban Philadelphia, the academic skills I’d honed at an upscale university in Virginia, and my shiny new graduate degree in Environmental Studies. A couple years dabbling in environmental non-profit organizations fueled the fire in me to crusade for a better world.

As the plane to Fairbanks, Alaska, took off, I rifled through my spiral bound notebook to review the page where I’d scribbled my approach to living:

• Follow your dreams.
• Don’t let society tell you what to do.
• Be skeptical of technology. It creates more stress than it relieves. 
• Television: evil, obviously. 
• Dresses and high heels are dumb (you can’t hike in them).
• Big houses in suburbia:  bad.
• Living in a cabin:  good.

I wasn’t shy about espousing these tenets to my friends and family. They either agreed with me or tolerated me, and every one of them, bless their kind souls, supported my quest to find my own true north. They bid me farewell as I headed to Alaska, where I didn’t know a single person.

The run-down hostel where I spent my first night fit perfectly into the way I thought my world should be ordered. If only my friends could see me now, I thought. This was a real cabin in Alaska, with log construction, creaky wooden floorboards, and old metal traps and mining equipment tacked to the walls. I was assigned to a room and found my way to an empty bunk. The room was cluttered with backpacks, shower sandals, and drying laundry. They must be true travelers, I thought.

I told the other travelers I was on my way to Denali, which got a nod of approval, but I had nothing else to contribute, so I sat quietly on my bed and listened to tales of where they’d been and where they were headed. They spoke of towns and mountains and rivers I’d never heard of.

As I climbed into bed, I wrapped myself in my sleeping bag to stay warm. I waited for darkness to set in but it never did, so I put a shirt over my eyes to block the midnight sun.  The shirt helped, but my mind raced with thoughts about what the summer would be like.

The next day I took the shuttle down the Parks Highway to Denali National Park, where I’d gotten a non-paying job as a backcountry ranger through the Student Conservation Association. After spending six months thru-hiking the 2,159-mile Appalachian Trail and spending the majority of my post-college free time exploring the Rocky Mountains, I thought I had a fair amount of backcountry experience. So did the rest of the 20-somethings who had come from around the country to spend a summer in Alaska’s premier national park, where Denali, the tallest mountain in North America, rises ghostly white to over 20,000 feet and enchants the sea of green tundra that surrounds it.

Most visitors to Denali National Park ride the bus into the park in hopes of glimpsing the great mountain and seeing grizzly bears, wolves, caribou, Dall’s sheep, and moose. There is only one road in six million acres and virtually nothing else to interrupt the vast expanse of wilderness: no settlements, developments, or infrastructure that make it easy for people to get there and be there. One of the things I hadn’t considered when I applied for the backcountry ranger position was the fact that I’d never traveled through country with no trails, no bridges, no signs, no campgrounds. I’d also never traveled through country with grizzly bears and wolves.

When my supervisor paired us up and assigned us our first backcountry patrol, I found myself matched with the only member of the backcountry ranger staff who actually lived permanently in the area. The other rangers sat with their partners and excitedly pulled out maps, speculating what they might encounter. They decided what gear they would share and how many days of food to plan for. Hoping to make eye contact, I glanced across the room at Jeff, but he seemed to roll his eyes as he looked over the group of rangers that were about half his age. As I walked toward him, he turned his back to put on his jacket. I paused beside the large wall-map of the park and searched for the drainage we’d been assigned to. When Jeff scooped up his belongings and headed for the door, I sheepishly intercepted him. “So, you know where we’re going?”

“Been going there for decades,” he said with a look that added “how about you?”

“Anything in particular I should bring?” I asked.

“Standard stuff.” he said. “We’ll take the camper bus tomorrow 10am, see you there.”

Part of me could understand his resentment at being an equal member on a team of overly excited kids from the Lower 48, but still, he had no right to treat me like that. How could my supervisor have paired me with him?  I returned to my cabin wondering if I’d made the right decision to come here. I threw my bag across the bed and sat down with a sick feeling in my stomach.

Our patrol began on a trail that went for only ¼ mile before fading into alders and willows along the river bar. Feeling like I needed to prove my strength, I hiked faster than he could on the trail section, but as soon as we hit the brush, I came to a near halt. I’d never hiked off trail before. Jeff sensed this and blazed ahead, thrashing through the alders and willows, wisely choosing a route through the thinnest branches and keeping us on course. I could barely keep up and had no idea how he knew where to go. I tried to look up out of the brush to get my bearings, but when I looked up, I stumbled over branches and rocks. I powered through as fast as I could and tried not to lose sight of Jeff’s back.

When we got to a point where we had to cross the river, Jeff simply trudged through it. Accustomed to dry Rocky Mountain hiking with few creek crossings, my instinct told me to sit down and take off my boots before wading across in order to keep my feet dry. But after seeing Jeff cross, I wasn’t sure if this was a test to see if I was dumb enough to get my feet wet, or if it was a test to see how well I could ford a river. Jeff looked at me and then looked impatiently at his feet and sighed. Forget wet feet, I thought, I can’t let him leave me. I stepped into the coldest water I’d ever felt, restrained a grimace as the icy water seeped through my hiking boots and socks, and felt my way across. I pretended it didn’t hurt that much as I stepped out of the river with feet that were burning from cold.

Fortunately, I had enough sense after the first day to realize that I didn’t know much about this country and that Jeff did. As much as I didn’t want to admit it (I’d worked hard to cultivate my confidence and independence), I could probably learn something from him. So I began asking questions. And he began, slowly, in his characteristically gruff style, to let me in. By the last day of our patrol we sat side by side on a grassy hillside above a wide river bar.

“You need to pay attention,” he said.

He noticed my confusion. I knew I had to look out for wildlife and make sure no animal surprised me and got any of my food.  Our week-long training had established this as the Golden Rule of Denali. It was the only way wild animals will stay wild and safe. I knew this already. I told him I was scanning the river bar for bears.

“You might be looking at the river,” he said, “but you gotta look behind you, too, so you can see the wolf coming down the hill. You gotta be alert and look in all directions. All the time.”

He wouldn’t let me lounge back and take a nap in the sun. “This isn’t the Rockies,” he sniggered. “There are animals all over the place that want your lunch. And I have to shoot ‘em when some goddamn hiker lets ‘em get food,” he said shaking his head.

“And besides,” Jeff told me, “these here are critters people come from all over the world to see. Why you’d want to waste a nap over that…”

“Is that why all these people come then? To see the animals?” I asked.

“No…” he started, “I mean, yeah they do, but…. Look, you could go to a zoo and see every animal out here, right?”

I nodded.

“There are big mountains that are a lot easier to get to. These people are paying huge bucks, spending 15 hours on an airplane, and then cram into a shitty school bus for eight hours into the park.” He paused, and said, “No, it ain’t just the animals.” 

I returned from that patrol hungry for more, hungry to understand exactly what Jeff was talking about, and I anxiously awaited my next assignment. It would be a little while. We earned our patrols only after a week or two working in the visitor center, talking to tourists and helping them plan their trips. It didn’t take long to confirm my suspicion:  people came long distances at great expense because they believed it was unlike any other place on earth.

One evening an elderly couple with a southern accent returned from a trip into the park. The woman smiled at me and said, “It wasn’t just seeing the bear. It was seeing that bear leading her cubs through the tussocks, rooting up ground squirrels, and those snowy mountains behind her. The light, it was early in the morning and the sun was low so her fur was glowing and the yellow light reflected off the side of the mountain.” She turned to her husband, “Was that something or what?”

Her husband leaned in and said thoughtfully, “You can imagine that bear doing that for the last thousand years. It’s like getting to see where life came from, where we all came from.”

“Where are you all from?” I asked.

“North Carolina.”

“You came a long way,” I said.

“There’s not much left in the world like this,” she said, contemplating. “We wanted to come for a long time.”

 

We backcountry rangers were proud of our jobs as protectors of one of America’s largest, wildest, most special places. We were thrilled to work there and contribute to something we saw as good and noble. We worked hard. We worked long hours. We were polite to every visitor, even when they were impolite to us. We answered all their questions the best we could. We lived together in small, cold cabins with no running water. After dinner, we drank cheap, cold beer and played cards. During the night we peed in milk jugs. Over the course of that summer, those big wild spaces did something to my psyche that I hadn’t expected. I had planned to stay just four months. Twelve years later I’m still here.

I now manage the wilderness program for all the national parks in Alaska, and it’s still an honor, though I spend more time behind a desk than I’d prefer.  Every time I leave the state, I meet people who tell me that Alaska is on their bucket list. They light up and I wonder what images are filtering through their brains. Perhaps an igloo, a wolf, or snowy mountains. Maybe they’re thinking of the American frontier, of independence and freedom, of bigness and greatness, of the world before we messed it up.

Sometimes I think of the wilderness as being comprised of two different things. There’s an outward appearance that we can point to and quantify (wildlife, clean air, clean water, rivers and coastlines, cliffs and canyons). These are the things on the glossy brochures and television ads. Secondly, there is what all those things add up to. It’s what the tangible things collectively represent. The way a place makes us feel, the mystery, the connection to something larger than ourselves, the inspiration, peace and awe – this is the soul of the wilderness. Like the human soul, it is hard to define and impossible to quantify; and also like the human soul, perhaps what is most compelling is that it has the power to shape a person.

Over the course of a dozen years, just as the rain and wind and ice have continued to shape topography and sustain dynamic ecological systems, this place has filtered into my psyche and sculpted my inner landscape. I get it now, and I believe it is these things, not just the big mountains and bears, that made Ranger Jeff speak with passion. And it is because of these things that places like Denali continue to appear on bucket lists the world over.

 

Adrienne Lindholm lives in Alaska where she works in public lands conservation. She's the author of A Journey North: One Woman's Story of Hiking the Appalachian Trail and is at work on a collection of essays about life in the Alaskan wilderness.