Open Holds

by Mary Kudenov

When I opened my truck door, I knocked the boy off his feet. I might never have spoken with him at all if he wasn’t directly in my path, for I was living in a part of Anchorage where the smartest course of action was to mind one’s own business. I had pulled into the parking lot of my no-bedroom, 450-square-foot “apartment” and lingered an extra few minutes in the driver’s seat to finish listening to a song, something maudlin and full of angst, I’m sure. I didn’t want to go inside because it was March, a month that straddles winter and spring and brings with it stir crazy and spring fever. I was just so tired of being inside. We had that in common.

“Hi, lady,” the boy lying at my feet said. He held up a mittened hand, a cue for me to help him up. Instead I stared down at him while he pushed himself back to standing position. Normally I wouldn’t have remembered many details about a child’s appearance—I wasn’t a mom yet, and children all looked generically cute, like puppies or kittens or any newly formed creature, and they invoked mostly fear and annoyance, emotions that I had neither the patience nor willingness to understand. But that boy was as classically memorable as Norman Rockwell subject: blonde hair, blue eyes, and plate-round face as symmetrical as a Disney character. He wore Oshkosh-by-Gosh overalls with a windbreaker. No winter coat. I thought someone is missing him, someone close, but dismissed the pang of worry.

I said something like, “Hi kid. Watch out,” and turned back to the truck’s cab to gather my things. He stayed close as I headed towards my stairs, close the way children do, so unaware of personal space that if I stopped walking he would have bumped into me. I ignored this. I didn’t want his parents, whoever they were, to discover me talking with their child and get the wrong idea. I should say here too that I was single and self-concerned (which might be a redundancy) and I didn’t want to draw any attention from my neighbors who I, perhaps unfairly, assumed were all armed.

“Do you know where my mom is?” he asked, still following. “I can’t find her and Jaden’s mom said he can’t play outside and I can’t come inside because he’s being mean to his sister.”

 I scanned the windows facing my parking lot. There were no over-protective mothers watching us. In fact, most of the curtains in the vicinity were still closed.

“He’s in there somewhere.” He pointed to the nearest building, four stories of rental units with dozens of doors and windows.

“Is that where you live?”

“No. I live in a yellow house with a brown roof.”

So helpful, I thought. He stared at me with curious looking eyes. I was not used to the frank appraisal of children. His cheeks were dark pink from the cold that had not yet lost its February seriousness. I might have been a little squeamish about the snot streaming straight from his nose and into his mouth (something I wouldn’t even see now) but his vulnerability was grossly conspicuous and even I couldn’t look away.

I never wandered far in the winter. I stayed on my block, as near the wood stove and hot chocolate as a child could while still filling as many hours as possible with sled rides down snow piles. One spring day—very similar to the day I met Christopher—the sky was a Dodger-blue dome, both the sun and moon visible. The beach was pulling me and I was restless for the ocean and tide pools and hermit crabs. I wandered alone to the cruise ship dock in Haines, the small town where I was born. Only it wasn’t a cruise ship dock yet, just a long pier left standing by the remnants of the town’s first harbor, reduced by then to tarred and barnacled logs poking up at low tide. Normally my second-oldest brother, Seth, would have been a chaperone, but he had left home an autumn earlier, so sick of this town and its bullshit. My mom, a single mother, was likely working or recovering from work, which on most nights ended hours before she made it home.

At the beach I gathered straw and seashells and really cool rocks. Old shipwrecks lined the shore, sand and ants spilling from their crevices. That seemed to preoccupy most of my time—gathering, exploring, pretending to captain. I couldn’t use the bathroom at the Quickstop unless I bought something, so when the urge came I looked for a private place. The holds of the long-grounded fishing boats were split wide open by a half-century or more of winter storms. There were no leaves on the trees yet, so the bushes wouldn’t work for cover and I really had to go.

I scanned the area for familiar houses. Did I have a friend near who would let me use her bathroom? The land sloped up from the ocean steeply, the Fort Seward part of town poised above the bay. From the beach I could see the field where Seth taught me to fly a kite. He had taken me everywhere with him when he lived at home. When I could not keep up with him, he carried me and when I grew too heavy to be carried he found a solution. (The last time I visited Haines someone I have no memory of said, I remember when Seth used to pull you everywhere in a little red wagon). He would have known what to do, I thought. I needed something near. I spotted a nice house, gray with big beach-facing windows. Behind the glass an adult woman moved about. I don’t know why I chose that house, why I thought it would be safe.

When she answered my knocking I blurted, “Can I use your bathroom?” I think this made her laugh. It’s hard to say. She may have regarded me with the same trepidation I gave Christopher, but in my memory she’s morphed into a cheerful big-haired chubby woman. She smelled like cookies. She let me inside and led me across plush carpets and spotless linoleum to a bathroom near her kitchen.

On my way out I could see Glacier Bay and the beach I’d combed. The snow-covered mountains that normally seemed to loom over town appeared pastoral and dreamy from where I was. I felt like I’d made it inside a glass orb, inside something ideal.

“Did you wash your hands?” the woman asked me.

I hadn’t. She ushered me over to her kitchen sink, turned on the water, and asked my name. I asked her for a cookie. I ran the warm water over my hands long after they were clean, not wanting to leave.

“I don’t have any cookies,” she said.

“Then what’s that smell?”

“It’s a cake.”

“Can I have a piece?”

“It’s for somebody’s wedding. Have you ever seen a wedding cake?” she asked.

“Only at my brother’s wedding. It was strawberry cake with vanilla frosting and it was beautiful but I like vanilla cake and strawberry frosting.”

“What’s your brother’s name, dear?”

“Which one?”

“The one who had the wedding cake.”

She knew my oldest brother, we discovered, and had in fact baked the cake I described. I thought for sure she would give me a piece of whatever smelled so good because she knew my oldest brother and everybody liked him, I was certain.

But she only said “I see,” alert to who my family was and why I roamed around unsupervised, inviting myself into the home of a stranger. She propped her hands on her hips, striking the classic Super Woman pose.

“How old are you, Mary Beth?”

“Almost 8,” I said, knowing the exact number of days left until my birthday.

        “I bet you should check in at home,” she said. “It’s getting close to dinner time and it sounds like you’re hungry.”

        “I guess so.” I dragged my feet all the way to the door.

I was almost back to the road when she called out to me, “When’s your birthday?”

“June 13^th!” I said, and headed toward home.

I didn’t know what to do with the boy following me up the stairs. I couldn’t drive him anywhere—what if someone thought I was abducting him? I could have called the police but I didn’t think they would arrive in a timely manner. I had called them recently for a woman who lived alone in the apartment behind mine. She was trapped inside while one of our other neighbors, drug violent and wanting her, kicked in her door. She slipped past him and hid in my apartment. The police came several hours later, long after he finally broke her door open, as though they thought a woman ought to know better than to live alone in East Anchorage. The police inspected her splintered frame, the door that would no longer close or lock, and advised her to make a complaint to the landlord. The woman didn’t insist they arrest the man, as though she too thought she ought to have known better.

I hoped the boy didn’t wander as far from home as I did when I was a child. Haines was a small town, population in the lower four-digit range. The long distances trekked in my youth were likely shorter than my memory recalled. The boy lived in a rough part of Alaska’s biggest city if he lived anywhere near me, and I assumed he did but thought to ask if his mom had dropped him off.

“No. But I wanted to play with Jaden so I came to get him but his mom says he’s in trouble and he can’t play. She’s mean.”

At the door of my apartment I said, “Wait right here. Okay? I’m going to walk you back home.” He nodded. When I came back out he was trying to slip his head between the bars of the balcony.

“Which way is home?” I asked. He disengaged from the railing and looked around.

“It’s somewhere over there.” He pointed south. There were small houses a few blocks into the neighborhood, an elementary school where the District 22 folks voted, and softball fields beyond that, but I didn’t think he came that far on his own.

“Let’s trace your way back, okay? What is your name?”

“Christopher.”

“All right Christopher, did you come down this hill?” I pointed to Fireoved, a street I suspected was misspelled and then renamed, which ended at my driveway where it intersected with another.

“Yes,” he looked up at me. “Do you think I’m going to be in trouble?”

I thought of the sorts of trouble he could get into in our neighborhood. I had the sense not to scare him with stories of vicious dogs and pedophiles and men with guns. I told him I didn’t know. We walked up the first block of Fireoved, past apartments with blankets for curtains, past a car on flat tires, past an overfull dumpster.

When we got to the first intersection I pointed to a house and asked, “Did you walk by here?”

“Yeah. That dog scared me.” Christopher pointed to an American pit bull laying in a chicken wire enclosure. The dog watched us walk by without lifting his head, his eyes following our feet disinterestedly. Christopher was nervous though and slipped his hand in mine. His mitten felt warm and soft as summer sand. He’s so small, I thought. My concern about being accused of kidnapping lessened some and I held onto him. After a couple blocks the houses appeared tidier, more like homes and less like rentals, but Christopher kept walking.

“What is your mom doing, Christopher?” I asked to make chit chat.

“She was tired so she told us to play outside,” he said.

“You and who?”

“My little sister.”

His little sister. “Where is she?”

“I dunno.”

We walked for about 15 minutes, straight through a handful of no-light intersections. Christopher didn’t show signs of stopping.

“Are you sure you came this far?” I asked

“Yeah. I remember that house,” he said, pointing to a two-story. “Guess how old I am.”

“Eight.” I estimated up, hoping to flatter him.

“No!” He said and laughed. He held up his one hand and a one thumb. “I’m this many.”

“Five?”

“Six!’

“Wow. Are you going to start school soon?” I asked.

“Yeah, I already did.”

I told Christopher that I was in school too.

“No way!” he said. “You’re way too old to be in school.”

“I’m only 27,” I said, my feelings a little hurt.

“Wow. You’re really old. You’re even older than my mom! She was in school but she had to quit.”

“Are we getting close?” We were almost to the elementary school. I heard children playing on the next block.

“Look, it’s Tommy!” Christopher yelled, pointing with his whole arm to a boy in the distance. “My house is bigger than his!” He began pulling away, his feet itching to run to the other boys.

“Wait a second,” I held his arm. “I need to talk to your mom. Where do you live?” He pointed to a yellowish duplex with a brown roof and leaned away from me, but I didn’t let go. “Which door?”

A silver truck pulled out of the driveway Christopher had pointed to. I held onto his arm as he tried to wriggle out of my grip. The truck was coming toward us. It stopped in front of us and the driver’s side window rolled down. I let go of Christopher’s arm and thought, I’m going to get my ass kicked now. But Christopher froze at the sight of the male driver and I wanted, suddenly, to put myself between him and the man.

“Where’s your sister?” the man asked. Christopher said he didn’t know. And just like that, the man drove on. He barely looked at me. I asked Christopher if that was his dad.

 “That’s my sister’s dad. Can I go play with Tommy now?”

“Go for it. I’m going to tell your mom you’re with Tommy. Okay?”

“K. Byeeee,” he said, stretching the last word into two syllables and already running.

I approached the door where I thought Christopher’s mom might be and knocked. When no one answered I knocked harder. As I turned away the door opened and a woman around my age looked at me with sleep-crusted eyes. The house behind her was dark. She wore pajama bottoms, and her blonde hair hung in long tangles over a faded t-shirt.

“Hi,” I said, hoping I didn’t look like a crazy or a missionary. “I live by the highway, on Fireoved and Taku. Christopher walked all the way over there. By himself. I brought him home.”

“Thanks,” she said and shut the door. Firmly.

The night before my eighth birthday, a special cake arrived at the American Legion where my mom bartended. She didn’t ask why I was gifted that cake or how I met the cake maker. Perhaps she already knew. The cake was suited for a princess, tiered like wedding confection, strawberry frosting over rich chocolate and a secret vanilla heart. But as delicious and pretty as it was I felt hollow when my mom brought it home, embarrassed that it was delivered to a bar, embarrassed that I’d shown that woman how lonely I was. I don’t know if it was that day or sometime soon after that I took to hiding in the gutted hold of my favorite wreck, where even on hot afternoons the sand inside stayed cool and damp. I wasn’t afraid of the beetles or the sandworms that sheltered there. I wanted my brothers to come looking for me, but they had moved on. That summer I carried the sounds of waves and the smells of tar and seawater and rotting boards.

When I walked home from Christopher’s the silver truck passed me twice. The man, at least, was looking for his daughter. I was angry because I thought I knew something of the longing that pulled that boy so far away from his front yard. I assured myself that he had good instincts. He was the kind of kid who would look for what he needed, regardless of how far it took him, and therein laid the tightrope of success and tragedy.  Because I can’t ever forget him I let my hope for Christopher swell in me like a cake rising.

Mary Kudenov is an MFA candidate in University of Alaska Anchorage’s Low-Residency Creative Writing and Literary Arts Program. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Chautauqua, Permafrost, The Citron Review, and F Magazine. Mary has essays forthcoming in Chautauqua, Vela, and The Southampton Review.

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.