river journal vol. 3

River Journal

part 3: the conclusion

(Our travels to Alaska had presented a new dimension of leaving the grid and creating self-sustaining lifestyles in more remote locations than what we had ever imagined. After the three of us returned to our comfortable retreat in the Washington Cascades, conversations regarding the investment of time, funding and the amount of labor began to reveal a widening divide in our sentiments of the challenges of life in the Alaskan bush.)

Fall There was a woman standing across the river from our side. Just standing there being wet on a typically dripping late fall day. I was helping Pete split the last rounds of a tree he had fallen near the landing. Pete determined she was not looking for us, since we had not heard a horn. I hesitated quite a while after he had turned and hiked back up the hill. She seemed to be looking at me but there was no wave or confirmation of her desire to interact. Her profile did not resemble anyone I knew, so I assumed she was merely looking at the oddity of the cable and was checking out the recreational cabins on that side of the river. I was to learn later that she was the granddaughter of the family that had originally homesteaded our parcel and constructed the cable crossing. By mere chance, I made the acquaintance of the person who revealed this to me in the nearby small town of Index. She was, shall I say, possessed by hundreds of photos of the early development of the area between 1909 and 1936. The collection depicted, among other things, the logging of giant Douglas fir trees with springboards and crosscut saws, and the railcars used to transport them down to the lumber mill circa 1910.

A photo of the first county road punched through leading past our property landing in 1912 showed it to be a muddy mess and quite impassable. The group photos of oddly dressed loggers and lumber workers revealed a river settlement of almost a thousand tenacious people existing on the constantly soggy mountainside. Dorothy was a historian by default, being the deceased photographer’s fourth wife. She was in the process of getting the photos safely boxed and transported to the University of Washington historical archives, many years after his passing. She shared photo stories with me of boardwalks and bordellos, hotels and school rooms, fires and floods. The viewing took an entire fascinating day. She was familiar with our piece of land across the cable because a woman had once come to her looking for photos of her grandfather’s homestead fitting that description.

My recollection of my visitor’s faded carrot colored hair and approximate age from the slump of her posture made a good case that it was her. The memory of her just gazing across at me through the rain haunted me. I wished I could have met her. Just rolled across and brought her over. I would have asked her where the original house sat, was it connected to the two remaining walls of a root cellar? Was their garden in about the same place as ours? What did they grow? What kinds of animals had they kept in the big gambrel roof barn? She would be saddened to see it stripped of its shakes and most of the floorboards. And why was it built hanging over the side of the bank, supported by large timber posts? Had there been a slide or was it built like that for the extra storage space beneath? She could have answered so many questions. I was so mad at myself that we would never have these answers. I had not listened to my intuition that day. I remained hopeful that she would return, but she did not.

BY

Cruver Jacqueline

After that, I became the one to go down to greet visitors if Jim was not down at his cabin. It was always enjoyable to see friends, walk them up the hill to my cabin for coffee and conversation and hear what they were up to. Even in summer months the rain would sometimes demand a morning fire, so coffee was pretty much on tap. One such morning a distant car horn sounded just as I removed a pan of cinnamon rolls from the cookstove oven. Looking out to confirm that no one emerged from the other cabin, I shut down the stove flue and grabbed my leather gloves. Waving across the river I could see Jim wave back and a dark shape next to him, dwarfed by his tall frame. Introductions to the beautiful raven haired Rachel, coming to see Jim’s river roost, were followed by a promise to come up for rolls after the tour. She was quite taken by the whole set up, and I was hopeful she would become a new part of the trio. When I returned them to the landing, our words were interrupted by gunshots back up the hill. Jim shrugged it off, not wanting to alarm Rachel. She was actually excited when we mentioned there was an area for target practice. Her dad had taught her to shoot. Jim was gleeful hearing this news. This one came with gun safety training.

Returning back up the hill, the last cinnamon rolls were cold but I delivered them over to Pete’s place since he had not joined us. I left them on the table and heard several more gunshots jarring the silence. The shooting range was over by the large doorless outhouse we had constructed with a superb view of the river. Knowing not to approach either pursuit unannounced, I called, hearing his reply of “all clear” from the target area. The cool shade that was ever present on that north facing slope of cedar and alder trees still had a serious chill for mid-day and so did the look on Pete’s face. He was not interested in hearing about the new visitor, or engaging in chatter with me. He shoved his piece in its case and started ripping down his targets from the bullet riddled posts. Taking the hint, I popped over to the privy to check the t.p. supply to be adequate. I was startled to see multiple bullet holes in the wall of the outhouse and several more ventilating the floor. His only remark was one we had recently been hearing a lot from him, that we should stop bringing people across. He zipped up his soiled blue down jacket and headed back toward his cabin.

My journals recorded the patterns that repeated in the wonders of nature. The day that I noticed the ferns emerging, the date the fish seemed to sense the river temperature too warm to bite, the first sign of the spawning salmon returning, the week the mosquitos hatched, even the time the ants were visible doing their busywork seemed to be on a schedule. Every day was an entry of what my senses were hearing, smelling, feeling. Every night was free of light pollution and the deep dark starless ones gave the sensation that my eyes were closed when they were indeed open.

I had been afraid at first and worked through the fear. Lesson learned. “Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision” is a quote by Winston Churchill. I had evolved, embracing a security not present in the existence I had come from. The very first sign of animosity was earlier in the summer when Jim and I had taken jobs as supervisors for a trail crew conveniently just eight miles up the river. Pete really seemed inconvenienced to have to ferry us across the cable daily to allow him to keep the cable car available. We really didn’t give it much thought since we were really excited about the job opportunity. It was a Forest Service contract to improve a primitive camping location and overgrown trail that led to an impressive waterfall. The project was very unique. The organization that hired us was supplying the tools and would be selecting youth for the labor crew who wished to study and obtain their GED while housed in tents in this remote location. I enjoyed meeting the diverse group of teens, and the role of camp cook seemed to suit me. We supplied all of the meals to six young people and occasionally to a tutor that came to offer guidance, for the duration of the project. It was anticipated to take four to six weeks. Jim spent his workday teaching the crew how to use the tools and demonstrating the back-breaking labor needed to keep the project on track. The two young women excelled in using the tools and showing the guys what a good day’s work looked like. I will pause here to interject that two of the students developed a relationship at that job site that resulted in their marriage and three children, I learned by running into the couple in a department store some five years later. They believed the positive direction their lives took was a result of that opportunity to get their GED and realize the positivity of implementing a good work ethic. I was grateful for the insight. It helped balance the fact that I had learned earlier that the difficult person of that crew had been convicted and sent to prison soon after. Nineteen years old. He was also the prime suspect of the theft of all of the tools provided for the trail job, ending it before it could be completed. Life is a series of choices.

So returning to choices. About the time Jim met Rachel, he decided he was not interested in becoming a partner in the homestead in the Alaskan bush. I was not aware that he had notified Pete of his decision about the time I had declared the same thing. Pete wanted the challenge of something new, and nothing could stop him from signing on the dotted line to obtain the Alaskan homestead. We thought he would solicit new partners to take on the opportunity in Alaska with him, but he did not even try. He became lost in his contempt for us. The behavior I witnessed at the shooting range was the new norm for Pete as he wrestled with his own decision process. Within a very short time, his silence closed down communication, his availability for any work projects dwindled and chaos replaced the cooperation that we needed for things to run smoothly.

He began locking up tools. He would vanish without notice and leave the cable car on the opposite side, leaving the only option to exit to lift a fifty pound block up onto the cable and sit on a looped rope to get across. We waited for his disdain to diminish but our partnership was not returning to anything even close to amiable. He then announced that he was the one that found the property we were on, so he would be the one to keep it. In the chilling afternoons as the golden maple leaves dropped to the dark and saturated ground, we all seemed to be treading water in our own little pity pools. The only solution was to appease Pete and take our leave.

Jim and Pete could not come to an agreement regarding tools or a dollar amount of money invested over the years since books were not kept. The lesson learned was brutal and the outcome was a tug of war, winner takes all. Jim lost, being the nice guy. Jim packed his cabin into a camper trailer. He found a place to park it up the mountain, convenient to the ski area. The season was about to start for instructors and lift crew employees and Jim welcomed the boisterous camaraderie that would have to replace his dream of building a round log house for now.

I re-read my journals and realized they were the only piece of this paradise I was going to be able to take with me. Even Phaedrus, a ward of the partnership, would remain where he was most familiar. I simply signed my name off of the title and removed myself from bickering over how much was mine, his or theirs.

Determined to remain in the area, I found a loft to rent. My landlord was the new Mountain Manager at the ski area and his wife. This acquaintance led to taking a job as a ski lift operator, and by the end of the second season led to my marriage to a ski patrolman. But that is a story for another day. Other destinations called us and the peaceful mountain settlements retreated to my file of memories. I wandered the river property in my dreams for years, picturing it vividly and with sweet longing. Jim also left the area, carrying with him the bitter taste of hard feelings.

Epilogue

As natives of the Pacific Northwest, Jim and I both recognized connections to our heritage there on that special river property. Jim had once found a very old broken stove piece on the property while kicking through the wet underbrush. Attached by one rivet was an ornate plate with the words Everett Stove Works. He sat down on a wet stump (the only kind we had there), marveling that his grandfather had been employed at that very place. My own grandfather was a carpenter building schools throughout the quickly developing western part of the state about that time. Our grandparents’ generation built houses, schools and hotels from the timber that had been logged on those mountainsides. They witnessed the Northern Pacific Railway extend through those mountains in the early 1900’s. Literally. Photos of the first train emerging through the nearby tunnel were in that local photographer’s collection. Lee Pickett was the official photographer for the rail line, riding all of the routes to capture history in the making. Once those first rails became transcontinental, supplies flowed west and so did most of my early relatives, relocating to Washington state, from Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas.

After Jim and I vacated, the Forest Service land surrounding the twenty acre triangle that Pete held was helicopter-logged, no doubt impacting the peace and quiet that we cherished so much. Many more floods swept past, creating islands and drastically changing the shoreline each time. Thus demanding constant revisions to the cable route. The river itself showing signs of aging with the rest of us, as the width has shrunk like an old man, no longer resembling the stature he once held. If we would have stopped to think about it, we had become a part of the evolution of that piece of the mountain, part of the winds of change. The ghosts of the early logging days remain in the rusted pieces of the old logging donkey engines left peeking out of a moss covered bog, and in the notches of the giant tree stumps. The sounds of the long and heavy crosscut saws float on the breeze through the cool dripping tree branches. Stumbling upon splintered timbers of the old trestles in a pile at the bottom of a ravine, one can hear the rail cars carrying the giant logs or mined ore on a rattly ride calick-calacking down the mountain and along the river. And on those special days when the clouds do not blanket the entire setting, the birds come near, nature’s reporters, perch on a mossy snag and fill the air with news of old and new. But the one who remained there longest never had heard them, never had listened. He did not connect with the history of the place. That is the element that Jim and I determined to be the source of our lingering resentment. I finally found solace when I acknowledged that we had indeed left part of our spirits there to join the rest of them. I smile now in reminiscence of those incredible days that nature allowed us to linger awhile, and mingle with her great mysteries.

When the property was eventually sold in 1995, it was advertised to have a two story home, solar power, gravity fed water system, woodshed complete with a five year supply of split and (meticulously, if we knew Pete) stacked firewood, multiple outbuildings, a helipad and a pedal powered cable crossing. Price: half a million dollars. Pete returned to wherever he came from.

The homestead in Alaska, never visited, returned to the state. That blank sign next to the Corbet’s is painted with the letters of someone else’s name. The distant ringing of bear bells, panting devoted sled dogs and shrill blast of train whistles proclaim the reality of someone else’s choices.