We’re surrounded by tall, leggy spruce and birch trees that are still mostly naked, though I see tiny buds on the ends of skinny branches. Fallen trunks lay in every direction, many rotted and coated with patches of bright green moss. A blanket of crumpled brown leaves from last fall’s shedding layers the forest floor in clumps, like soggy newsprint, waiting to decompose fully.
“Is this my property?” I feel like an idiot asking that, but it seemed like I trailed Muriel forever.
“Sure is.” She unfastens her helmet and hooks it on her handlebar, then reaches for the brown rifle strapped on her ATV’s rack. “I imagine we made enough noise comin’ in that there won’t be a sane critter within a mile of us, but I like to be prepared, just in case.”
What about insane critters? I want to ask. The predatory grizzly that dragged a man out of his tent in the middle of the night? The protective moose that trampled a dog because it got between her and her baby?
I haven’t seen our moose in weeks. Jonah thinks the noise from the plane taking off every day may have caused them to venture elsewhere.
Muriel checks something on the gun before throwing the strap over her shoulder. “Jonah’s taught you how to use one of these, right?”
Here we go … “I don’t like guns.”
“It has nothin’ to do with likin’ them. Though, plenty of people love their guns.” She picks through the loose branches, her boots kicking away clumps of wet leaves. “It’s about feeling safe.”
“That’s just it. I don’t feel safe around them.” Even seeing this one in her grip unsettles me. “I didn’t grow up around guns.”
“What? Your dad never took you out huntin’ in the tundra when you came to visit?”
Toby and Teddy know I’m from Toronto and that my father owned Alaska Wild, so I have to assume they are Muriel’s source of information. “I never came to visit. My father and I … we weren’t on speaking terms until last summer. I hadn’t seen him in twenty-four years.”
She steals a gray-eyed glance back my way, quiet for a moment, and I brace myself for the invasive prodding, the wise-woman lecture, the uninvited opinion.
“Well, you know what’s more dangerous than a gun? Being in Alaska and not having one when you need it,” she says instead.
Your son, Deacon, had a gun and look where that got him.
I trail her as she pushes through the brush, her rubber boots heavy as they fall. I wonder, deep down beneath the rough exterior of this woman—never a lady, according to her loved ones—how often she thinks about the son who disappeared one day five years ago. Is that startling truth still the first thought she wakes up to every morning, in that precise moment when the fog of sleep dissipates?
“There’s a ton of history about the Mat-Su Valley that I’m guessin’ you have no idea about.”
“You’re right. I don’t,” I admit.
“When you have kids, they’ll learn about it all in school. Of course, most of the focus is on the colonists. They get all the fanfare. Parades and special days and all that hoopla for them. But they didn’t start comin’ up here until the Great Depression. There were plenty of people here before them who helped settle the area. Farmers, miners, people wanting to be free and live off the land. They began headin’ up this way as soon as homesteading was allowed, back before the turn of the century, when we were a district of the United States. That’s how my family ended up here. They were originally from Montana.” She pushes a low tree branch back, holding it for me to pass. We round the thick crop of trees to find a small, dilapidated cabin ahead.
“What is this place?” I take in the sunken, moss-covered roof and the rough wood logs that make up the four walls. Boards have been nailed across what I guess are windows, sealing them. It reminds me of the safety cabin Jonah and I sought refuge in while waiting for the murky weather to pass.
“The original homestead on this property.” Muriel steps over a rotten log in her path, then kicks another one. “You’ve heard about that, right? Homesteadin’?”
“When the government gave away land for free? Yeah, I watched a documentary about it.” I watched everything I could find about Alaska after returning to Toronto, grieving for the loss of both my father and Jonah, and desperate to hold on to it for a little while longer. My mother lovingly accused me of masochism.
Muriel’s eyes widen with surprise. “That’s right. They’d give a parcel to you, and you had five years to build a dwelling and cultivate a certain portion before the land was yours, free and clear. A man came up here sometime in the ’60s, in the spring to settle with his wife and two young boys. He was from Montana, too. He staked his claim, paid his entry fees, and away he went, thinkin’ he’d made off like a bank robber, ready to show everyone how it’s done.
“He built houses down there, so he assumed he’d be fine. I remember my parents talkin’ about what an obnoxious fool he was. Didn’t have the first clue about survivin’ up here, though, of what it’s like to be part of a community. Well”—she peers over her shoulder as she walks to give me a knowing look—“one boy was gone before Christmas. Caught somethin’ that he couldn’t shake, livin’ in this drafty, cold place, half-starved. The wife went out in a blizzard a month later and didn’t make it home. Took days to find her body. The man up and left with his remainin’ son before the snow melted. Didn’t last a year.”
My jaw hangs open as I regard the tiny cabin before me, equal parts amazed and horrified by its dark history. What is it with the McGivney family telling me these terrible stories?
“Might have gone a completely different way, had they been willin’ to help, and be helped. They didn’t even know how to keep a proper root cellar so their vegetables wouldn’t rot!” She shakes her head. “Eventually, the Beakers showed up with money to spend. It was the ’70s and this area was startin’ to grow, with the Parks Highway finished and talk of movin’ the state capital to the area from Juneau. The government was sellin’ land, so the Beakers bought up a bunch and made somethin’ of it by settling over on the other side of this lake, building the log house where you live. They put in a good decade here before deciding they were ready for something a little easier, so they sold to Phil and Colette, who really made somethin’ of it.”
She caps off her story with a prideful smile, that grin that transforms her face and softens her harsh tone. “Now it’s your turn to leave your mark.”
Things have changed, I want to tell her. Even in Alaska. We’re not trying to settle the land. I certainly have no intention of living off it. But this little trip has helped me begin to understand Muriel. Her family not only survived but thrived in what that documentary I watched described as the harshest of conditions—poor soil and short summers that challenged crops, wild animals that threatened livestock, the blistering cold, long winters, the endless assault of mosquitos deep in the thicket, the grueling daily labor required. It’s in her DNA. She’s proud of her heritage, of what her family has accomplished.
She sees only one right way to live in Alaska.
Leading me around the corner to where the roof hangs over a single wooden door, Muriel points to the glimpse of water beyond the trees. “That’s your lake. You’re over on the other side.”