Tide, Feather, Snow_ A Life in Alaska - Miranda Weiss [81]
The land had beautiful trees. Birches lined the gravel driveway that curved a quarter-mile into the property. Their boughs spread like arms infinitely fingered. I loved the jagged edges and strong venation of birch leaves and the way that whole canopies lit yellow with the first deep frosts of fall. We had plenty of spruce, both live and those killed by bark beetles. There were enough dead spruce to bring down for ample supplies of firewood. Thick alders masked the view of neighbors, making the place feel private and wild. Nearby, along the creek, tall cottonwoods grew in pairs. In late summer, they would cast off minute seeds in downy nebulae that would zoom across our acres. And in the spring, scrubby willows would reach pawlike flowers over the banks of the creek.
The night after John and I signed on the property, we stayed up long past the sun had gone down talking incessantly about our plans. We would turn the unfinished, two-story structure that sat next to the driveway into a workshop, with a little apartment above it for visitors, or a renter, even. We would turn the earth over and grow a large garden. We would have chickens. We would ski from the property in the winter, and walk along the creek in the summer, and take cold dips in it. We would build a sauna and fill buckets with water from the creek to throw over our heads.
The weekend after buying the place, we set out to explore. From the end of the meadow, we walked south, toward the bay. Damp grasses licked our rubber boots until they shone. We examined the small stream for aquatic insects and found none, though I was certain we’d see them in the spring. We crossed Fritz Creek, which was one of the largest that ran off the bluff into the bay, on the back of a fallen cottonwood, and spotted a pair of harlequin ducks from the far bank. These shy birds were John’s darlings. The male had plumage as playfully colored as a court jester—bold white markings on a blue head, with red crown and flanks. This species of sea duck nests along remote freshwater creeks and rivers in the summer. We were thrilled. Maybe we’d have our own nesting pair nearby.
Farther along, at the edge of a pillowy upland area covered in crowberries, squat spruce, and a miniature form of birch, we came across a small clearing where the ground had been torn up. We found moose hairs, then part of a bloodied backbone. We circled the bear kill cautiously—irresistibly curious about the attack yet knowing that the bear could still be nearby. Then we saw the skull—cleaned of skin and blood: It belonged to one of this year’s calves. We loved knowing there were bears nearby and that they hunted not far from our new place, that we would be able to witness these other lives. All of this, too, seemed perfect.
But we couldn’t move in yet. There wasn’t a place to live, and the property needed work. A forty-foot-long dilapidated trailer house stretched across the end of the driveway. The previous owners had parked it there twenty years ago. Its aluminum siding—white with a pale blue trim—was falling down. Inside, it was a mess. It looked as though the previous owners had just up and left one afternoon and never returned. A coffee mug sat on the counter and cans of food crowded the cupboards. The bedroom was littered with clothes and children’s books with curled pages. The place was unlivable. The carpet had gone moldy and bad. The walls sagged. The countertop was peeling off. The place stank of the rot of man-made things. But John and I weren’t fazed. We would get rid of it. John assured me we could hire someone to haul it to the dump, where it could be gotten rid of for free. We would clean up the mess. We would take down a sloppy shed that had been added onto the trailer. John looked at a tiny one-room cabin that