August 12
Thorofare cabin, a mile in from the road along a meandering path clearing low berry bushes & dwarf willows, a beaver pond flanking momentarily the south side. The cabin sits almost hidden against a hill bluffing over the Thorofare River, under a pitch of quaking aspen & otherwise engulfed by dwarf willow & birch & low brush. To the south, the range builds higher as it crops west to crescendo in Denali’s looming 20,320 feet; peaks that earlier today shone crisp now buried in heavy lenticular cloud. The porch of the cabin looks down at the confluence of a trickling creek with the river—three hundred yards downstream the Muldrow Glacier comes to its abrupt end, an ice cliff a hundred feet tall spewing rock & ice-boulders in its calving into the silty water. One, from here, can climb its toe where it is yet vegetated & hike steadily until only ice & rock reveal themselves, a barren arrow pointing directly to the north slope of Denali. The cabin serves primarily as a winter patrol stop for kennels—two or three mushers will break trail from headquarters to Wonder Lake, stopping here to sleep with their teams of dogs outside. Two bunks, a desk, a fine woodstove, a cabinet full of kitchenware. In the corner an axe, a maul, a coping saw. Two lanterns, two Coleman stoves. On the porch & along the side of the cabin spruce felled, cut & stacked high in anticipation of colder months ahead. On the north side of the cabin sharply cleft grooves & deep gouges, the mud below pocked with prints where a grizzly used the wood to sharpen his claws. Along the trail to the river, too, deep grizzly paw impressions in the mud from a day or two ago. The riverside dense with soapberries, the hillock behind the cabin thick with blueberry, & these Denali bears almost vegetarian.
***
Close to nine, a long shadow extended now for hours over the thin sliver of valley, I stoke the woodstove & light a lantern, hanging it above the desk from a nail plunged into the log crossbeam. Autumn beginning its blaze, the air claycold & crisp. Patches of red & gold flaming across the tundra, that particular quality of the air in fall, almost gravid with pending sorrow & its last push of vernal joy, the funereal attending the blithely mineral present, the landscape touched, & just so, hint of hurry, of refulgence, whispers of coming snow.
The crackle & slow burr of the woodstove among the most precious things, so dear to my heart, that song the barn on Orcas sang daily. That little flame we hovered around to hear, our hands supplicant like paupers while we asked questions that seemed to consume us & talked of distances even while we held one another close. What was it ferried me here? What stuttering pulse in vein, what rupture in the filament? I can scarcely tell anymore, & would now sit before that stove with its maple tree emblazoned bold on the door, with my dog curled nearby in contented slumber, with my love beside me, a hand outstretched.
***
Awakened this morning from a pleasant night’s sleep by a sub-adult grizzly using the porch as a backscratch. Quietly approached the window to regard him—just as he quietly stepped his forepaws on the porch to regard me, huffing for scent, peering through the glass & directly into my eyes from four feet away. A moment later he stood, briefly, turned, & was gone through the willows, fine hairs left caught in the splintering wood of the post.
***
Since then a renewed sense of ursine fear—began a hike towards the Muldrow, stopping at the river where its moraine walls calve rock & ice with splintering cracks that resound in echo along the river corridor. Climbed atop one such glacial face, covered at this lower altitude with the same sprawling tundra-cover as the rest. & seemed to freeze there, suddenly again afeared of a bear; though my better judgment urges me on, I cannot seem to shake that visage of hours ago, those dark eyes locked with mine over such short distance, that magnificent creature blazing in my eyelids against their closing. & so I retreated to the cabin, where I’ve hugged the perimeter, reading, writing, whittling my pencil tip, picking blueberries & glancing cautious around me every minute. an extraordinary thing to witness, but some time I suppose in its processing
***
Close to nine, a long shadow extended now for hours over the thin sliver of valley, I stoke the woodstove & light a lantern, hanging it above the desk from a nail plunged into the log crossbeam. Autumn beginning its blaze, the air claycold & crisp. Patches of red & gold flaming across the tundra, that particular quality of the air in fall, almost gravid with pending sorrow & its last push of vernal joy, the funereal attending the blithely mineral present, the landscape touched, & just so, hint of hurry, of refulgence, whispers of coming snow.
The crackle & slow burr of the woodstove among the most precious things, so dear to my heart, that song the barn on Orcas sang daily. That little flame we hovered around to hear, our hands supplicant like paupers while we asked questions that seemed to consume us & talked of distances even while we held one another close. What was it ferried me here? What stuttering pulse in vein, what rupture in the filament? I can scarcely tell anymore, & would now sit before that stove with its maple tree emblazoned bold on the door, with my dog curled nearby in contented slumber, with my love beside me, a hand outstretched.
***
Awakened this morning from a pleasant night’s sleep by a sub-adult grizzly using the porch as a backscratch. Quietly approached the window to regard him—just as he quietly stepped his forepaws on the porch to regard me, huffing for scent, peering through the glass & directly into my eyes from four feet away. A moment later he stood, briefly, turned, & was gone through the willows, fine hairs left caught in the splintering wood of the post.
***
Since then a renewed sense of ursine fear—began a hike towards the Muldrow, stopping at the river where its moraine walls calve rock & ice with splintering cracks that resound in echo along the river corridor. Climbed atop one such glacial face, covered at this lower altitude with the same sprawling tundra-cover as the rest. & seemed to freeze there, suddenly again afeared of a bear; though my better judgment urges me on, I cannot seem to shake that visage of hours ago, those dark eyes locked with mine over such short distance, that magnificent creature blazing in my eyelids against their closing. & so I retreated to the cabin, where I’ve hugged the perimeter, reading, writing, whittling my pencil tip, picking blueberries & glancing cautious around me every minute. an extraordinary thing to witness, but some time I suppose in its processing
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