the end

“I want to go back to a river with my dad,” he told me.

He crinkled his forehead.

He didn’t know where or when, he added.

Or he couldn’t say it yet.

He wasn’t ready to come home alone, like a child unlocking his front door and sitting at a walnut table that cooled under his fingertips. The clock tick, tick, ticked in the hallway as the child folded his arms and drew them toward his heart.

The man spoke again:

“I want to go fishing with my dad one last time,” he said.

He couldn’t gather ashes lost in the wind and cold rain, once he let go.

one more look

My old pal Virgil waved at me.

I reminded him of my name. I hadn’t seen him for a couple of months, when he piloted a 10-passenger floatplane loaded down with food, supplies, a boss, and a brand-new housekeeper.

I got used to the place.

We took the same plane back to Anchorage. But this time we took a near-empty plane.

I took the co-pilot’s seat and slid the headphones over my ears.

“Can you see the mountain today?” I asked casually, adjusting the mouthpiece with my fingers.

“Yep, we saw it for about 30 minutes on the way in,” he said.

“Really?”

I’d only seen it once. It was very far away.

“We’ll swing around and take a quick look before we head back to Anchorage,” he told me. 

I strained against my seatbelt.

Within 30 seconds I saw a white stone triangle hovering above the clouds.

Is that it? I whispered under my breath. I leaned toward the window. It seemed smaller than I remembered, even close up.

He shifted the plane to the right.

“Oh wow,” I gasped.

 That’s it.

Google Images doesn’t do it justice.

You really have to sit in a co-pilot’s seat in a 10-seat floatplane and press your head against a thick, dusty window. That way you can hear the propellers roar and cut through the wind.

Or you could climb it.

gold!

We were skipping rocks one day, flat round slivers of stone. I can’t seem to pass two skips, but Brendan can hit six, at least.

In the water, the camp lab played, jumping at pinks and snarling at their shadows. They stayed a stroke ahead.

And then I looked down, to the sand glittering under the waves.

I sighed.

Wait.

Is that?

We looked at each other and knelt on the ground. I dragged my fingers under the water.

I bent my head closer to the water and saw tiny gold flakes twinkling in the sandy beach. I sunk my fingertips under the sand.

A group of fishermen rushed by in their boat. I straightened up and waved, waiting for them to pass.

Waves from the wake washed across the treasure.  I waited for the water to subside. I tried to grab the flakes, and they sunk below the surface.

I sat on my heels and exhaled.

We weren’t even looking.

I knelt in the water. The sand dug into my knees. I slid flakes under my fingernails and leaned back on my heels. I pressed my nails into my palm and let go of the flakes. They shone, black and dirty gold, in my hand.

Brendan shoveled sand onto a 6-inch piece of driftwood and stood up.

He had to work.

But we had money now.

I followed behind, cradling bits of the future in my fingers.

Once back in Guideville, I slipped the flakes into a Ziploc bag. I had room for much more. I contemplated grabbing a blue bucket from the laundry room, and hours spent shifting through the sand.

But the mosquitoes buzzed above the puddles on the trail. The purple flowers still glistened at eye level.

They told me it was pyrite, but no one knows for sure.

I don’t believe them, at least.

a break

I rushed to cabin 2, my favorite one. A couple of quick turns of the sheets and I’m done, no bathroom to scrub. I carry a bottle of cleaning agent and old rags to scrub the counter. Some people don’t knock mud off their shoes.

Once in this place I stumbled into the old maroon vacuum cleaner and sliced my toenail.

Now I take B vitamins to keep my mind sharp.

But I don’t normally wear shoes. I hobble on one foot and then the other and kick them off outside the cabin door. I don’t like to track in last night’s rain. My shoelaces are worn and frayed after too many mornings trudging through puddles. I don’t bother to tie the laces.

I prefer wearing flip-flops to work.

I felt a little bit slow, sluggish. I forgot my vitamins. I missed the 7:30 breakfast, but I really tried to make it. I felt worn down by my efforts to clean perfectly and charm beautifully.

(I know.)

My head felt foggy, so I stopped and stared into the distance. I still gripped a cloudy plastic spray bottle, a third full of sloshing, pale green cleaning chemicals.

I saw the water sweeping over the piles of rocks in the middle of the river. The water curved into a channel that roared alongside the grassy bank.

I watched the bright green grass fluttering in the gentle breeze. The grass shimmered with morning dew, and it  chilled my bare toes.

In the river the spawning salmon splashed upstream, flashes of silver sparkling in the sunlight.

I put the bottle down.

pranks

They were from the South, and they liked me, I could tell. A couple of them approached me one afternoon. They smiled mischievously. One spoke.

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary, could you do us a favor?”

“But of course, anything – within reason,” I added with a cheeky grin.

“When you make the beds tomorrow, could you short sheet one?”

“Ah – what?”

“You’ve never short sheeted a bed before?” He sounded shocked.

“No. But I’ve read about it in books … It’s like a camp thing,” I added quickly.

“It’s not hard!” he told me.

(Well, we didn’t learn how at Camp Wakonda.)

 I felt embarrassed, unprepared for life in double digits.

“Could you get me a paper towel?” he asked.

I grabbed one from the sink behind the bar. He took a book, a hiking guide for South Central Alaska. He tucked the paper towel over the top of the book, where a very short person might rest their head. He stretched the towel halfway down the book, and folded it up at the top.

“Could you do it again?”

(Maybe I’m a little bit of a perfectionist, or just really great at customer service.)

“It’s not rocket science, Mary!”

I smiled slowly.

“Tuck, fold, real simple.”

“Okay, I think I got it,” I said.

“Remember, the queen bed in the middle!” he told me.

“Yeah, I got it!” I said with a bright grin. I felt like a nine-year-old.

The next morning I cleaned their cabin first, in case they caught their limit quickly.

I worked quickly, but it took longer than I expected.

I saw them after lunch.

“Oh, Mary,” one said.

“Yes?”

“You weren’t supposed to short sheet all the beds!”

I grinned.

“Oh. I know.”

grace (Denali)

The chefs can’t very well toss leftovers to the bears, so instead we all throw our scraps into white plastic buckets. Every couple of days, a guide drives out on the Yentna River and shakes the buckets overboard. The seagulls screech and roar, diving into the water to snatch orange peels and bread crusts floating in the boat’s wake.

The other day I went along. I like to take photos of the setting sun, the gold-tinged clouds glowing, and the white feathers flapping in the wind.

I grabbed a life jacket and hopped in the boat. Noah steered us, farther this time it seemed. Brendan and Abby came with. We hang out, the four of us.

I tied the strings of my red knit cap and felt the crisp breeze rush past my cheeks.

I felt lost in the fading sun, and calm.

“Mary! Look left!”

Abby and Noah pointed frantically toward the shore.

And there I saw McKinley. Again. 

Some people see it and burn to conquer it.

This time, I only wanted to cry.

on second thought

You know what I thought I saw?

I didn’t.

It didn’t make a difference at the time.

But now it does.

That wasn’t the Great One that I saw.

It was just some mountain range.

How do you get confused on that one?

I don’t know for sure.