by Karen Dionne
Diana squats down as far as her snowshoes will let her and points to a fresh set of tracks. “Is that a bobcat?”
“Could be,” I hedge. Judging by the size and the depth of the prints, I suspect the tracks were more likely made by one of our wolves, but it was hard enough to convince Diana to come on this hike; I don’t want her using the wolf as an excuse to turn around and go back.
“I’d like to mount a bobcat. Maybe Max will trap it for me.”
“Absolutely not. You know the rule.”
Diana knows perfectly well that she is only allowed to prepare animals that have died of natural causes. They can be animals that died of old age, or were killed by predators, or were hit by cars—by far the largest group of the three, especially in the spring and fall, when animals are on the move—and nothing else. “Ethical taxidermy,” it turns out our guidelines are called, though we were unaware of the term when we made them. After I told the bookstore owner about Diana’s new hobby and asked if she knew of any good books on the subject, she showed me an amazing coffee table book featuring the work of two world-renowned Dutch taxidermists who preserve and pose exotic animals in fantastic tableaus inspired by old masters’ paintings. The ostriches and Siberian tigers and anacondas and monkeys and parrots and other birds and reptiles they preserve are strictly sourced from legitimate breeders, animal shelters, and zoos, and have all died from natural causes. The artists even have the paperwork to prove it.
I have to admit that their extraordinary and oddly compelling artistry combined with their ethical approach have softened my opinion. They truly have raised the craft of taxidermy to the level of high art, as evidenced by their gallery and museum showings all over the world. Their work has also shown us the way forward. We’re not always going to be around to provide a home for Diana and to take care of her; one day, she’s going to have to earn her own living. I can’t imagine her working in an office or any other setting that requires her to interact regularly with people. I can picture her living at the lodge and supporting herself doing work similar to theirs. Diana is naturally artistic. Her instructor says she has talent.
But all of that is in the future. At the moment, Diana is a twelve-year-old girl who can’t stand to be contradicted. She straightens and tosses her head and fixes me with a glare that could melt a glacier.
“Aunt Charlotte says that rules are made to be broken.”
“Aunt Charlotte says a lot of things,” Peter says. “That doesn’t mean she’s right.”
I appreciate his support. I wish Charlotte would do more of the same. I don’t care how close she and Diana have become; Charlotte has no right to undermine our authority by encouraging our daughter to disrespect our guidelines and directions. “Rules are made to be broken,” indeed.
Diana huffs her displeasure over our united front, but backs off, taking the waterproof camera my sister gave her from her backpack and squatting down again to take pictures.
“I think these are wolf tracks. I’m going to show these to Max. He’ll know what animal made them.”
And that’s the other half of our problem. Charlotte and Max; Max and Charlotte. Diana is always citing them as authorities, as if their opinions are the only ones that matter, never mind that Max is nothing but a con man and a liar. The times I’ve caught him telling whoppers are too many to count, but two of his wolf stories stand out. In the first, Max claimed that he and a friend were deer hunting when a band of wolves surrounded them. They fired shots into the pack, but the animals kept coming, so Max and his buddy each climbed a tree. Only his buddy slipped and fell, and because Max’s rifle had jammed, he could only watch helplessly as his friend was torn to pieces. In the other, Max claimed he got separated from another friend during a hunting trip one January when the weather was severe and game was scarce, and when his friend didn’t come back that night, the next morning, he went looking for him. He found his friend’s body gnawed to the bone with the carcasses of the thirteen wolves he had killed as he fought for his life surrounding his body. Both stories were so over the top that I checked into them, and sure enough, while both were true, and both happened in the Upper Peninsula, both incidents took place more than a hundred years ago. I figure you can take anything Max says at maybe ten percent of face value, but clearly, my sister and my daughter have drunk the poison.
If Peter is bothered by Diana implying that our handyman knows more about the wilderness than her wildlife biologist parents, he doesn’t let on. He blows on his hands to warm them and tugs on his gloves. “Okay. Time to get moving. It’s not much farther now. Just to the top of that ridge.”
He points to a rock-strewn slope a thousand or so feet ahead. The slope starts as an easy climb but gets gradually steeper until it finishes at an angle of around twenty-five degrees. From this distance, the approach doesn’t look all that strenuous, but I know from past experience that it’s sufficiently challenging to leave you feeling as though you’ve accomplished something worthwhile after you reach the top.
“All the way up there?” Diana whines predictably.
“Yep,” Peter says cheerfully. “That is, unless you’d rather wait at the bottom while Mom and I enjoy our picnic at the top.”
“Daddy’s joking,” I say quickly before she has time to get upset. “We wouldn’t leave you behind. Besides, you have the marshmallows.” I grin, though Diana does not.
I collect the empty water bottles and shrug on my pack and move to the head of the line.
“I want to go first.” Diana plants her hand in the middle of my back and gives me a shove. It’s not a hard push, but between the snowshoes and my belly, I’m so unbalanced that I topple forward and land on my hands and knees.
“Diana!” Peter scolds. He puts out a hand to pull me to my feet because there’s no way I’m getting up without help. “Be careful. You could have hurt Mommy or the baby. Tell her you’re sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say quickly. There’s no point in trying to extract an apology from a person who has never felt remorse. “I don’t mind if she goes first. It will be good for her to learn how to break trail. Let’s just keep going.”
Diana forges gamely ahead, stumbling and falling more than once as she struggles through the deep powder. Each time she goes down, she gets back up and keeps going. I glance over my shoulder at Peter to share a smile. I’ll say one thing for our daughter: once she makes up her mind to do something, she doesn’t easily quit.
“Okay,” Peter calls to her as the snow cover disappears and the ground turns rocky. “We’ll leave our snowshoes here and climb the rest of the way without them.”
It’s a relief to take them off. I’m much more winded than I anticipated. I’m nowhere close to quitting, but if Peter were to call for a short rest, I wouldn’t object.
He moves to the head of the line. I take up the rear, putting Diana safely in the middle between us. We’re well away from the edge of the cliff, but I’m not taking any chances.
We pick our way carefully among the boulders. Our cliff is part of the Marquette Iron Range, one of three iron-rich mountain ranges in the western half of the Upper Peninsula, which explains why the boulders are a dusky red. Most of the cities on this end of the U.P. were founded due to mining: Marquette, Ironwood, Iron River, Ishpeming, Negaunee; and some depend on mining to this day. There are copper and gold in the area as well, with hundreds of abandoned mine shafts scattered across the U.P. Peter’s grandfather likes to show off a copper nugget the size of a baseball that he claims was found on our property, but I’ve yet to come across anything bigger than a pebble.
The climb gets progressively steeper. By the time we reach the top, I’m so winded I have to bend over with my hands on my knees to catch my breath before I can even think about taking in the scenery. When I straighten at last, surreptitiously slipping a hand inside my jacket to massage my aching back as I look out over our frozen valley, the view is every bit as
magnificent as I remember, a fairy-tale wonderland in every imaginable shade of blue stretching away as far as I can see. Only from the top of this cliff can a person appreciate our acreage’s unique bowl shape, which defines our property while isolating and protecting it. The cliff we are standing on curves away to the north and the southeast like a giant scythe, the only break the gap Peter’s ancestors cut to allow access to this lost and magical world.
A raven croaks from the top of a tall red pine—cr-r-ruck tok, cr-r-ruck tok—a warning to its companions that there are intruders in the forest, as if the crunch of our boots and the sound of our voices weren’t enough. Trees crack from the cold. A puff of wind sends the snow swirling down off their branches and onto our shoulders as though we were standing in a snow globe. I think about my bears and Peter’s frogs and all the other forest creatures coping with the season in their own way: some sleeping in dens and hollows carved beneath the snow, some like the deer holed up in the cedar swamps, others such as ravens and ermine scavenging whatever they can find on top of the snow crust—everything ecologically balanced and working in perfect harmony. We’re so lucky to live here. Truly, our home is a place like no other.
“What do you think?” I ask Diana as I wave my arm to take in the expanse.
“I like it.”
Not exactly gushing praise, but considering the source, I’ll take it.
Peter walks a short distance back from the edge and begins trampling a circle in the snow for our firepit. “Want to help?” he calls to her as he crumples newspaper and arranges kindling in a circle around it like a teepee. “Come over here. I’ll let you light it.”
Normally Diana would jump at the chance to play with fire, so I’m a little surprised when instead she walks closer to the edge of the cliff than I’d like and points to the valley below.
“What’s that?”
“Not so close. Come and stand back here with me.”
She takes two steps closer to the edge and shades her eyes. “Down there.” She points. “I saw something. I think it’s a wolf.”
“Come back here,” I say again as firmly as I can without frightening her. “I’ll check it out.”
Something in my voice must have told her I’m serious, because for once, Diana does as she’s told. I walk carefully toward the edge, testing the snow with each footstep before putting my weight on it, because there’s no way to know where the cliff ends. Last year when Peter and I hiked down to the valley to explore the cliff along its base, great curls of snow hung over the lip like I’ve seen in nature documentaries and in movies. There’s no reason to assume that this year it will be any different.
When I’ve gone as close to the edge as I dare, I lift my binoculars and sweep them over the valley.
“I see it! It’s a moose! No, wait. There are two of them. A mother and calf. Great eyes, Diana. Peter—come here. You’ve got to see this!”
Moose in the Upper Peninsula are almost as rare as the wolves that feed on them. The only decent population is on Isle Royale, an island in Lake Superior that’s fifty-six miles from the tiny town of Copper Harbor on the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula, the northernmost point in the state. Occasionally an Isle Royale moose will get a hankering to explore and cross over to the mainland when the lake is frozen, but the Canadian shore is a lot closer, which means that an Isle Royale moose isn’t likely to have traveled all the way here. Odds are this mother and calf are part of a small but growing population on the mainland that has been deliberately reintroduced. It’s exciting to think that our property is home to a breeding pair.
Diana tugs at the binoculars hanging around my neck. I hadn’t realized she’d come out to join me. I turn to face her.
“I told you to stay back.”
“I just want to see.” She grabs for the binoculars again.
“Ow! Stop. Be careful, Diana. Give me a minute. The strap is caught in my drawstring.”
I pull off my mittens and stick them between my knees to work the strap loose. And then, inexplicably, impossibly, I am turning cartwheels in the sky.
* * *
—
Pain.
Sharp. Insistent. Overwhelming. Everything hurts. My head, my neck, my back, my arms, my legs. My body feels like it’s on fire.
I open my eyes. See nothing but sky.
I turn my head to the side. Rocks. Snow. I’m lying on my back in a pile of rocks. I’m not sure why.
“Jenny!” Peter calls from somewhere high above.
“Is Mommy dead?” Diana asks.
“Jenny! Answer me!”
I roll onto my side, wrap my arms around the boulder next to me, pull myself up until I’m almost sitting, hang on to the rock with one hand and prop myself up with the other. The snow is freezing. I don’t know why my mittens are gone.
No. I took my mittens off so I could untangle the binoculars’ strap from my parka drawstring before I fell.
I fell.
I’m lying in a pile of rocks and snow at the bottom of the west cliff because I fell off it.
I fell, and I am alive.
“I’m okay!” I call, though one of my legs is definitely broken. I can tell by the way my boot is turned too far to the side. I’m not sure about the other.
“Thank God! Are you hurt?”
“I think so. Yes. I can’t move my legs.”
“Stay there! Don’t move. I’ll be right down!”
I almost laugh. As if I could possibly do otherwise. But Peter can’t climb down to help me. He can’t leave Diana on top by herself. And even if they both climbed down, he can’t carry me two miles back to the lodge wearing snowshoes.
“Go home! Get the snowmobile! I’ll be okay! Just hurry back!” I pour all the strength and confidence into my voice that I can. I don’t want him to leave me. He has to leave me.
“All right,” Peter calls back after a long silence during which I imagine him weighing all the options and coming to the same conclusion. “Just stay calm. Everything will be fine. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”
I let go of the rock and lay back in the snow and close my eyes. My entire body is shaking, whether from the effort to hold myself upright, or from shock, or from cold, I don’t know. It’s impossible to wrap my head around the enormity of what happened. I fell off the cliff. I’m lying on my back in a jumble of rocks and snow at the bottom. I’m hurt. Probably badly.
On the plus side, I didn’t die. On the negative, I still might.
I close my eyes and picture Peter and Diana following the trail we made back to the lodge, Peter running as fast as his snowshoes will let him, Diana struggling to keep up, Peter barely noticing that she’s lagging, intent only on getting back to the lodge as fast as he can. I see him ripping off his snowshoes when he reaches the side yard, yelling for Charlotte and Max to look after Diana while he drags the snowmobile out of the lean-to and hitches on to it the sledge that we use for hauling. He jumps onto the machine and roars away, driving much too fast for conditions, struggling to control the snowmobile in the deep powder, wondering all the while if I will be alive when he finds me.
Which I will be. I can’t die. I have to get through this for Peter. For our daughters. For the baby.
My hands stray to my belly. The baby hasn’t moved since I fell, but sometimes he doesn’t for long stretches of time. I poke my belly to provoke a response. If he were a two- or three-month-old fetus floating around inside my womb like a little spaceman with plenty of amniotic fluid to cushion the fall, he’d probably be fine. But this baby is already pushing the boundaries, only millimeters of tissue and skin between him and these rocks. I think I landed on my feet and the weight of my pack pulled me onto my back, and this is why one of my legs and possibly both are broken, but I can’t be sure.
I lay still for a long time. The cold creeps through my clothes, through my skin, and all the way into my bones.
I unzip my jacket and shove my hands beneath my sweater to warm them. Doing this will cause me to lose body heat faster, but I’m not willing to lose my fingers to frostbite. Not yet. I’ve read about mountain climbers who faced similar situations. After they were rescued, they said they didn’t care that they lost fingers or toes; all that mattered was that they were alive. I hope I don’t have to be that brave.
I shiver again. Shivering is good. It’s when I stop shivering that I’ll be in trouble. That’s when I will succumb to hypothermia. It’s inevitable. The only question is how bad it will be. As my core temperature falls, my body will shunt my blood away from my skin and extremities to my vital organs—my lungs, my kidneys, my brain, my heart—and I will no longer feel the cold. I have no idea if my body will consider my baby essential or non-essential.
I look up at the curl of snow high above my head, barely visible against the darkening sky. I try not to think about what would happen if it came plummeting down.
A pair of ravens circles like vultures.
I shiver again, but not because I am cold. For the first time since we moved to these woods, I am afraid.
SIXTEEN
NOW