North of Hope

by Shannon Polson

  The raft surged forward. We passed rocks on both sides of us, staying to the center of the river, and then hit a wave train. I grinned as the raft bucked up and down, wedging my feet under the back seat tube of the raft to stay secure, letting my butt bounce off the rear of the raft. The main channel pulled us to the left around the corner, and we steered to the right of a rock fence on the left, then cut right to avoid a hole at the bottom.

  “Whoo hoo!” I yelled. “Take out on the right, paddle left!” I back-paddled right and the raft swung into the eddy.

  We got out to mark the ending coordinates, and I made the journal entry:

  “Rich’s Rapids” (rafts)

  beginning coordinates: N W

  at high water: start center, pass small rocks right and left.

  1st drop: follow wave train down middle, stay center around corner. Left after sand bar before “walrus” rock.

  2d drop: follow left-most chute.

  last drop: watch rock fence to left. Cut left below rocks. Pass over to right.

  Ending coordinates: N W. Ending elevation 1752’.

  Looking back, I’m embarrassed we considered naming something wild after any person. Better to do as the Native Americans did: name something by its inspiration. Denali, “the great one”—not McKinley, the name of a president who never set eyes on its icy peaks. In New Zealand, the English names for natural features are often the names of white explorers. But the native Maori words suggest the spirit of the place. The rapids we passed should remain nameless, carrying the more substantive—and lighter—weight of the wind and rain, the snow, and the sighs of the Arctic.

  This, it now seems to me, is a difference between people of the land, and people on the land, between humility and hubris. It is why a part of our Western culture looks with envy at indigenous people’s beliefs: they come from a deeper wisdom of themselves and their world than we can hope to reclaim. We envy this, while ignoring the potential of this wisdom in the name of supposed progress, even as such progress continues to erode that wisdom or the possibility of our ever recovering it.

  It is too hard to try to change our inadequacies. I began to learn, from this trip, a sense of relief in the world’s largeness, that creation has the power to heal both us and itself—if we understand it as creation. The Arctic revealed itself as desert, vast and intricate with the openness of both great innocence and great wisdom. Emerson once wrote that “beauty in nature is not ultimate. It is the herald of inward and eternal beauty … The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.” I still had much to learn.

  Below the rapids the river coalesced into one current again, and the raft moved easily on the smooth waters. Just a few minutes downriver, on the left, a wide, inviting valley led back into the mountains. A creek spilled out of the valley. Kotuk Creek. A gentle gravel bar bordered the river.

  “Should we take a breather?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Sally said.

  “How about the gravel bar straight ahead?” We pulled into a small take-out on the tip of an island sitting midriver. Ned and Sally got up to stretch their legs. I pulled out the map, and then I saw it. I hadn’t been paying attention. Looking across the river into the valley, the rise and fall of the hills leading to the mountains corresponded to the contour lines on the map, and the rocky beach just below it was the campsite.

  “This is the Father’s Day site, just across the river,” I said.

  Ned walked away and up the beach without a word. Sally opened her daypack and found a granola bar. I picked out a rock to sit on and looked across the river. Dark clouds hung low in the mountain valley, resting comfortably, stable.

  Last Father’s Day in Seattle, I had known Dad and Kathy would call. It was their planned call from the river, so that we could connect on Father’s Day. I had told them that I would be hiking that weekend, and asked them to call in the evening so that I wouldn’t miss the chance to say hello.

  I woke up that Sunday morning on the shore of a sparkling alpine lake, one of several tucked into a craggy cirque in the Central Cascades in the Alpine Lakes area. I had hiked into Rampart Lakes with a small group of friends, including two new friends from New Zealand, Alex and Katharine, who had recently relocated to Seattle for work.

  The night before, our new Kiwi friends had been nervous about the nightly ritual of hanging our food fifty yards away from our campsite, since we were in black bear country. I had laughed and said, “Anyone have anything else? Toothpaste, granola bars?” Alex and Katharine peered out of their tent, which they’d set up in the middle of our small group so they would have plenty of warning if there was an unexpected intruder. “Really,” I said, “bears don’t bother you. They want less to do with you than you want to do with them. We just hang up the food so they aren’t tempted to get too close.”

  “In New Zealand, we don’t have anything like this to worry about,” Katharine said. “I like it better that way. The worst thing is the Keas stealing your bootlaces.”

  “Don’t worry, really,” I said. “I’ve been backpacking my whole life, and I’ve never seen a bear except from the car or in a zoo. You just have to be careful.”

  “Well, make sure you scream nice and loud if one comes into camp, so we have plenty of warning!” Alex said, zipping the two of them into their tent.

  Peter had not come on that weekend trip. Things weren’t going well between us.

  “I just don’t feel like I can make it,” he’d said. “Work’s really busy.”

  “Okay, well, I’ll miss you,” I’d said, trying to hide my disappointment and the feeling that our relationship was decaying. “But I really want to go. If you’re going to be busy, we’ll make sure we’re back in plenty of time for me to help with dinner on Sunday.”

  It was so much nicer to be in wilderness with him. We shared a fierce love for wild spaces, close to home or far away, desert or mountains, arctic or tropical. As long as the space was natural, it nourished our souls.

  Peter and I met in business school at Dartmouth. He had taken two years off to work for a start-up between his first and second year, an atypical academic path, so he returned to a cohort he had not met. Our class size was among the smallest among business schools, so classes could be tight, even cliquish. While at an internship in Minneapolis over the summer, a woman from his first-year class and I met at a party in the heavy summer air. “Watch for Peter Polson,” she said. “He’s joining your class this year and won’t know anybody. He’s really outdoorsy—loves hiking and skiing. He’s a really good person too. You can’t miss him. He’s six and a half feet tall and has a huge smile.”

  We met early on. Both of us were dating other people, but I could not get him out of my mind. He seemed to be the serious type. I figured he was as good as married. Peter joined our small group of avid hikers, backpackers, and skiers. Our first hike together was up Franconia Ridge in northern New Hampshire. The weather forecast deteriorated to rain and slush, even at lower altitudes in Hanover, and all but the German exchange student begged out of the hike.

  The three of us hiked up a steep, forested trail, breaking out onto a bare ridgeline. Rain turned to whiteout conditions. The wind howled. I cinched my hood around my freezing chin, squinting into the gale, and carefully extracted the map from my pack, trying to keep the wind from ripping it from my gloved hands.

  “Which way?” I yelled through the wind. Peter pulled out a compass.

  “Looks like we are here,” he said, pointing at the map, “and the trail will go …” The compass needle vibrated tremulously. “Back just behind us and to the right.” We snapped a picture in the howling gale and, with the help of Peter’s compass, picked our way back to the trail descending the ridge. It was the first of many times we would work together to find the way.

  The company I accepted an offer from sent me to Seattle after graduation. Peter was a Seattle native who was also returning to work in his native city and recommended great neighborhoods to look for apartments. Hal
fway into my first year in Seattle, I told a good friend, “I know this sounds crazy, since we aren’t even dating, but I think I’m going to marry Peter.”

  A year after moving to Seattle, both of us still single, we started dating. I had never before met someone I thought I’d marry. I was smitten.

  We had a good time, but not good enough. Things were fine, but not better than fine. It wasn’t what either of us wanted for our lives. No matter, I thought. We’ll figure it out. We are meant to be together.

  Coming back from the hike on Father’s Day, I called Peter to let him know I was on my way. Then I checked my voicemail.

  “Hi, Shannon, it’s Dad and Kathy,” the message said. “Sorry we missed you today! We’ll try you later if we get a chance. We love you!” I was frustrated that they had called early. I didn’t want to miss my chance to talk to them. Before they left on these trips, Kathy would email and remind us that they’d be on the river over Father’s Day in case we wanted to send a card early, addressed to her, so she could bring it along as a surprise. I’d sent my card out in time, but had planned to put pictures in a travel mug to send along as well and hadn’t finished the mug.

  Back in Seattle, Peter grilled salmon on the deck under the wisteria. His parents, as well as his sister and her family, joined us around the picnic table in the easy summer air. I had my phone next to me in case Dad and Kathy called again, feeling guilty for being tied to technology during a family dinner, but not wanting to miss a call. We finished dinner, and still they hadn’t called. I felt just a bit desperate. I couldn’t call the sat phone, since they turned it off when not in use to save batteries and kept it in a watertight case. We cleared the table. Peter’s family left.

  Minutes later, the phone rang. “Hi, Shannon?” The phone crackled just a bit, but was surprisingly clear for satellite connection.

  “Hi, Dad!” I said. I grinned with selfish relief. “How are you doing up there?”

  “Oh, we’re just having a great trip,” he said, a satisfied chuckle in his voice. “How are you?”

  “We’re great. Just had grilled salmon with Peter’s family. Happy Father’s Day, by the way!”

  “Thanks! You have a good hiking trip?” Dad was always asking us about our lives, and I wanted to hear about their trip!

  “It was great, Dad, really pretty. How’s the river?”

  He laughed his deep, belly laugh. “We’re having a great time! Let me put Kathy on!”

  “Hi, Kathy! How’s the trip?”

  “It’s just beautiful. Your dad had a spill today, but everything was okay.”

  “What happened?” I was concerned. They were a long way from help.

  “Oh, a piece of aufeis broke off and the wave flipped his kayak. He was just fine though.”

  “Well, that’s good. What did you guys have for your Father’s Day dinner?”

  “Black beans and lentils. It was perfect!”

  “That sounds great,” I said. I smiled. It was good to hear their voices.

  “Well, I’ll put your dad back on,” Kathy said.

  “Great, good to talk to you. Have a great trip! I love you!”

  “Love you too.”

  A brief pause as the sat phone was passed from one canvas chair to the other.

  “Shan?”

  “Hi, Dad. Sounds like you’re having fun, though you left out flipping your kayak!”

  He laughed again. “Oh, it all turned out okay. Nothing even got wet.”

  “Well, be careful up there,” I said, feeling wistful, wishing I could give him a hug on this day honoring him.

  “Did we tell you we saw a wolf?” His voice was easy, relaxed, and intensely happy.

  “Really?”

  “Actually, we saw two—a gray wolf our first day out, and a white wolf just this morning.”

  “That’s amazing!”

  “Just beautiful. Well, better let you go; this is two dollars a minute,” he said.

  “Okay, Dad. Happy Father’s Day. I love you!”

  “Love you too, kiddo.”

  That had been it, a quick call of only a few minutes. The river in the background, sand in their water bottles, life in their voices.

  How do you know what word will be the last word? How do you know you should hold onto it, lock it away?

  Three days later Peter and I broke up. Two days after that, I got the phone call from Kaktovik. Now a year had passed. Peter and I were friends; he had come with me to the funeral and supported me through the darkest year of my life. I invited him on the raft trip, hoping he would come, knowing he was the only one who could really understand, but he declined.

  The call from the police had trumped what had been a traumatic breakup. After a few awkward adjustments to intimacy, finding ways to connect while not dating, we slowly found a more cautious comfort in our friendship. Now, on the river, for the first time, I missed having Peter next to me. This place was holy, and it was empty, and I stood on that gravel bar very much alone.

  What did it mean when people said things like, “They are always with us”? That we remember them? It was a platitude, tinny, the chatter of a child’s toy meant to entertain. Where precisely was the “heavenly home”? I wanted GPS coordinates. I wanted a precise understanding.

  And what I wanted was inconsequential. I understood that faith requires believing without seeing, accepting mystery, and that was fine as far as believing in God was concerned. But I didn’t want mystery here. I wanted clarity.

  The void opened in front of me again. Dad had been reading Where the Sea Breaks Its Back, an account of Alaska’s first naturalist, Georg Steller. The bookmark and receipt were still tucked in the pages when it appeared in the box of personal effects left from Dad and Kathy’s campsite. Dad had bought it at Title Wave Used Books in Anchorage four years before his trip. I can see him walking the aisles, perusing the shelves, picking up his copy, putting it under his arm, not quite getting to it, rediscovering it on his own bookshelf, packing it in a plastic bag for the trip. When he and Kathy called, I imagined them as I’d seen them in pictures of their trips—books at their sides, tea in their mugs, sitting in canvas camp chairs with the brick of a sat phone, facing the river, the perfect Arctic light on their faces, looking across with meditative satisfaction to the spot where I sat now.

  I wonder what those mountains behind them might tell me, what advice they would give, if they could talk. What they would tell me about love, and about loss, and about how this wild place could heal as naturally as it could kill? But I was trying too hard. This kind of wisdom comes slowly, if it comes at all, and of its own accord.

  Ned walked up behind me. I startled, but kept my gaze on the water.

  “It’s not okay,” he said tersely, as though to the river. I kept a guard up, but his pain washed through me. I felt it like a shudder.

  I was accustomed to his violence, and he to my sarcastic comments holding him at a distance. The threat I felt from him constrained my compassion. One time this barrier had cracked temporarily. Years ago in the army, my phone had rung at a late hour. I was already in bed, and I rolled over to pick up the phone, squinting into the darkness of my bedroom to find the receiver. The sounds of a party popped and snapped. “Hello?” I said groggily. “Hello?” I don’t know why I didn’t hang up immediately. The undertone of a voice gurgled against the background of raucous laughs and yells. “Hello?”

  I was about to hang up when I heard, “Shannon?” in a cracked, low voice.

  “Hey.” I woke up partly, shocked at the call, recognizing Ned’s voice. He was studying for his PhD on the East Coast. I hadn’t talked to him in months.

  There was more crackling, gurgling. “I love you,” he said, a quiet statement, almost like a sob.

  I blinked into the blackness of my room. “I love you too,” I said, letting each word out with care.

  No response. Only the sounds of the party.

  It was midnight. “Okay, I’m going to hang up now,” I said into the receiver. I hun
g up and rolled over to my cat, who was curled up next to me under the covers. “What do you think that was about?” I asked her. She purred a little in her sleep, and I nestled in next to her, burying my fingers in the fur at her throat.

  That had been many years ago. Our relationship never changed. I still regarded him with suspicion, maintaining a defensive posture against his abusiveness, interwoven with threads of persistent hope and tempered by sadness recognizing the fragility beneath his spiny surface. It was not that we were so different; it was that we were so much the same. I assumed he had likely grown past much of his anger, but enough indicators persisted that I still didn’t feel safe around him. Dad would have liked it if we could have leaned on each other. But it wasn’t up to Dad anymore. Maybe it never had been.

  “No, it’s not okay,” I said slowly. “This trip won’t make it okay. It’s never going to be okay.” I watched the late afternoon sun on the empty beach across the river. “It’s not supposed to be okay.”

  We both stood looking across at the empty beach for what felt like a long time.

  Requiem

  Sanctus

  Holy holy holy.

  I look forward to Monday nights this first fall back from Alaska, after the funeral, after clearing out the house, anxious for the weekend to end and to begin the week and rehearsal. I keep my score on the piano in my small apartment, where I will be reminded with a glance: Mozart. It is assurance and challenge.

  There are rehearsals that make me squirm, but most tap into an undefined place inside where body, heart, and soul come together, a place I can feel between my forehead and my stomach, a place I stroke by inhaling and exhaling, bringing in air, releasing it on melodies and harmonies deep and sweet, complex and beautiful.

  This music that has been washing over me is beginning to sink in. I am starting to hear the melodies again, to appreciate the harmony, to hear the dissonances come and then resolve. I am beginning to learn beauty again.

  Now, in late fall, most of our rehearsals include the whole choir, men and women in concert, singing the parts each group has been learning for the past several weeks. At first it is like holding a hand, this coming together, and then like a small rain shower, and then a gathering storm—the rain and the wind, clouds moving and darkening and the slick smell of water, and trickles and torrents. It is the storm abating, the clouds breaking, the first rays of light, the rainbow. It is pleading and angry, terrified and consoling, all of these different voices coming together and making this music that brings us out of ourselves, out of that rehearsal hall, out of the hard metal folding chairs looking across at I-5, into a force beyond any one or even all of us, into something terrible and beautiful and ultimately redemptive. Or this is what I hope. This is what I’m counting on.