She steals a gray-eyed glance back my way, quiet for a moment, and I brace myself for the invasive prodding, the wise-woman lecture, the uninvited opinion.
“Well, you know what’s more dangerous than a gun? Being in Alaska and not having one when you need it,” she says instead.
Your son, Deacon, had a gun and look where that got him.
I trail her as she pushes through the brush, her rubber boots heavy as they fall. I wonder, deep down beneath the rough exterior of this woman—never a lady, according to her loved ones—how often she thinks about the son who disappeared one day five years ago. Is that startling truth still the first thought she wakes up to every morning, in that precise moment when the fog of sleep dissipates?
“There’s a ton of history about the Mat-Su Valley that I’m guessin’ you have no idea about.”
“You’re right. I don’t,” I admit.
“When you have kids, they’ll learn about it all in school. Of course, most of the focus is on the colonists. They get all the fanfare. Parades and special days and all that hoopla for them. But they didn’t start comin’ up here until the Great Depression. There were plenty of people here before them who helped settle the area. Farmers, miners, people wanting to be free and live off the land. They began headin’ up this way as soon as homesteading was allowed, back before the turn of the century, when we were a district of the United States. That’s how my family ended up here. They were originally from Montana.” She pushes a low tree branch back, holding it for me to pass. We round the thick crop of trees to find a small, dilapidated cabin ahead.
“What is this place?” I take in the sunken, moss-covered roof and the rough wood logs that make up the four walls. Boards have been nailed across what I guess are windows, sealing them. It reminds me of the safety cabin Jonah and I sought refuge in while waiting for the murky weather to pass.
“The original homestead on this property.” Muriel steps over a rotten log in her path, then kicks another one. “You’ve heard about that, right? Homesteadin’?”
“When the government gave away land for free? Yeah, I watched a documentary about it.” I watched everything I could find about Alaska after returning to Toronto, grieving for the loss of both my father and Jonah, and desperate to hold on to it for a little while longer. My mother lovingly accused me of masochism.
Muriel’s eyes widen with surprise. “That’s right. They’d give a parcel to you, and you had five years to build a dwelling and cultivate a certain portion before the land was yours, free and clear. A man came up here sometime in the ’60s, in the spring to settle with his wife and two young boys. He was from Montana, too. He staked his claim, paid his entry fees, and away he went, thinkin’ he’d made off like a bank robber, ready to show everyone how it’s done.
“He built houses down there, so he assumed he’d be fine. I remember my parents talkin’ about what an obnoxious fool he was. Didn’t have the first clue about survivin’ up here, though, of what it’s like to be part of a community. Well”—she peers over her shoulder as she walks to give me a knowing look—“one boy was gone before Christmas. Caught somethin’ that he couldn’t shake, livin’ in this drafty, cold place, half-starved. The wife went out in a blizzard a month later and didn’t make it home. Took days to find her body. The man up and left with his remainin’ son before the snow melted. Didn’t last a year.”
My jaw hangs open as I regard the tiny cabin before me, equal parts amazed and horrified by its dark history. What is it with the McGivney family telling me these terrible stories?
“Might have gone a completely different way, had they been willin’ to help, and be helped. They didn’t even know how to keep a proper root cellar so their vegetables wouldn’t rot!” She shakes her head. “Eventually, the Beakers showed up with money to spend. It was the ’70s and this area was startin’ to grow, with the Parks Highway finished and talk of movin’ the state capital to the area from Juneau. The government was sellin’ land, so the Beakers bought up a bunch and made somethin’ of it by settling over on the other side of this lake, building the log house where you live. They put in a good decade here before deciding they were ready for something a little easier, so they sold to Phil and Colette, who really made somethin’ of it.”
She caps off her story with a prideful smile, that grin that transforms her face and softens her harsh tone. “Now it’s your turn to leave your mark.”
Things have changed, I want to tell her. Even in Alaska. We’re not trying to settle the land. I certainly have no intention of living off it. But this little trip has helped me begin to understand Muriel. Her family not only survived but thrived in what that documentary I watched described as the harshest of conditions—poor soil and short summers that challenged crops, wild animals that threatened livestock, the blistering cold, long winters, the endless assault of mosquitos deep in the thicket, the grueling daily labor required. It’s in her DNA. She’s proud of her heritage, of what her family has accomplished.
She sees only one right way to live in Alaska.
Leading me around the corner to where the roof hangs over a single wooden door, Muriel points to the glimpse of water beyond the trees. “That’s your lake. You’re over on the other side.”
“Seriously?” I’ve spent countless hours looking across to the far shoreline. Never did I catch even a hint of a cabin hidden within. We can’t even see it from above, everything so overgrown.
“Okay, let’s see if this will budge.” She gives the doorknob a yank and the old door opens with a hair-raising creak of the hinges. Muriel looks impressed as she pushes it all the way back. “Move that rock over here, will ya?” She nods toward a small boulder on the ground a few feet away.
My back and arms scream in protest from the earlier soil tilling as I struggle to roll it over. I prop it against the bottom corner of the door to hold it open.
“Haven’t been in here in years,” she admits, leading me into the small room that smells of damp wood. It’s dark, the only light streaming in from the door and the few cracks within the boarded-up windows. It’s empty of everything but dust, debris, and a few chunks of broken glass.
I do a slow spin, trying to imagine where four people slept and ate, where the kitchen was situated. A black pipe in one corner hints at the location of the woodstove, but nothing of it remains.
“Locals cleaned the place out as soon as they caught wind of the family takin’ off,” Muriel explains, as if reading my mind.
“How old is this place again?”
“Well, it was built in the ’60s, so well over fifty years old now.” She paces in a slow circle. “That man might have been a shmuck when it came to survivin’, but he built a sturdy enough cabin. Phil’s done some repairs and upkeep over the years and made sure it stayed boarded up, or else he was bound to find a sleeping bear in here, come winter. Thomas used to come out here with his friends and get up to no good. That’s their son, by the way. My boys would come out with him from time to time, too.”
It’s the first time she’s even alluded to having more than one son.
“And of course, Thomas would sneak out with his girlfriend, too. What teenager could resist a place to shack up.” She raises her eyebrow with meaning. “Anyway, thought you should see some good Alaskan history on your land.”
I may have been reluctant at the start, but now I find myself appreciative. “I had no idea. There wasn’t any mention of the cabin in any of the paperwork.”
“They probably lost track of it.” She shoos me out the door with a wave of her hand, then gives the boulder a swift kick with her boot, sending it rolling enough to loosen its grip of the door. With the cabin secured, she leads the way back through the bramble. “That spot where you have your garden, it wasn’t too much better than this when Colette and Phil took over. Of course, the Beakers had a little garden. Colette wanted bigger, so Phil gave her bigger. Lord, did that man ever love her, bless his heart.