The most important work we can do, individually and globally, is the healing and prevention of traumas so that we don't pass them down to future generations. This blog is a working tool to contribute to this good work.
I woke up this morning to a thin, wispy cloud cover that faintly dimmed the intensity of our first day of desert sunlight. Is this the first of the high sky moisture that might lead to a timely arrival of our much-hoped for summer rains? Oh, JOY that it might be! But as the day follows the morning this cloud cover has vanished and again the sun bakes this earth and all life upon it. But I have hopes!
In the process of responding to the comment at the end of my last post, +GRADUATION – ON TO THE NEXT STAGE OF PUBLISHING MY MOTHER’S WRITING, as well as in responding to the Facebook posting of the same picture of me planting in Alaska when I was 6 in the spring of 1958, I realize that I want to add something here.
As I become increasingly clear that I will be publishing my mother’s CHRONICLE about her homesteading experience I also realize that I am dividing what I KNOW ever more clearly from what my mother wrote. Although I will by definition be leaving my analysis and interpretation out of the chronicle that is my mother’s story of events during the years her writings cover, I WILL be placing them in my version: Unspeakable Madness.
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Now, regarding these pictures. My mother evidently considered that what I was doing here — planting what I believe was a green bean that had been started in a cardboard milk box — into the soil that my mother had prepared alongside the log house our first spring in Alaska DARLING ENOUGH to warrant her taking a photograph of JUST ME.
Yet there is her true DARLING, her second daughter obscured in the back of the photograph standing at the corner of the house. My mother did something that any ‘normal’ mother could be expected to do. She called my sister forward so she, too, could be included in a picture.
All good.
But……
I am not sure that I can think of one single event of my childhood with my mother that was EVER left alone to be remembered by me as ‘all good’. What happened in connection with this planting, and comes to me when I just found these two photographs, is that my mother had added manure into this soil around the log house that she had gotten from our farming neighbor across Eagle River Road.
What happened in my mother’s world – that yet again (as always) removed Linda from the Darling side of the family — that amputated me from Darling-Good and left me in as always in the Demon-Bad (though she did not use the word demon until I was in high school in reference to me) side of her sick mental equation regarding her children — was that evidently SOMEHOW (and it is the SOMEHOWS of my childhood that caused me the greatest ongoing pain over the yeas as they were brought up during abuse and beatings over and over and over again) it was LINDA’S FAULT that my ‘baby’ sister, who would have been not-quite-3 at this time, ended up with severe eczema between her fingers, on her hands and her wrists that she suffered from repeatedly throughout HER childhood.
How did Linda-Me manage to make certain my mother’s DARLING curly-haired baby doll daughter suffer with this eczema?
Evidently I INTENTIONALLY LET MY BABY SISTER STICK HER HANDS into this manure-infested gardening soil my mother had prepared — and THIS is what caused my baby sister’s suffering (she is not in these pictures).
Even if I had ONLY been PUNISHED for this IMAGINED horrible infraction JUST ONE time perhaps my mother’s abuse surrounding the planting of the green bean plant would not have been added to her abuse litany that she created for me. But it WAS added to the litany. The ‘fact’ that I had been so irresponsible as to let my littlest sister stick her hands into this soil while somehow (the intimation always was) KNOWING that the consequences in the FUTURE would be that my baby sister would GET this eczema and suffer as a result — meant that I HATED my sister, that I wanted to be an only child, and that I evilly WANTED my sister to suffer. I intended my sister harm!
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This is an example of UNSPEAKABLE MADNESS. Nothing about what happened in connection with this little strip of amended gardening soil surrounding the log house BELONGED to anything my mother SAID it did.
But my mother DID associate nearly every single aspect of ME in my childhood to something that DID NOT BELONG in or to her DARLING version of the world! As she dissociated the BAD from the GOOD, she very magnanimously and generously gave the BAD to me — and did so from the moment I was born!
It was not a darling thing that her darling baby girl had eczema. Therefore, she simply was able to amputate this un-darlingness from her darling version of the world and move it right on over to LINDA’S side of the equation — right on over to the NOT DARLING child — ME!
What happened to my sister HAD to be my fault! Everything that happened during my childhood that my mother could blame me for could be removed (as works any time there is a ‘scapegoat’ or ‘pharmacos’ present – imagined, of course) from my mother’s darling world, banished, vanquished — and moved over to ME. Then I could be punished and tortured, tormented and maliciously abused for things that had NOTHING to do with me!
Planting this green bean ended up being one of those ‘things’.
"Oh, cute! Linda doing a cute, darling thing" - To be associated and included as a part of my mother's 'picture-taking perfect DARLING world'."Come, darling second daughter! YOU are the true "always darling" girl. Come be a part of this darling-moment picture!" My sister looks awkward and not very comfortable here!
I guess in a way it’s time for me to celebrate my ‘graduation’ from the job I assigned to myself to transcribe the complete and utter chaotic mess of my mother’s letters and papers that somehow found their way to me when my mother died in 2002. I am done. After working most of this past weekend on two more of her homesteading journals that I found at the very, very bottom of the papers piled here by my computer, I cannot find one more single scrap of paper left to do.
The surprises are over. Now I am working to fine-tune, tweak, correct spelling and edit format in completion of the process that will finally lead to some form of publication of my mother’s words. While this is still no simple task, it feels to me to be an entirely different step that could NOT happen until I finally finished sorting, organizing and transcribing her work.
I realized yesterday as I transcribed the last pages that never once in all these thousands and thousands of words does my mother ever write about ME in the same way that she does for her other ‘darling’ children. That left me knowing that the dichotomy that existed in my mother’s mind between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ let her make the distinction between her DARLINGS and her DEMON child, Me.
What exactly will happen with all this information next I do not know. Time will tell. But I look forward to experiencing an every-growing sense both of pride in the accomplishment of the goal I set for myself and a kind of relief in my freedom from this task during these next days ahead. The work I have to do now is something that ANYONE could do. It doesn’t even require that I be any more ‘present’ for the task than I would be if I were editing writing that I am completely remote from.
This is unlike what happened to me last night as I worked with the very last of my mother’s letters. She was describing where we were on the Jeep road of my childhood when we saw our first black bear. I was actually following that story as I mentally following the startled scared bear as it crashed away from us through the woods when my daughter called me. The ring of my telephone literally caused me to jump right off of my chair.
No more surprises. I am glad for that. I have worn out the plastic carpet protector under my computer chair until it has cracked and broken into little pieces under the wheels of my computer chair. I have worn the lettering off of many keys on my keyboard. But I still have work to do here if you should wonder where I am!
I am here working on my mother’s chronicle of living her Alaskan homesteading dream:
CHRONICLE
Etymology: Middle English cronicle, from Anglo-French, alteration of chronike, from Latin chronica, from Greek chronika, from neuter plural of chronikosDate: 14th century
1: an historical account of events arranged in order of time usually without analysis or interpretation <a chronicle of the Civil War> 2:narrative
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Planting beside the Eagle River log house, spring 1958 (I was 6, still wearing the infamous turquoise parka with the white fake fur cuffs)
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Main Entry: 1chron·i·cle
Pronunciation: \ˈkrä-ni-kəl\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English cronicle, from Anglo-French, alteration of chronike, from Latin chronica, from Greek chronika, from neuter plural of chronikos
Date: 14th century
1: an historical account of events arranged in order of time usually without analysis or interpretation <a chronicle of the Civil War> 2:narrative 1
If we are going to survive we have to have the light from within us met by the light from without. Abused children DO find that light – somehow, somewhere – or they could not possibly survive. Looking back, where did we find that light?
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I was wide awake around 4 o’clock this morning and started my day as the first light began to flood the world even though the sun itself was nowhere to be seen. Filling the outdoor animal’s water dish, sweeping lose dirt from my adobe walkway, watering and turning my ever-growing compost pile, until finally, just now right before 6:30 in the morning the first rays of the sun reach over my eastern neighbor’s trailer, and then just over my tall old corrugated steel fence where the rays begin the day by caressing the ferny tips of the tiny little carrot plants my neighbor children brought me to plant a little over a week ago.
Before long these sun rays will be blazing. They will challenge with their parching heat every green leaf within my yard at the same time that they feed them.
I am thinking about the amazing experience I had as I transcribed that long letter yesterday that my mother wrote down over fifty years ago: +A ROAD IS A LIVING ‘THING’ – 1959 HOMESTEADING ‘STORY’. The more I watched the story contained in her words unfold before my eyes, the more I scanned in the photographs and trimmed them up to add in along with her words, the more my body remembered those days on that mountain road when I was seven years old.
As I remembered I felt something happening inside me that I could not name until just now as I watched these sun rays appearing out of the darkness of the night, bringing a new morning to the world on THIS day, THIS day that cannot possibly ever be exactly like any day that has ever passed over this earth in all of its very long history.
What I now can name is that especially because I was a hated, shunned, usually-frightened and terribly abused child, any time that darkness went away even for a little while the light from without that met and touched my light from within helped me to grow by ‘leaps’ and by ‘bounds’. As I walked my little, growing feet over the virgin land of that Alaskan mountainside something new and different happened to me.
I felt fine. Absolutely fine.
I see in my mother’s homesteading letters that she often turns her scathing tone to my slowness as I trudged along with my family up that mountain. “There’s Linda, so slow as always, lagging far behind the rest of us.” As if I was some foreign albatross, some anchor around everyone else’s neck that dragged down the rest of them no matter what they were doing and no matter what I did.
But as the light from without touched me yesterday as I transcribed that story and remembered every smell, every sight, every tone of the mountainside itself along with what glorious shows of life that lay along the road that led back to OUR mountain along the valley’s floor, I could feel those same sun rays from fifty years ago lighting up my skin on the outside as my soul and spirit lit me up on the inside as clearly as today’s morning sun rays are out there at this instant nourishing those tiny carrot sprouts that rise above the soil’s darkness into their new life.
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At this same moment I know inside of myself that I walked that mountain as slowly as my mother would allow because I was eating it up. I noticed every step I took, every sound I heard, every wafting sweet-smelling breath of air that swirled around me. I noticed every twig and branch, every sight of water seeping from the cut earth banks and flowing, the edges of every patch of mud, every freshly cut root from every tree that had been hacked apart by some big caterpillar tractor that had TRIED to make that mountain road.
I heard every bird. I saw every cloud pass above me. And for all the meeting of light from without with my seven-year-old and growing light from within that happened to me upon that mountainside I remembered. I dreamt about those old mountain road switchbacks and the steep walk well into my 40s. I would travel there in my dreams on a road I knew only I could still find. And, oh how I grieved for most of my adult life for those days, for those nights.
I grieved for the mountains as the tractors came to strip away the trees and plants to add in the power poles. I grieved for every freshly cleared strip of land designed to reach someone’s newly built house rising among the trees. I grieved for that light I felt then, and I didn’t even know it. Today as I realize how naturally I responded to that Alaskan sanctity of land only newly touched by people, I also grieve for the eagles and bears and moose and beaver that fifty years ago belonged back in that valley and on that mountain before so many people came and scared them all away.
When I returned to that valley and to the place of my childhood last summer I found that the road all the way up that mountain is paved now. How nice for those who live there, content as they must be with their money, their good vehicles, with the plows that come and clear away all snow trouble before it bothers them. Nestled in all their houses built on subdivided land they are to me nothing more than signposts of change, of the passing of years, of the continued traveling of people who will go as far as they can around this world until there is barely a single thing left over from long ago and no more far away.
At the same time I am grateful that I was allowed as a small child to be a part of history there in that valley, on that mountain, in that time. Because there was so very little light allowed to shine for me in my terrified, suffering and very dark childhood, what light came to me in that place, on that land was essential for my very survival. And here I am today, writing these words, because of my part not only in the horror of my mother’s story that she never truly tells in her written words, but because of the beauty that she also knew — and wrote about.
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Our own life force is as much our light within as it would be for a plant – or for any other creation. We are designed biologically to respond to light from without. No matter how abused we have been, as I mentioned at the start of this post, we DID receive light from without that met our own life force light from within.
Because we are members of a social species we are designed first and foremost to respond to the light in other PEOPLE as our emotional-social brain and our entire nervous system-body grows and develops from birth (and before). Yet for some of us the human environment was far more toxic than light-enhancing. That could not possibly stop us from responding to nourishing, life promoting influences in our environment no matter what our age.
Perhaps we could see the love and devotion in a pet’s eyes. Perhaps a stranger offered us a compliment. Perhaps we became aware of a miracle of nature around us. Perhaps we loved to run, or to draw, or to cook, or to hit a ball, or to feel damp grass under the soles of our feet or squish wet sand between our toes.
As long as we are alive in a body supportive and nurturing influences surround and encompass us. They feed and sustain us every bit as much as air, water, food and sleep. And in that world we were born into SOMETHING and/or SOMEONE DID delight us – or we would not have survived.
We don’t usually think of roads as being living things. Yet without nearly constant human attention a road will simply return to the life it had BEFORE someone tried to change it into something it isn’t. This is a delightfully descriptive early homesteading letter my mother wrote – enjoy!
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May 9, 1959 Monday [Mildred’s mother recopied Mother’s writings onto pages – much harder for me to read!]
Dear, Dear Mother,
I hope you had a happy Mother’s Day. I would have called you but we were “back in” all weekend, so of course I couldn’t, but I thought of you all day!
We sure had a peculiar time for Mother’s Day – I must say! So much to tell you – how much I wish I could keep you informed day by day! First I’ll tell you about today, then go back.
Before even telling you about today, though, I’m writing real tiny so I can get more on the paper since I’m low on paper. I’ll first put you at ease by telling you I’m better. Oh, Mom how sick I was. The doctor said it might be two or three months, and Mom he wouldn’t let us pay for two office calls and it was only 25.00. Now isn’t that a bright note in Alaska of all places? I know I must watch it and always wear a kerchief in chilly weather, but I feel so much better. I still am a tiny bit weak but that is to be expected.
I saw today what a pokey-poke I am. We climbed to the homestead and it took me three hours from here [trailer at bottom of mountain?] to get up! I had to rest every few steps and sometimes just collapsed on the sleeping bag I was lugging up. Bill had a bag too and our camp dishes and Sharon. Even Linda beat me by far.
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Oh Mom for words to describe our so-called “road” – (ha-ha.)
The first steep hill is dried out but then we hit one alder tree grove and guess what? It’s near a mountainside marsh for half a mile! The water just seeps out of the ground.
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All the water runs from the soil now to our road and down it. Oh Mom, Mom, our road (?) has turned into a creek. I never saw anything like it – it’s a stream and where it runs in [to the road] it has even washed the mud off and it’s a stone bottom like a creek and then in between is oozy–deep mud. You sink way down and your boot sticks in and you can hardly pull it out. If you don’t move quickly you’d never get out. For all that distance one has to walk on the upper side through alders and brush; or try to walk in to “creek” or sink into the oozy mud.
Mildred’s caption on the back of this photograph: This is where we always had to duck through the alders – no other place to walk. ‘Your pack’ would catch on the trees and it would be a job – nasty alders. Oh, what days those were.
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Even the sides are muddy with deep gully ridges. The upper part is now dried out and is O.K. but so steep.
Bill told me that since the snow and ice had melted it was like that, but I had to see for myself! We just don’t know how long before it will dry out. Bill has diverted the water in as many places as he can but it really doesn’t help much.
It took us three hours to get there and another two hours to cook a simple meal over an open fire because the wind was blowing so hard.
Oh Mom I didn’t want to come back to the trailer – Pollard’s know the seventh [the day we told Land Office we were moving to the land to begin the seven month proving-up residency requirement] has passed. Bill put in residence the night he set up the Quonset [Jamesway, April 4, 1959] – will it count? Will we be contested? Oh Mom he must get up there, but no water there. What canwe do?
Tomorrow we’re buying a Yukon stove for heat up there. It will burn wood. We can chop and gather and save us hauling oil up now until we can drive – also a camp stove to cook on.
* When school is out I’ll stay there. We’ll try to prove up in seven months – to get title – that means clearing and cultivating twenty acres this summer! We have to have a tractor. We can’t depend on others to do it — Frary’s all booked up solid. Thomas’ broke down and he is building a new road for himself. Pollard wants land cleared. Carr needs his for his own work. You remember how busy everyone is here in the summer – the precious summer days.
I won’t rest until we get title to our place. We need at tractor to rebuild this road, clear our own land, haul up supplies now and in the future and to build a new road. When we get the $ we’ll turn the Ford and Truck in on a Tractor plus 800 down. 2,500 for a second hand one!
* Oh how the children loved it up there. Oh to be young, Mom. They scamper up the mountain shouting and laughing. They think it is great fun indeed! I’m glad we’re doing all this now while they are young!
How Bill ever managed to erect that enormous building single-handed I’ll never know. It would be simple enough to build a house alone, but those enormous big pieces! He did, though, and he slept there, and even we are dragging our possessions up – so as far as we are concerned we’ve set up residency. We gave up our apartment and certainly this trailer [still down at the foot of the mountain] is a camp along the way.
How I yearn to sleep there now and wish you could be up there too for the summer. I’m sorry I can’t come to California – my work is laid out here and every day is precious – so much to be done before winter sets in!
(I am finally selling out plastics – decided last week – so far still booking parties but sold out for 10% off; 20 – 30%, depending. Samples are going fast and I have very little left. Have two this week, hope that will do it! It’s been too much and can’t make profit when must travel so far etc. It’s made us all tired and irritable and been hard on everyone.)
School is over one week from Friday and I hope to be all done with it by then. I’ll hibernate to my mountain top even if I walk.
Bill thinks as soon as ground thaws he can dig out a spring in the valley for water. There are only a few remaining patches of snow up there and not a sign on low lands now. The berrybushes are all there as last year and the wildIris are now coming out.
Oh, Mom, I want to be done with town except for occasional trips and make my home here – all year round. Oh for a decent road, but as I tell Bill, I’d rather wait until we have title for sure or someone else will want our place and contest us. True?
I would give my eye teeth to have this trailer up there. It’s home now – elegant next to the Jamesway. It’s all a matter of comparison, isn’t it?
Saved your recent letters. Keep them rolling.
Now I’ll go back to the Tuesday two weeks from tomorrow [would have been April 26, 1959] when we got our jeep out. Remember? Oh that was a busy day. I had plastics to deliver, packing to be done. Bill planned to take Wednesday off and we were to move to the Mountain Top. I’d even seen the Principal about teaching the children the remainder of the year.
I sold the Motel owner 14.00 worth of plastics so paid for day but still owned $14. OUCH!
Finally headed home and oh it seemed good to leave the city behind. Stopped off at Frary’s to see about having him come up next day to do some road building. He’d been had last several days clearing land for Barclee and was boiling because Barclee’s land was steep — road in. He is so awful. Tried to talk us out of homesteading in here and in next breath told us how awful it was when he first homesteaded.
Well, as I said, he’s busy for some time to come and we left. As we drew out of his driveway Pollard’sdrove by – headed back to town. Oh No!! Said two jeeps were stuck in mud and couldn’t get by and those were being dug out – much too far to walk – at least five miles and already 8:00 P.M. and me still weak from being sick. There’s been the real bad marshy place where Pollard and Thomas had just worked over – now barely passable. Evidently when Frary’s tractor went over it, it ruined it – too heavy – and road collapsed.
We went sadly to Fire Lake Lodge for a decent meal – first decent meal in ages – 10 P.M. before we were done — full and satisfied. Asked Bockstahlers (she thinks all this if funny – ha-ha!).
I haven’t seen one person other than her since returning to Eagle River and don’t intend to until hold title to our own land!! It means the world to me – to both of us – if we could leave jeep there over night.
Stayed over night in town at Far North Motel – double room and private bath and adjoining restaurant — $17.00 for one night and well worth it in comparison with other places we’ve seen.
Wednesday night back to town again, but couldn’tpass mud hole. Pollards right behind us. So we walked across and left everything in car. I had gotten a tiny black kitten that day – three weeks old from one of my Haliday plastic women – and carried it to Barclee’s and he rode us to next mud hole. We all waked rest of the way. Next morning, Thursday, I had to go back to town so we all got up at 4:45 so we wouldn’t keep the Pollards waiting. They had their old pick-up truck waiting one mile down the road. We all walked to it and rode it to bad mud hole. We all got across it [left the pickup on the other side] and then in our own jeeps and then to town. What an expedition!
Thursday woman said she wanted plastic party Friday, so we left plastics at her house so we wouldn’t have to bother with them. Friday night stayed over at Far North Motel again and home Saturday.
When we got to mud hole all the homesteaders were working on the road. I wish I’d had a camera with me. Where the road went completely out when Frary went over it, they were scooping all the mud out of that spot to fill it in with gravel and then so pretty birch trees over this to make a bridge over the mud which is so oozy and deep you sink in it.
What a busy place. Our jeep was loaded with everything we had bought in town plus groceries plus clean laundry, but we couldn’t drive it over. We all put our high boots on which look freakish in town where everything is all dried up. We got out.
Ecklund offered to ride us home and Bill would stay and help the men. They carried the children over the mud. It would have gone to their knees and maybe over them. I barely got over – what gooey, gooey stuff.
A view of our trailer stuck at the bottom of our mountain on Pollard’s land – could not get it up “Horror Hill” to the homestead – and that’s slippery, gooey mud! Mildred’s comment on back of photo: This is where the trailer stayed for almost six months! Where we lived in April 1959. Taken from top of first hill.
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Home to messy trailer Haven’t really lived in it for some time due to sickness and jeep breaking down. No water though. Was in back of jeep so carried some from Pollard’s stream. Washed dishes, floor, some clothes. Made cake and Bill got home. He drove home – amazing to see the jeep get through after all this time and over those hundreds of birth limbs. Now isn’t that something? It’s called “corduroying” the road. Learn something new every day.
For all the trouble homesteading certainly is exciting to say the least.
Sunday [May 1st] morning Bill had a sales manager from Chan [sp?] Motors coming out to demonstrate a German jeep that he guaranteed (ha ha) could get up “Horror Hill.” Pollard, Carr and sons were all here to see. Well, it got up the hill and stuck in first mud hole. Got it out and he was determined to get through the next, but he couldn’t. Turned it around and he rammed it into a tree. Broke front windshield and top!
Boy, I bet he was mad. Men said Bill should have taken picture for the news of this $4,000 snazzy jeep before and after our road!
Oh I could write pages on all this, but not time. When I am up there for good there will be more time and peace.
I did write you about mosquitoes. We were eaten alive first night here after my being sick. Then got “Off,” a repellant that really works, comes in a spray bottle – no more trouble now! Thank goodness!
Bill doesn’t get home until quarter of seven.
He’s fine. We all feel fine, close again and happy. I felt mean and horrible before I was sick. Then Bill was so good and kind when I was sick and I’m so thankful to be better now that nothing else matters.
I did have time to think and know I’ll give up anything for our homestead. It’s ALL to our way of life now.
We’ll live in Jamesway and walk if I have to.
Sharon just came in. We have a strong glacier wind today. She feels like ice. Otherwise day is heavenly – blue skies and sunny. We’ve had some gorgeous weather recently.
Oh how I love to see you all. After we get title to our land – we’ll come there – should get title November 1959! Hooray!
My secret worry is that you and Pollards and others know that we are not on our land – Oh Mother I worry. Pray for us. We’ve worked so hard and there’s so much ahead yet.
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This is probably from March 1960, but it gives an idea on what 'stuck' looks like
Well, in the final throes of digging up ‘stuff in words’ I have (unexpectedly) unearthed the last of my mother’s homesteading journals. Today, if I was going to name her book I would title it something like this:
Moving Mildred’s Mountain — The Road to a Good Dream is Seldom Easy
An Alaskan Family’s Homesteading Tale
Oh - the road - 1959
“Of the deep wilderness of the wood where you and I shall walk free”
– words evidently written by Mildred around 1933 when she was 8-years-old
There were nearly more obstacles in my family’s story than a person could count – and moving the mountain to make a passable ROAD was certainly one of the main ones.
But even above all others the Number One Obstacle our family carried along with us throughout all time and over all distance and to and from every place we lived was NEVER identified, recognized, named, accepted or dealt with:
My Mother’s Borderline Personality Disorder
In the end this WAS what doomed The Dream. The demise of the homesteading dream happened not because of her mental illness itself but because it WAS never recognized, named or healed in any way. The family was left ‘playing parts’ on my mother’s dream-stage in a continuing downward spiral no matter how hard our family participated in Mother’s ‘drive’ to move up that Mountain and to find a way to stay there.
Well, nearing the end does not mean there aren’t some important lingering pages lying hidden here and there – just found this and respectfully post it — and, yes, she says it, her brother and her mother hurt her:
I see the masses are not hopping up and down trying to get to these last Alaskan posts – but I am hunting now, and I mean SCRAPING around looking for any more papers that are not transcribed yet. Talk about cleaning the skeletons out of the family closet! I have scribbed and scrubbed that old closet right out – and I’m on the disinfect and then polish-er-up end of this job.
Still have some of my grandmother’s letters here, but I have very little motivation to deal with her crappy handwriting. My youngest sister said I can send them to her – I don’t give a damn what’s in the rest of them for the most part.
This graphic is one of my favorites – it’s my father’s sketch March 1960 on how to attach the Jamesway to the trailer they hauled up the mountain.
Oh, how my moods change here – awhile ago, well, hours ago not I was so happy! I was out gathering wood and heard a tractor coming – my, such excitement – the children all came out, (it’s been showery all day) and we ran to greet it. It was our operator [‘cat skinner’ tractor operator]. He had come to inform me that he would help Bill bring my first load of household things up when bill got home from work.
He came in our very humble dwelling and I gave him a welcome hot cup of coffee. It was 6:00 P.M. then and he figured he’d just make it back down the mountain in time to meet Bill.
I’ve had quite a time keeping these good, good children amused all day – we’d been making paper hats out of newspapers and playing ‘tit-tat-toe’ [sic] – so I asked him if John could go – He’s so nice, just like a jolly Santa Claus and readily agreed! It had stopped raining and so he happily climbed in two-wheel trailer behind tractor and they took off down the mountain.
My, how our wood stove hungrily devours wood – but how warm it keeps the Jamesway – today, being rainy, I’ve kept it burning all day. It takes alot of wood fetching and we all help.
7:00 P.M. I went out to get more wood. It was sprinkling ever so lightly but the woods and grass smell ever so sweet and the wildflowers are blooming about – enormous blue flowers looking all the world like lilacs [they were lupine], blue bells etc.
I heard the tractor returning! Oh, how pleased I was – I gathered ten armloads of wood – the house must be cozy and warm when they returned damp and cold.
I peeled my last potatoes, opened string beans and fixed hamburg –
The lamp must be lit – oh, how temperamental it’s been lately and how dull. It doesn’t light up this big Jamesway the way it did the tiny trailer. I cleaned the glass inside and out. Bill tells me to ‘pump’ it up plenty and hold my finger over the hole. Oh, bright welcome light – then gradually it dimmed and went out! More fuel – I get the filter and go out and fill it up – pump, pump and on it goes. (But gosh, I’m frightened of it and it seems to know it).
Up til now I’ve stubbornly and flatly refused to light our Coleman Camp Stove. I’ve heard of them exploding and only will use it when Bill is home. Consequently I have to haul ever so much more wood and it takes forever on the Yukon stove. Today, I asked Bill to show me how and did cook the children’s breakfast on it and how quickly it heats dish water.
But tonight I couldn’t get it to work and just lost courage.
All the wood burned up – it started pouring outside and Oh Mom, the tractor had seemed so close and it stopped completely.
I got more wood – all wet – the potatoes and meat won’t cook. I try the stove again, it won’t light and I’d cry if it would help but it wouldn’t.
So I fix the three patient girls a half peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some fruit punch and they go to bed in their sleeping bags on the floor because Bill was bringing the wash—in their clothes – and I wonder?
Oh Mom – they’re angels – as I put them to bed and tuck them in and hear their prayers – Cindy says “Mommy I added a special prayer tonight for our homestead.” It’s their dream too – oh such darlings – we cannot fail them. It’s theirs as much as ours.
Now it’s close to 11:00 P.M. – no Bill, no John – no tractor, no trailer – what happened? Are they stuck in the damned mud – or was the trailer too loaded down and the road couldn’t hold up?
Then why not walk home? Poor darling John was so thrilled to go – he gets so tired of being with three girls and me all the time and now this.
I gave him soup and crackers at 5:00 – all of them – but no dinner and cold and wet and mosquito bitten.
Oh Mom, Mom. Mom!!!
I’m sitting here close to lantern for light and swatting mosquitoes who smell the half-cooked food and are attracted by the warmth, the lantern light and me! I must have killed two dozen since I started this! (My spray is gone!)
You know me – I’ve never been patient and it’s all I’ve had to be since one year ago when we started all this!! — and all I can do now is sit, wait and wonder and hear the purr of the lantern and the drip, drop of the rain! – and the wood is all gone too!
11:15 P.M. – Still not home. I am worried! Oh Mother remember when Bill used to be half an hour late sometimes on the L.A. Freeway and I’d call you because I feared an accident.
Oh Mom, who do I call now? It’s still raining and pitch black outside – I went out awhile ago to listen – listen. I’ve listened so much I can almost imagine the ‘putt putt’ sound. A minute ago I was certain I heard it – but opened the tiny window and only heard the rushing river below.
If it wasn’t for leaving the three girls I’d start down the road looking for them.
I’m worried especially about John. It just dawned on me that I don’t really know that man at all. I never would have let him go but they were on their way to meet Bill.
Bill said he might stop to help Carr fix the road below his place where the creek flooded over but I figured he wouldn’t in the rain –
And I did hear a tractor, but that was at 7:00 and not it’s 11:20.
And Smokey she’s been gone all day. She’s never once left us here alone before today. She used to follow us down to the trailer when we all out together and wait there for us – or rather come bounding down the road to meet us at the sound of the jeep.
Why, I’ve been lost without her and worried over her.
She may have followed Bill but why today and why didn’t she return!
She never lets John out of her sight a minute and we all adore her and depend on her too.
Oh Mom, I’m scared!
Where are they all?
Here is Bill’s gun hanging on the wall but I don’t even know how to load it!
I’ve been sitting here praying. I want us to be together.
I’ve been so alone lately – yet always I’ve kept the children together.
I miss John – where is he? He’ll have pneumonia for sure and he’s so thin anyways.
Glorious clear, sunny day. First light frost last night. Red letter day for two reasons. First Bill is really plowing today and I kick myself for not having any film
– (I’m not going to make menus and lists galore ) – so that I’ll have ingredients for recipes handy (no running to market here if I need one thing etc.) – also want to plan quickie meals and yet very nutritious – we’ll need to pack in every vitamin.
Secondly I drove for the first time down one night and out and back! I honked and honked the jeep on way down to trailer [Linda note: What trailer?] – I was so proud and RELIEVED.
Our mile is still muddy but this is – believe it or not – third day of clear weather and the road has dried out considerably – and no need for chains SO – I decided to try it – I still had more census to take and load to take to Nursery –
EVENING – A gorgeous evening follows a gorgeous day and I realize I’ve been depressed lately because I’ve been in tight cramped quarters for so many rainy weeks – and no view at all through the teensy hut windows
— Ah today though has more than made up for all that those weeks lacked.
The very air has been marvelously clear after the rain and today seemed even more lovely than yesterday.
Other people thought so too as they trek to the highways in search of outlets that can’t be found in the city – many have come down our jeep trail to explore the unbeaten paths but the lower homesteaders turn them back before they reach our road – once again I’m glad to be on our Mountain!!
There were three cars turned back from Pollard’s today while I had coffee with her!
I just returned from a short walk down to Bill – the children are tucked in early tonight to get a few extra winks before school starts and I am once again alone with my thoughts!!
— As I returned up the hill from his plowing and saw the cheerful smoke wending skyward from our hut chimney and knew all was well and snug inside I had a marvelous sense of accomplishment – Oh, how crude to any outsider – but to us – well, as I look at the first home we’ve made in the wilderness and trudge happily crushing soft, rich dirt clumps beneath my feet I feel rich – and I feel like shouting – We’ve done this and I feel rich indeed!
The sun was setting and the sky was a mass of vivid orange tonight above the purple Mountains that form Sleeping Beauty above Knik Arm and the clouds were purple above the orange sky. – Oh to paint and be able to capture this scenery –
It’s cool but nice – so nice to have these few days of sun before winter – Indian Summer for sure and how the children reveled in it!!!
(Magic) Precious Moments
I take time off to
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When my mother writes 'hut' and Jamesway, this is it
Stop the Storm 
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