+THE LIGHT FROM WITHOUT MEETING THE LIGHT FROM WITHIN

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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.

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+A ROAD IS A LIVING ‘THING’ – 1959 HOMESTEADING ‘STORY’

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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 can we 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 berry bushes are all there as last year and the wild Iris 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’s drove 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’t pass 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

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+THE DOOMED MOVE UP MILDRED’S MOUNTAIN

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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

SEE: +SOMETHING ODD I FOUND IN MY MOTHER’S CHILDHOOD HAND

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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.

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+FOUND THIS: MY MOTHER’S CHILDHOOD STORY

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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:

*1974 Mother’s account of her “Family History”

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+ABOUT OUT OF ‘MAIL’ AND SKELETONS IN THE FAMILY CLOSET

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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.

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+APRIL 15, 1960 – MY MOTHER ON THE MOUNTAIN – LISTENING

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April 15, 1960 Friday 10:30 P.M.

Dearest Mother,

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.

Oh God, Oh God – help us!

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+MY FATHER’S FIRST WRITTEN ALASKAN HOMESTEADING PLAN

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My father’s first written homesteading plan.  Clue:  Nothing in this PLAN worked out according to plan!

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"Means of tansportation" up and down the mountain other than our feet!

+MY MOTHER HOMESTEADING – FEELING ‘RICH’

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September 6, 1959 Sunday – Journal

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

+SOMETHING ODD I FOUND IN MY MOTHER’S CHILDHOOD HAND

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Yes, I am working my way to the bottom of my mother’s papers and just found something that strikes me as being SO STRANGE!

In with my mother’s mother’s college graduation information from Boston University 1917 and masters graduation transcript and information for the University of Minnesota in 1918 I found two very old regular size envelopes with ‘Bureau of Educational and Vocational Guidance, 6 Park Street, Boston, Mass. printed on them.  Neither envelope was ever mailed or addressed – but here is what is written in my mother’s child handwriting – evidently before she even knew how to spell her own name (I am going to correct the spelling here in this text):

On the first one:

and presently upon her breast a baby raised and cried aloud.  Her mother was so surprised she wept upon her golden hair which was upon her breast.  She wept and wept until a bride arrived and swept

On the second one:

a ruined city in my heart.  Of the deep wilderness of the wood where you and I shall walk free as when I rode that day where the bare foot maiden raked the hay.

Mildrid

[actual spelling of her name is Mildred] – ah, my youngest sister solved the puzzle – partly:

“As you point out, very precocious of her to understand the meaning of the poetry.”

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Famous poet, John Greenleaf Whittier:

http://www.poetry-archive.com/w/maud_muller.html

“Free as when I rode that day,

Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay.”

The strangeness of these two pieces – archetypal image of the mother and baby – but why with the sorrow and the weeping?  – prophetic?
THIS is what I believe took my mother to Alaska. THIS is what called her to homestead.
Archetypal – prophetic of the HUNGER FOR THE LAND, of the ruined city in the heart – reminds me of her dark rainbow storm dream – healed upon the land?

I would think because of the misspelled words that my mother did not copy these words from some other text, which does not mean that she didn’t know the words from some other place.  Of course the context for these writings will never be known, but they definitely have been saved for a very long time – probably since around 1935 (when my mother was 10 or even from an earlier time).

This looks about like an age eight handwriting – even then the seeds of how my mother’s life turned out had certainly already been planted within her beginning with not having her needs met from infancy forward.  The loss of her grandfather, of her father, and the loss of her mother when her mother went to work to support her family once she had divorced when my mother was five.

Whatever all the combined influences were in her very early years, I can’t help but wonder about these images contained upon these envelopes that have probably traveled 25,000 miles and are 75 years old today, June 16, 2010 when I found them:  The a troubled mother with her infant daughter and the yearning for the healing of the land.

How would it happen that a child this young would understand the meaning of these phrases, “a ruined city in my heart” and “the deep wilderness of the wood where you and I shall walk free?”  I wonder.  I have to deeply wonder.

(And if these are archetypal images with their archetypal figures, whom might the ‘bride’  and ‘the barefoot maiden’ be?)

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This reminds me of something I wrote August 21, 2007 on a little piece of paper that I dropped into the ‘mess’ of my mother’s papers and also found today:

Did Mother have to pay the price for “going on being” by leaving the biggest part of who she was and who she could have been and was meant to be — behind?

(Informed compassion) – Understanding frees me to love my Mother — and then to love myself better — as an extension of her (and Dad).  If we “hate” a parent we cannot help but have that hatred carry over to how we feel about our self.

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+MY MOTHER, THE PIONEER

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As I transcribed this one of my mother’s 1957 early Alaskan letters seven weeks into her new life, I find myself ‘wishing’ that a miracle could have been possible so that some kind of surgery could have been performed that would have removed every single remnant of my mother’s mental illness from her.  As I work with these last of the hundreds and hundreds of pages of her writing that I have transcribed, I continue to wonder, “Who actually WAS my mother?”

It’s as if her mental illness possessed her, took over her mind and body, so that who my mother ACTUALLY was had to fight and struggle to exist side-by-side within that SAME so-troubled body and mind.  When am I glimpsing my ‘real’ mother and when the ‘sick’ one?  In the end, it’s not mine to figure this out, as much as a part of me wants to.

Instead, some part of me remembers from my childhood that it was the other way around and that the ‘problem’ was me, meaning that the set-up was if LINDA could be amputated and removed from my mother’s and therefore from your family’s life, everything would have been fine!

It’s very hard for me not to feel as I read her writings (which of course do not talk about her mental illness or the terrible abuse of me she was so capable of committing) that somehow all the trouble with Linda REALLY WAS BECAUSE THERE WAS SOMETHING BAD AND WRONG WITH ME.  Part of me tells me, “Linda, it all WAS your fault!  Read these words.  See what a marvelous person your mother REALLY was.  The problem WAS all you.  Linda, YOU BROKE YOUR MOTHER!”

In this letter I realize that my mother is describing something I would name LAND HUNGER.  This kind of hunger is carried by some people, but not by the majority.  This LAND HUNGER DID belong to America’s early pioneers, I have no doubt of this fact.   But I don’t sense this as a ‘land fever’ in my mother’s letter here.  It seems to be literally a longing, a great hunger.

My mother makes a most interesting and insightful comment in this piece of writing:

“I must have been a pioneer in my old life.”

I believe a part of my mother that was her TRUE self (not the sick self) is present in this writing:

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October 21, 1957 Monday evening

Dear Mother,

Right this minute I should be washing dinner dishes – my kitchen is a mess!  I usually attempt to wash them now immediately after dinner but tonight we ate late and I read to the children instead.  So-o- will make this short – really too!

Bill brought home Linda’s [late] Birthday package and note and my nice letter!  I just had to write you tonight – without delay – to let you know how beautiful I think the skirt is and what’s more, and this I know, we’ll relieve you – it’s a perfect fit and length!!!!!  I consider the whole thing a marvelous accomplished [sic] and you certainly are a seamstress plus everything else!  Congratulations.  I’d probably never fully appreciate the beauty of the workmanship if I didn’t sew myself – but it’s really perfectly done.  Well, I could rave on and on.

Linda does like it and I told her you did it for her because you loved her and she must show her love for you and appreciation by taking very good care of it.  I adore the colors – they’re beautiful.  Wouldn’t a royal or powder blue sweater be pretty too?  The white is very cute and fits well too – it’s also extremely versatile.  You know – even the buttons were in just the right spot.  I sure love it.

Cindy size 5 – and she looked adoringly at it and said I’d like one too!!  HINT

Knock on wood – we’re all very fine now.  The weather is very warm and that one light snow flurry weeks ago has been it!  This warm weather is most unusual for this time of year!!!  Today it showered some but the week-end was perfect.  I’ll tell you more next time I write but a short of what we did over the week-end.

Friday I did make pie, clean and The Glenn Briggs, from across the creek came over.  We had worried some over way to entertain them as they’re more your age – oh about 50 I guess – (you’re so energetic, you seem 50 – REALLY!)  We had a nice time – just talking.  He’s very nice and we both like him very much.  He’s unlike Scotty who we don’t care to see much of.  He’s natural, intelligent, bulging with ideas, enthusiastic and just plain nice!!  Could be Bill’s father – looks like Bill and acts like him – our doorish and all.  (More energetic, but that comes from living in Alaska!)

His wife is nice – more quiet and reserved and harder to get to know.  Seems to resent the influx of people here in Eagle River, even though they’re partly responsible.  They were the ones who had originally lived on Vanover’s farm, having bought the 160 acre homestead.  (Farmed and had hog ranch for seven years and then leased 40 acres to Vanovers – who bought it after three years.  They exercised an option to buy and meanwhile prices here had gone up – so Briggs regretted not waiting.  They subdivided rest here and built this house, Janie’s and their own – sold Pottel’s that house and land.  He bought another 160 acre adjoining homestead and has sold lots off and really made $ — lives off of profits!!!  Some dealer (operator).  He’s still holding about 90 acres across road, next to stream, beyond Vanovers.

Oh, Mom, we’ve been miserable this weekend and sick for land.  It’s all gone in this area – we’re too late.  If only we had come here eight years ago, I’ve been sick all week-end over it.

I found out Johnsons – parents of our babysitter – Homesteaded 160 acres five years ago.  The most beautiful land you ever saw!  Yes, five years ago we could have and we’re too late.

It’s $800 an acre now and will go up, up, up!  Many are getting rich – you multiply it!  Isn’t it sickening!  Then most are holding it for further, higher prices.  This section is booming.  They’re adding three new stores now to our shopping center – and exclusive restaurant!!

Oh Mom, I so love it here – Eagle River Road is home to me!

Saturday we looked into five acres of land Briggs told us about plus a homesteaded ‘habitable house’ (??) on it.  You see they could PROVE UP on the land, get title, and leave it.  This 160 acres belongs to the owner of the Woodcraft Shop [Bockstahler] over across from our mailboxes – the one with such beautiful lamps etc.  He originally had his shop in this house – expanded and took a business tract and now really has something.

Well, Briggs quoted 2500 for the five acres plus house.  Now it’s 4,000 and no road to it.  Well there are two roads but can’t use them – so there would be that cost.  To think this man owned this and left it.  He too, is not anxious to sell as prices going up, up, up.  His 160 acres is about three miles beyond us.  He has level land and slight slopes, all overlooking mountains, glacier and Eagle River.  It’s indescribably beautiful – I’d give all I own to own it!

He will sell these five acres for 4,000 – 1,000 down and it’s a bargain as prices stand now because it does have a partly finished house (he lived there two years) of three rooms and a well!  [Bockstahler’s ‘shack’ or ‘cabin’ we rented later in the summer]

What a view!  Oh Mother, we took a picnic there and it was grand!  Of course there’s no stream (a small brook!) but the mountains look like Heidi’s Alps and all at once I’m reminded of ‘Trail of Lonesome Pine’ scenery – remember?  It’s just as beautiful and one lonesome pine stood outside the front windows.

I believe my parents DID buy this five acres the following summer - and then let it go when they moved into Anchorage for the winter of 1958 and then to homestead spring of 1959
There is 'the lone pine' Mildred writes about in this October 1957 letter

If we had 1,000 (ha, ha) I would buy it —  We could still homestead out someday (maybe).  It’s even gone in Valley now!  Or tract, etc. but you see, these all require you to live on them right away.  Here’s a house – of sorts – no bathroom etc. – but Bill could fix it up in a few months and we could move in when our lease here expires and save that rent.

Five acres would cost 30,000 there in Pasadena – and you’d never find it.  Lumber is so high here that house is worth something!  There’s room for horses, a garden etc. and it’s still in this section – same stores, school, etc.

The house there now is on the perfect location – it sits on a knoll overlooking the valley below and surrounding mountains.  I would like to move it elsewhere on the five acres, fix it up some – live in it build another (one room and move in) then rent the old house for $100.

Oh darn it, $ $ $ — we have a few pennies and Bills, bills, bills.

I wish you were here to talk to – and to see this scenery.  It’s spectacular, wonderful, marvelous and the skies so blue, blue – the air like wine.  You’d adore it and all the cultural advantages of Pasadena – best schools, stores, shops!!

I could kick [many underlines] us around Alaska for not having come before!  I tell you I was sick all week-end and I want to do something next summer!  Our lease here is up August first.  Come before then because I’m warning you – I’ll live in a tent or quonset hut to get land like that!

[Linda note:  And she did!  Actually a combination of both:  A Jamesway is a canvas Quonset, like a big curved tent.  This is ‘LAND HUNGER’, and she had it bad.]

The further up the Eagle River Road you go the less flat land there is.  The Johnson Place is perfect – as they have flat land and a view of the mountains and even the glacier!  Beyond it gets very mountainous – no level land – even the road is carved out of the mountain and to the right is a drop to the river and swampy land – so even as the road is built as the government plans to extend it, there won’t be livable land there!

The part that hurts me the most is that there are no hicks Mom, here.  The people are refined, educated and plain NICE – they come from California mostly (Funny).  They’re just like us and they homesteaded.  They did without electricity, roads etc. – even five years ago Mrs. Briggs didn’t have electricity here!  In fact, while building this place – it’s seven years old – they saw a bear in the yard!  And one time a baby bear was looking through our dining room window!  So there!!

Well, my dishes are still undone.  Once I get started.

So even though we would have to buy that land at $800 an acre we would be ahead.  There could be a phone, plumbing, electricity etc.  It would be half mile from Eagle River Road and one mile from nearest neighbor and four miles from shopping center – but it’s perfect for me.  Why, dream though.  It’s quite impossible.  But see, say our payments would be 40 per month – we could live in it in August, September, October and apply this 150 a month to fix it up.  1,000 down, 1,000 payments = 2,000 Balance by next August – and only 40 a month payments and no rent!  Just 100 from here for three months or so would make it livable.  Maybe we could dicker to use neighbor’s road (there are two roads already!)

Tell me your reaction.  I bet it sounds primitive to you but to me it’s right.  I must have been a pioneer in my old life.  I love I there – and it’s not rugged to me – only picturesque and beautiful.  [Linda note:  bold type is mine.]

The children adore it here too and are completely happy.  They’re real Alaskans!

Sunday they went to church and we spent afternoon home.  I made hot rolls – best yet.  It’s a basic sweet dough recipe.  I made half into Swedish Tea Ring (m-m!) and other half into Egg braid.  They both looked professional.  The Braid raised so high it filled my cooking sheet!  I’ll bake you bread and rolls next summer!

What a note – I can’t resist!

I think Carolyn is [bunch of squiggles].  So there!  Not to write and so does Bill!!  Shall I write Charlie?

Hope you’re really taking care and getting more rest and please eat right.  Maybe we’ll reserve ‘old house’ for you for summer, say!!  — an idea!  I have too many for my own good.

Good night Mom.  I miss you terribly!!  Everything here I want to share with you – how will I ever wait.  Come for Xmas instead, could you?  And again in July.  How I wish you could!!  Will be good now and do dishes.  Bill has gone up to ask Jo Anne about that movie thing I got him into – and I promised to clean kitchen up before he came home!

[Mildred sketched the five acres with notes]

House is not included in price so is really a gift.  Owners had to build it under Homesteading Requirements.  There’s flat land for garden or corral, a driveway of sorts.  Woods comprise the five acres, could be farmed or left as is.  No work on this land here, it’s forest!  Bill could use birch for outside of house and it would look like a Swiss Chalet in Switzerland.

P.S.  Finally I got a nice letter from Grace!  And a joint note from group of girls in Glendora.  Grace recently had a car accident – she’s OK.  She tells me to write (what do you know), found my letters so interesting.  Said I should contract Star News about column ‘Lloyd’s in Alaska’.  Wouldn’t hurt to inquire, will you?

I wrote various letters on Friday and sent various pictures to the whole gang.  Please explain to Charlie I wouldn’t send anything to Carolyn.  Anyways she’s selfish not to write in six weeks – plain mean!!  Anyways explain to Charlie – O.K.!  He’s so busy I didn’t want to obligate him to show them around and Elsie and Byron will enjoy it!

* I hope you keep my letters.  I spend so much time writing to you I neglect making notes for books and might need my letters to you for reference!  [Linda note:  June 16, 2010 as I transcribe these letters – again, she did not DATE any of them even with this intention to use them as historical record!  What a job I have to work from postmarks when the letters are with envelopes or piece the story together!]

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