Beyond the Bear (3 page)

She was living elsewhere by the time we started exchanging greetings and opinions about the weather. Working as a high-school counselor for Cook Inlet Tribal Council in Anchorage, she was living halfway between Girdwood and the city in the small, woodsy community of Bird Creek. Tired of the commute, she’d heard about this oasis of mountain living above Anchorage called Bear Valley, considered by my crowd as the Girdwood annex, and was intrigued. I’d just put earnest money down on my cabin up there and was in a holding pattern waiting to close.

“You should talk to Dan,” a friend told her.

Standing around the fire pit one night in the backyard at Max’s, I saw her weaving around this person and that person and some other person’s dog. In snug jeans, a maroon hoodie, and ankle-high Steger mukluks, she was headed my way as if on a mission. I plunged my hands deep into my front pockets and rocked back on my heels. She walked up. I grinned. She grinned. “Hey,” I said. “Hey,” she said. She hooked her straight, shoulder-length hair behind her ears and got down to business.

“I heard you got a place up Bear Valley. I’m actually looking to buy some land, and was hoping you might have some leads.”

“Yeah, I do. I mean, I will once some property line issues get straightened out. I poked around up there for quite a while before finding my place, and have a pretty good handle on what’s for sale. I could show you around if you want.”

Amber stared at me a moment while the offer sunk in. She hadn’t expected that. Maybe a nudge in the right direction, a number to call or something, but not a private tour. She started nodding her head in slow motion.

“Cool,” she said as she fiddled with a dangly earring. “Great. Yeah. That would be awesome.”

Her carpool partner dropped her off at Alaska Children’s Services after work a couple of days later. Waiting for me in the lobby, she could have sworn that Barb Good, the motherly receptionist who’d more or less adopted me and kept me well stocked with her homemade wild-berry jams, was giving her the once-over. I finally rescued her, and we hopped into my truck, a tricked-out, tomato-red, extended cab Toyota Tacoma I’d bought at an Arizona pawn shop my senior year at Prescott—chrome runners, brush guards, custom rims, sweet struts, and a killer stereo with an amplifier built in under the seat. Banished to the backseat, my dog, Maya, who went everywhere with me including work, kept trying to reclaim her spot up front, pushing forward between the seats, panting over Amber’s left shoulder, making her laugh and taking the edge off our mutual nervousness.

I drove south to the edge of the city, then up into the Chugach Mountains, taking a sharp turn at one side road, then another, and another. Amber, being the reticent type, seemed grateful that I was a talker. Born premature, I’d entered the world sickly and went deaf as a toddler, which seriously delayed my speech. Surgery fixed me, and I’d been making up for lost time ever since. We talked about my truck, about our dogs, about plans for the coming summer. The further up we went, the less hospitable the road. After several miles, we met the road-sign equivalent of a mean dog: “Restricted Road. Hazard. Ice conditions. Four-wheel drive, reinforced chains required. All vehicles travel at driver’s own risk . . .” This was my kind of driveway.

On the final stretch, pavement finally gave up, and a contorted, grimacing guardrail made it clear the sign back there wasn’t just for show. Halfway up the last mile of potholes and washboard came a nosebleed-steep pitch that had Amber clutching the oh-shit handle above the passenger door. At the top, I took a sharp right and the road narrowed, passing a cabin here and a cabin there before coming to one with a set of old wooden skis crossed above the porch, the one I was in the process of buying.

“Wow,” Amber said as she climbed out of my truck in Birkenstock sandals, a short-sleeved blouse, and another of her long, flowy skirts. “It’s pretty much heaven up here.”

It was a gorgeous May evening, warm by springtime-in-Alaska standards, at least fifty-something degrees, although that high up, patches of stubborn, windblown snow still clung to the mountainside. We stood together in silence a moment.

“Obviously the place needs some work,” I laughed.

Notorious Chugach Mountain gusts that can hit Category 1, even 2, hurricane strengths, had pried off a section of the cabin’s weather-beaten plywood exterior, leaving Tyvek exposed and the place looking gap toothed. Its innards were about as refined, with an aluminum ladder connecting the first floor to the second via an opening just wide enough to shove through a mattress folded up like a taco. The kitchen counter was covered in a mishmash of salvaged linoleum, and the sink drained into a five-gallon bucket that demanded vigilance lest it overflow onto the floor. The bathroom was an outhouse with no frills, not even
Far Side
cartoons tacked to the walls, just a one-seater with a bucket of lime on the floor and a coffee can as a toilet paper holder. It didn’t even have a door.

For me this place was all about the land. Out back was endless hiking and telemark-ski terrain, including a gully packed with snow that was skiable almost year-round. Out front was a view of Cook Inlet, Sleeping Lady mountain from her knees to her toes, and Denali, the highest peak in North America at 20,320 feet. Plus the next two stateliest peaks in the Alaska Range, Mount Foraker and Mount Hunter. Even the outhouse had a million-dollar view.

Three adjacent lots were among those for sale, so the three of us tromped over to check them out, brush and snow crunching beneath our feet. As Amber walked ahead, I noticed her skirt was the slightest bit see-through in the intense seasonal light, enough to imagine the shape of her legs. I watched as she moved across disheveled land as gracefully as a caribou floats across tussocks, except that her skirt kept getting caught on the shrubberies and she’d have to stop now and then and give a little tug.
Nope
, I thought,
I wouldn’t mind having this woman as a neighbor one bit
.

“It’s stunning up here,” she said at the end of the tour. “I can’t think of any place I’d rather live.”

A silence settled over us as we stood side by side looking out at Denali, then down on the city, filling our lungs with the delicacy of mountain air. We turned to each other and locked eyes. I went all lightheaded. Time to go.

I got Maya loaded up, and we headed down the mountainside, then turned south toward Turnagain Arm, an alcove of Cook Inlet, with glistening mudflats and restless seawaters on one side, three-thousand-foot mountains on the other, Dall sheep poised like gargoyles on the cliffs above. About halfway to Girdwood, just a few miles from Amber’s place in Bird Creek, I noticed a cluster of cars pulled off on the side of the road and people milling about the shoulder wielding binoculars and cameras. Out there in the arm the incoming tide was rising and rolling, rising and rolling like whitewater rapids. Only
they weren’t rapids. I checked my mirrors, braked, and pulled over.

“Sorry, girl,” I told Maya, “but you gotta stay.”

Amber and I scrambled out of my truck, and leaving the crowd behind, climbed over the guardrail, crossed the railroad tracks, slid down a short scree slope on our heels, then scrambled up a rocky outcropping that dropped off into saltwater the color of unpolished steel.

“Can you believe this?” I hollered over the din of water and wind. “They’re right here! In-friggin’-credible.”

Just beyond the water’s edge, what looked to be at least a hundred beluga whales were riding the incoming tide in pursuit of a small, anadromous fish called hooligan. We sat spellbound at the edge of the outcropping, letting the scene before us sink in. The whales were so close we could not only hear the
poof
. . .
poof
. . .
poof
of their blowholes but could swear we felt the windblown mist of their breath upon our faces.

Amber shook her head over and over in disbelief. I scooted closer, until we were hip-to-hip and I could feel the warmth of her body.

“I had no idea they came this close to shore,” I said. “We are so lucky.”

“We are
so
lucky. This is unbelievable.”

We sat then without talking, watching wave after wave of white whales, listening to the rhythm of their breath and of water lapping against the rocks below. Amber looked so fine, her wind-tossed hair the color of Scottish ale. I had to practically bite my shoulder to keep from putting my arm around her.

The belugas continued up Turnagain Arm, row after disorderly row of them. We saw them off until it was down to a handful of stragglers and the crowd along the highway had thinned. The wind picked up and the air got chilly. We needed to get moving, but neither of us was ready to call it a night.

We stopped for beers down the highway at the Brown Bear Saloon, a classic Alaska dive with dustbin decor, seam-sealed in cigarette smoke and wallpapered in business cards, autographed dollar bills, and bumper stickers like “Guns Don’t Kill People; Guns Kill Dinner.” The only ones in the place besides the bartender were two arthritic dogs, one of them missing a leg. We grabbed a table next to a window and, all hopped up from what we’d just witnessed, rattled on about the whales and Bear Valley and our respective jobs while Amber fiddled her cocktail napkin into shreds. One beer became another, and I found myself leaning into her words, unable to take my eyes off her. When she started describing her future ambitions, to live overseas so her children could experience things she never knew existed growing up in small-town Minnesota, I felt like the woman had been reading my mind.

“Exactly! That’s exactly what I want for my kids.”

Mid-laugh I kind of lunged across the table and grabbed both her hands in mine. Then, as if I’d snatched a pair of potatoes straight from the oven, I dropped them, jerked back, and continued to laugh, hoping she didn’t notice. She noticed.

When our glasses were empty, I considered the possibilities of where another round might lead. Something between panic and euphoria balled up in my stomach, like fear dipped in syrup. I was falling for her, and when I fall, I fall like a sack of rocks. More beer, I decided, wasn’t just a bad idea, it was a really bad idea.

I dropped her off at her house in Bird Creek, my engine left running. After an awkward and hasty goodbye, I sped the rest of the way home with Thievery Corporation’s “The Richest Man in Babylon” blasting from my speakers, fingers drumming the steering wheel, wide-eyed and dumbstruck, as if Cupid had bashed me upside the head with a tire iron.

The next morning, recovered from the intensity of the evening, I decided not to push it. Things were too good in my life to risk falling in love. I’d been there, done that, and had sworn off girlfriends for a while after my last two relationships went up in smoke. As jerkish as it sounds, I didn’t call her. Not the next day, nor the day after that. I’d had my heart broken twice, and wasn’t ready to give it another try. Besides, I was still on this grand adventure and having too much fun answering to no one but my dog.

In the following weeks when I was out on the town, I found myself hoping to bump into her, and sometimes I would. We would hang out, drink some beers, shoot some pool, have some laughs, get a little cozy, and at the end of the night I’d chicken out and we’d go our separate ways. Not one for drama, Amber decided I really wasn’t interested. The truth was, I couldn’t get her out of my mind, especially during a trip I made to California for the High Sierra Music Festival over the Fourth of July weekend. There I was with my brother and some of my closest buddies from college, with music and theatrics and enticing women all around, and all I could think of was how much better it would be had Amber come along.

By the time I returned I’d decided to go for it. The New Orleans band Galactic was playing at the ski lodge that coming weekend, and I knew Amber would be there. I just hoped it wasn’t too late.

The night of the show, I got home from work around seven. I grilled up some fresh salmon, tossed together a salad from my garden, and had a quiet dinner in the sun alone on my deck. I washed my dishes and stacked them in the drainer. I brought Maya inside, filled her water dish, poured kibble into her bowl, and topped it off with salmon skin peeled off the grill. While brushing my teeth in front of the mirror, I noticed my hair was a bit rowdier than usual. I pulled my favorite ball cap over the top of it, and headed out to the show.

Halfway through the first set I saw her up front near the stage. I watched her a while, then worked my way up, dodging dancers’ elbows and toes. Our eyes met. We nodded at each other. If she was irritated with me for dropping the ball she didn’t show it. I gave her a big hug, and she gave me a big grin.

“It’s
really
good to see you,” I shouted over the din.

We danced side by side facing the stage in a crush of bobbing bodies, and hung around each other off and on the rest of the night. But the place was so packed, by the time the show ended around midnight, I had lost track of her. I waited outside by the front door watching people pour out of the lodge, but didn’t see her. I went back inside, looked around, went back out, waited some more. Then I noticed clusters of people milling about the parking lot, and there she was, sitting on the tailgate of her truck, talking to friends while Hobbit was off watering the shrubberies.

Everyone was heading to the bars, but Amber had been holding back, hoping I would show up. When she saw me strolling her way, hands in my pockets, acting all nonchalant as if I’d forgotten which way was home, she hopped off the tailgate to greet me.

“Yo, Amber! You coming?” someone shouted from across the way. She glanced in that direction, then back at me and shrugged. “Well?”

“I’m not feeling the whole bar thing right now,” I said. “Could I talk you into a beer at my place?”

She paused a moment. “Yeah, sure, that sounds good to me.”

Back at the house, I grabbed two IPAs from the refrigerator, popped them open, handed her one, and took a long draw from the other for courage. We took them out on the deck overlooking the creek, where, leaning side by side against the railing, I took a deep breath and finally said it.