The Source of All Things (34 page)

Eighteen minutes after I pushed record on my Dictaphone in July 2007, I ended my dad's and my conversation. I knew that I had heard all I could take. My dad sipped water from a clear, blue bottle, and I bent down and started loading my backpack.

We sat, listening to the wind scream along the ridge directly
behind us, and before long, we both knew it was time to go. I struggled to stand up, because it felt like someone had cut open my chest and crammed it with boulders. Dad creaked into a standing position and for a second acted like he was going to hug me. I shook my head, and backed so close to the edge of the altar that I almost tumbled off it. From that moment on until we were back in Twin Falls, I made sure to keep myself out of my dad's arms' reach.

We recrossed the boulders beneath The Temple and then continued down the trail to our last campsite. When Dad asked how much longer I wanted to stay, I said, “Let's get the hell out of here.” We packed our things and started hiking back in the direction we'd come from. I knew I'd walk all night if that's what it took to cover the fifteen or so miles back to the boat ramp. I also knew that if my dad and I missed the last shuttle boat of the evening, I would keep walking, circumnavigating the lake, until I was finally back among other people.

Dad and I drifted down the trail, barely speaking to each other. I didn't know whether to scream at him or thank him. Twenty-eight years had passed since he first abused me, and now, finally, I had the truth. I liked knowing that I'd caught his confession on my tape recorder and could now share it with anyone I wanted. But no matter how hard I tried to rouse myself into a feeling of lightness, my heart felt a thousand times heavier than when we'd started.

I knew my dad had done me a magnificent favor by being honest, but nothing could have prepared me for the things he'd told me. All my life I'd convinced myself that I was overblowing
my abuse—that I was the selfish, melodramatic girl my parents, brother, and grandparents had always called me. But twenty-five to fifty nights of molestation? When I looked through family albums from the years I was abused, I saw a girl who, though awkward looking, was often smiling. Not once did I see the strained smiles or tear stains I'd imagined I would. Two years later, when I asked my dad to decode my apparent happiness, he said, “You didn't suffer as much as you could have. I drugged you with your mother's sleeping pills.”

I reeled from him in horror.

“What?” I choked.

“I knew from what happened after the trailer that you wouldn't be able to handle what I needed to do. I gave them to you at night, when you were already groggy from sleeping. I'm sorry, Tracy. I was sick.”

So much for the oft-touted “closure.” That revelation is the thousand pound weight I now carry around my neck. It turns out the truth doesn't quite set one free. But would I rather know the full story? Yes, absolutely. This disclosure turns my dad into a premeditated predator, not “just” the admittedly sick individual he had to be to molest a child. But now I understand my sleepwalking through so many years, the phantoms that formed in the shadows around me.

All along I'd thought that my dad's confession would be my ultimate vindication—the moment in the movie when the colors fade and the beautiful music starts playing. Dad's revelation at The Temple wasn't anything like I'd expected. It only raised more questions. Some of them I knew would never be answered, because
I wasn't brave enough to ask them. Like how he'd been able to watch me suffer and still put his own needs first. Now that I was a mother, it horrified me that he could take a child's trust and twist it into a form of bondage.

Around dusk on the last evening of our trip, Dad and I descended the final switchbacks to Redfish Lake. Waves lapped against the boat dock, and crows argued in the trees. My dad removed his boots and stuck his toes in the water. I looked at his bare ankles and felt the urge to vomit. He smiled up at me and said, “Talk about a little piece of heaven,” and I wanted to tackle him and throw him into the lake. My hands strained against my wrists, wanting to punch, scratch, rip his ears off. But I was too pathetic. I sat on the hillside above him and drew circles with my fingers in the dirt.

After a while the boat arrived, and we boarded it, shoving our gear into the stern. Dad clambered to the back and said, “Man, a beer is gonna taste good.” I silently agreed with him, imagining the cold, yeasty liquid sliding across my tonsils. But my heart was plagued by a feeling that a much larger mystery remained.

Could I still forgive him? I moved past forgiveness into an acid understanding etched in pain. I had explored the perimeters of love, however warped, and saw that love could retain some value while wreaking destruction at the same time. There can be no resolution of my childhood suffering, but I have the best life I can dream of. My main goal is to protect my own children from such injuries to body and soul. I refuse to let past pain intrude on the present possibility of joy. Shawn, Scout, Hatcher, and I all share the beauty of wilderness, the adventures that helped save me. My
sons are spirited, outspoken, and instructed on the dangers of pedophiles. Shawn is a kind, compassionate companion, and my job is the envy of everyone I know.

But where to go, how to be, with this new information? Before the hike, I had started to accommodate my parents into my children's lives, allowing them to babysit, have unchaperoned access to my sons. That ended with the word “drugged.” For months after hearing it, I severed all ties.

Love cuts with a serrated blade, and there are shreds of my feelings that form an unbreakable bond to my parents. They're getting older and weaker. I now see them, but rarely, on special occasions. At those “holidays,” the damage between us floats like static electricity. I never let my parents watch my kids alone and try, diplomatically, to keep space between the boys' bodies and my father's. When my parents depart, I turn to Shawn, Scout, and Hatcher and know that though I've just compromised I've been a better, more protective mother. So maybe there is peace, however hard won.

I often think
back on the last morning of Dad's and my father-daughter journey—how we packed up, stopped at a bakery for coffee, and left for Twin Falls. I listened to my favorite Neko Case album,
Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
, three times in a row. As we drove south, I could see the Sawtooths receding behind me. I thought it was nice that for the first time in a long time, my dad didn't ask me to change the music.

Two hours later, Dad dropped me in Twin Falls. As he drove away, the more lasting impact of my journey began to percolate up
into my consciousness. Over four days in July, I had retraveled the fateful path of my eight-year-old self's last innocent trek into the Sawtooths. I'd passed the signposts of my past—Russian John hot spring and the ranger station on Highway 75.

This time, I noted the small wooden sign, barely visible from the overlook on Galena Pass. Through a camera lens you might not even notice it, dwarfed as it is by the mountains. But if you know where to look, you'll find that sign, and below it, a tiny spring buried in overgrown grass. The narrow silver streak of water trickles upward—the headwaters of the River of No Return. It seeps out of the earth, gathers volume and speed, and becomes so fierce one hundred miles from here that it cuts a trench in the earth a thousand feet deep.

People say the river was named this because the current is so strong it's impossible to travel upstream. But when I was a little girl, I stood on the banks watching sockeye salmon struggling toward their ancient spawning grounds at Redfish Lake. Nine hundred miles from their starting point in the Pacific, they arrived redder than overripe tomatoes, their flesh already breaking apart.

In the early 1970s, thousands of fish returned here to lay their eggs and die. Then we put in dams along the Columbia and Snake rivers. By 1975, eight concrete dams stood like barriers between the Pacific Ocean and Redfish Lake; by 1995, the sockeye population had dwindled to zero. Many people took this as a sign that the world had become too corrupt for something as pure as native salmon to exist. I might have believed that, too, until the summer of 2007, when four Snake River sockeye made it home.

The ultimate irony began to buoy me—in that same year, I, too, had reversed the trip. I had managed what the river declared was
impossible. Just like those salmon, I had fought my way upstream on my own impassable river. Now, it was time to return to my real life and see if I could carry out my own, new equilibrium.

Not long after my trip, I was schooning down the Snake River in a boat with Mayz Leonard and her family. It was evening, the air was warm, and blue-and-purple dragonflies darted in the pale, tall grasses. Giant whitefish rose to the surface of the water and swallowed clouds of gnats and mosquitoes. The mud on the river's edge smelled like life—and a million years of granite and volcanoes. To our sides, the blocky walls of the Snake River Canyon rose skyward. And stretching between them, like a silver thread nearly five-hundred feet feet above the water, was the Perrine Bridge.

BASE jumpers now flock to the bridge to climb onto its steel railing and leap off over the water. Twenty-three years ago, I would have died jumping off the bridge. If I had been lucky, my body would have floated up against the lava-rock-cluttered embankment, so that everyone would know I was not some runaway but a girl with too much pain to continue living. But when BASE jumpers leap, they free-fall for several seconds and then pull a cord attached to a small parachute. Using risers to control their direction, they hover over the water and then land in the scraggly bushes at the river's edge. We drove the boat until we were bobbing directly below the bridge and the jumpers. I found it beautiful to sit with Mayz's family and watch the bodies floating toward us.

It looked effortless, the way they drifted on the wind currents rising off the river, but I knew that they'd taken measures to protect themselves from danger. With their parachutes, they could
have the experience of flying and still know that they were in for a safe landing. As I watched them, I began to realize something about my own experience.

I put myself in the shoes of the BASE jumpers, who—unknown to them—were flying off the first great turning point of my life. I realized that although I had just done something life threatening in the Sawtooths, I'd been my own protector. And I thought that maybe, after all these years of looking for someone else to save me, I had finally become my own salvation.

I
've recounted the events in this book as I remember them; they are my memories, told from my point of view. Others may remember events differently, but I have tried to be honest, fair, and accurate on all counts.

T
his book never would have happened without the early support and encouragement of two outstanding editors: Jon Dorn, editor-in-chief of
Backpacker
magazine, and Peter Flax, editor-in-chief of
Bicycling.
Together, they took an incredible risk sending me to Idaho three times to report the magazine version of
The Source of All Things.
Their deep care and exquisite editing led to that story winning the National Magazine Award, and to my eventual meeting of both my agents, Todd Shuster and Lane Zachary, and my book editors, Dominick Anfuso and Leah Miller. I don't have words to express the bottomless gratitude I feel for Lane and Todd, who did more work on my behalf than any person should ever have to, and bolstered my confidence over and over when I believed I couldn't do this. Dominick and Leah provided encouragement during my darkest moments and helped to elevate my book from mere life story to work of art.

Melanie Stephens, Mayz Leonard, Meredith Mahoney, Amy Burtaine, Julia Stephens, and Linda Edmondson (sisters all, plus one mother-in-law), were inexhaustible champions, full of love and support, and constantly cajoled me to write more. I'm lucky to have such dynamic, generous friends. Max Regan helped me
organize my thoughts and kept me interested in my own work by pointing out metaphors, connections, and meaning I didn't know I was creating. Michelle Theall, Angela Hart, Rachel Odell, and Hannah Nordhaus all read the manuscript in its various stages and gave insightful (though sometimes hard-to-hear) feedback.

Special thanks to the magnificent Claire Dederer and Mike Kessler, who came in at the end of the process and helped immensely. Claire loved my book unabashedly (giving me a final jolt of confidence), even when it was still covered in blemishes. Mike, master storyteller and soldier of truth, pressed me to tell all, especially when it came to the final revelation that I had been drugged, lest I shortchange my readers.

I don't have words to express my love and gratitude for my husband, Shawn, and my sons, Scout and Hatcher, who keep me grounded, focused on the good things, and laughing. I love you to the moon and back, and through the Earth, to China.