The Source of All Things (28 page)

Three weeks later, I was living in Denali. I'd moved into a small, rustic cabin in employee housing, completed a week of ranger training, and now split my time between ten-hour shifts at the backcountry desk in the visitors' center and ten-day backcountry “hitches.” Traveling with one or two other rangers, I would hike up one enormous river drainage and down another, crossing
paths with grizzly bears, caribou, and moose. With no established trails to guide us, we made our own paths, always keeping the Alaska Range in our vision. Singing, so that the park's resident bears could hear us coming, we bushwhacked through walls of sticky, thick alder and side hilled across scree- and snow-covered mountains.

All of the park's major rivers flow directly from glaciers that pour out of the Alaska Range, and we waded through their icy, waist-deep currents. Once, I fell in the McKinley River with my backpack on and nearly drowned; the silt-choked water sucked me under before I could unlatch my waist belt. At first I flowed backward and could see my hiking partners disappearing behind me. Eventually the current turned me around, until I was facing forward. My foot became lodged in the rocks at the bottom of the river, and I got stuck, with the muddy waves piling up behind me. My chest constricted and my fingers turned wooden. Knowing I would die if I didn't free myself from my backpack, I beat at my waist strap until the buckle came open, but my chest strap remained latched. The water filled my sleeping bag and pulled against my shoulders. For a few terrifying seconds I thought I would drown, right there, in the shadow of Mount McKinley, but at the last possible moment, when my face was inches from going under, I unlatched the top buckle, wormed out of the straps, and exploded out of the river.

Even though I knew that the wilderness could really, actually kill me, it didn't stop me from crossing rivers. The following day, I started another patrol in a different part of the park and spent four days hiking in a downpour. My group and I watched the Chulitna River rise and fall with each change in the rain's intensity. We
hiked along the bank the entire time and made several waist- to chest-deep crossings without incident.

Through May and June, I became even more adept at back-country travel. It never got dark, but I took a flashlight when I went hiking. Sometimes I patrolled the park solo, leaving the visitors' center in my scratchy grey uniform and riding the backpacker's bus to my favorite drop-offs. Tourists would point at my gold badge, and I could see admiration—and confusion—in their faces. I could tell they were trying to piece together how a girl like me ended up with a job as scary and important as a Denali backcountry ranger. As we bumped down the ninety-mile road to Wonder Lake, I'd mind my own business, but inevitably someone would wobble to my perch near the back of the bus, slide into the nearest empty seat, and ask, “Are you a ranger?”

Folding my arms across my chest, I'd say, “Yep.”

“What are you doing?”

“Going out on patrol.”

By now, several people would be listening.

“You're going alone?” one would ask.

“Seems that way,” I'd say.

“But what about all the bears? And aren't you afraid you'll get lost?”

I took my time answering, aware that by now the whole bus was rapt. But I knew I had the time to string them along. The one-way ride to Wonder Lake took six hours, longer if that particular bus driver stopped every time he or she saw a ptarmigan on the side of the road. Forty people would cram against the windows trying to snap pictures of the fluffy brown bird. I'd hang back, making it obvious that I'd seen more than my share of ptarmigans—as well
as golden eagles, wolves, and lynx. When the photo op ended, I'd wait for the tourists to resume our conversation, then answer their questions.

“I'm not afraid,” I'd tell them. “Because Denali bears are used to people. No one's ever been killed by a grizzly in this park. Just let them know you're coming and they'll usually steer clear. Of course, store your food properly, and never run if one of them charges, but other than that, no problem. As for navigating, that's even easier. The park road runs east to west. The Alaska Range lies south of the road, and all the rivers run south to north. It's big and wide and goes on forever. Beyond that, I don't know anything.”

I
t would take another year before I could finally extricate myself from Colin's clutches and serve him divorce papers enough times for him to realize I was serious. After the blowup in Talkeetna, he followed me to Denali, but I continued to assert that our relationship was over. He lived in our cabin, even though it technically belonged to me. I did everything I could to remove him, including calling the police and trying to get a restraining order, telling the Department of Immigration that he was working without a visa, and barging in on him at unexpected moments. In the end, I left Alaska altogether and embarked on a six-week trip to South America.

When I returned, a friend named Julia offered me a place to live with her and her sister in Winter Park, Colorado, a small, noncommercial ski town seventy miles from Denver. It was separated from Interstate 70 by 12,000-foot Berthoud Pass. The first time I drove the pass, on New Year's Day 1998, a huge storm was
raging across the Rocky Mountains. Avalanches ripped down the snow-loaded faces, covering roads and closing them. Fortunately the road on I traveled stayed clear long enough for me to get to Winter Park.

On the night I arrived, a guy named Greg gave me a free lift ticket to go skiing. On the second day, I rode the lifts from nine to four and found my new calling. On the third day, I went to the season pass office and bought my first all-access season pass. I skied every day that winter, after finishing my job at the local bagel shop, pouring coffee for tourists and smearing cream cheese on round bread. Colin followed me to Winter Park, and for a brief period I lived with him again. But I quickly realized that there was nothing worth salvaging between us, so I moved in with Julia's younger sister, Melanie. Melanie gave me a couch to sleep on, friendship and love, and the encouragement I would need to leave the toothless dog musher once and for all.

By February of 1998, I felt like the world had given me the gift of freedom. The previous October, I'd left Alaska to spend six weeks bike touring through Ecuador. Traveling with an audio digital recorder, I reported stories from my journey and sent them back to Talkeetna. The stories focused on everything from the food we ate—boiled fish with bulging eyes—to a women's prison where mothers were raising their babies, and were so popular that the local radio station agreed to run the whole series twice.

I was finally beginning to take my writing more seriously. Over the next few years, between going to school at the University of Alaska and then, later, the University of Colorado, I'd get a degree in English with an emphasis on creative writing. While living in Winter Park, I'd start writing for the local paper. Stories in publications
like
Climbing, Skiing, Outside
, and
Powder
followed—all of which solidified my belief that I possessed the skill, voice, and life experience to become a professional journalist. It would happen, and at a rate I couldn't believe.

But on that day in February, I wasn't writing or even thinking about writing. I was standing in the Berthoud Pass parking lot getting ready to go skiing. Ten inches of new snow had fallen, and my friends were itching to get going. I was attaching my avalanche transceiver, which lets people know your location if you get buried in a snow slide, when out of nowhere, a fluffy black malamute head-butted me in the side. He was running around the parking lot, chasing his own tail. It took me a while to place him, but I knew I had seen him before. Alaska. Cold beer. A boy with scraggly hair and eyes the color of blue glass. Wait! The malamute was Tank Edmondson, and Tank Edmondson was Shawn Edmondson's dog!

“Tank!” I shouted. “What are you doing on the top of Berthoud Pass?”

Snow was falling in big, fat flakes, piling up on steep slopes lined by dark green trees. All around me, giant mountains towered above a sleepy postcard valley, where I had now acquired a handful of ski buddies and friends. Almost daily, we loaded up in someone's car, drove to Berthoud, and skied laps through untracked powder, which billowed up like clouds of smoke around our chests.

Tank waddled back, his huge black tail wagging his massive black body. I kneeled down and scratched his forehead but immediately began scanning the parking lot. Heat crawled up through my belly, settling in my neck and cheeks. Somewhere in this lot
was the sweet, handsome boy I'd dreamed about since leaving Talkeetna.

“Tracy Ross?” shouted a voice from across the parking lot. “What are you doing in Colorado petting my dog?” I followed the voice until I spotted Shawn. He was dressed in navy blue ski pants, a bright yellow raincoat, and big, black ski goggles, but even in all his layers I could see the outline of the body that made my insides quiver in Talkeetna. The closer he got, the more I had to fight the urge to run up and hug him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked again. “And where's Colin?”

I didn't tell him that Colin had followed me because I knew right then and there that within a matter of days I'd be ending things for good. I would follow the advice of Julia and Melanie, who would tell me to confront him in public. I would take him to a restaurant so we could discuss things “out in the open,” and tell him, adamantly and decisively, that I wanted a divorce. When his voice started to rise, I would look around and say, “Do you really want to scream at me in front of all these people?” Then I'd pack my things and move in with Melanie, a photographer who once ran the photo desk for the Midwest bureau of
Time
magazine.

Shawn and I circled around each other, smiling.

“So what's up? How are you doing? Are you here alone?” he said.

My heart pounded and my head buzzed. “Colin's here, but it's over between us. Do you want to go skiing?”

On our first date, Shawn and I skied from the opening of the lifts at nine a.m. until the closing, at four. We ducked in and out of trees and hit wind-lips until our legs could barely support us. Shawn flashed through the spruce stands so fast I could barely see him. But every few minutes he'd stop, call out my name, and make sure I was still with him.

We spent the entire winter skiing, riding the lifts or hiking up the steep, windblown slopes surrounding Berthoud Pass. Shawn knew where the wind deposited snow in deep, buttery pockets that were also relatively safe from avalanches. We skied together every second we could, learning about each other in the place we both felt most alive and comfortable.

I don't know when, but at some point early in our relationship, I told Shawn about the abuse. We were probably skiing, because I wouldn't have wanted to make it into a big deal. I thought he needed to know, in case we were planning on taking our relationship further. When I told him, he responded with the same low-key, not-a-deal-breaker attitude with which I'd presented the information.

I'm glad that when he heard, he didn't fly off the handle and pretend like he wanted to kill my dad. I never wanted him to bare his chest and beat it on my behalf. Maybe I'd gotten used to no one truly caring about my wounds; maybe I only wanted to tell him so that when I fell into my inevitable sadness, which still hit me unexpectedly even though I'd surrounded myself with so much love and beauty, he would know that I and my history were the cause of it—not him.

That spring, I was going back to Denali. My ranger job awaited, and nothing could keep me from it. Shawn hadn't applied for jobs in Alaska and had a good job working for an excavation company in Winter Park. We'd loved spending the winter together, but both of us were adamant about not “diving in” to a relationship. Still, when the ski season ended, neither of us was in any rush to extinguish what we'd only begun.