The Year 2023, Before & Beyond

In the beginning, there was Greensaw, my construction company. 1205 S. 8th Street, my rowhome I renovated and sold for a tugboat in Alaska. A blue Toyota 4Runner bought off Ebay for 1500 bucks that spirited me, at times at the speed of 35 mph as we climbed the Rockies, across the country. Around this time, in fall of 2011, I started this blog. 

The other day I took a moment to reconnect with the posts, from the beginning. It goes without saying that the project ended up in tears – not so much in happiness or sadness, but at the sheer capriciousness of fate, how nothing and everything could have been predicted.

In other words, if I had come across you at a truck stop outside of Des Moines and we sat in a booth drinking coffee and you slid across to me a black and white photo of a curly-haired girl with no front teeth and you said that she, one day, will be your child, and you would be the one to snip the line connecting her to her mother. There she is, standing in a flower dress in front of a post and rail fence that you built with your wife in Sitka, Alaska, harvesting the yellow cedar from the surrounding rainforest. What would I have said in return? Most likely that you’re off your damn rocker. I would have finished my dank, cold coffee, thrown down a bill or two, and gotten back on the road.

After all, that’s when I started writing this, in fall of 2011. I sold the Philly rowhome I spent five years renovating to move to Alaska to take on a 100-foot World War II Army Harbor tugboat called the Adak. Loaded up the dog and headed west to Alaska, where the tug waited, purchased for 45k on fire sale. In October of 2012 I met Rachel while teaching Cuban salsa. (Once more the glory of Alaska – you do things you really have no right doing – aka teaching salsa and thinking that this brilliant, beautiful woman from New Jersey might go actually go on a date with you.) 

Three years later, on May 21st 2015, Haley Marie entered our lives with her outsized marble eyes. Then Kiera-Lee aka “Kiki” 17 months later.

In September 2018 we moved to Russia for a year, came back, and got surprised by wee Quinn Mary Jo Anguria Jones a year later. Life, in all its non compos mentis Thunderdome glory, was in full swing. 

Never – even in my most altered, prescient state – could I have predicted such a trajectory. Looking into the mirror in Sitka to see a South Jersey gal staring right back at me. Publishing The Alaskan Laundry with Houghton Mifflin, then Whispering Alaska with Penguin/Random House, seeing it win the 2021 Green Earth Book Award. Now in the process of selling Americans in Siberia. At the moment my dream editor reads, so please light a candle.

It’s been a ride, I’m not sure how else to put it. Though I have “put it” here in the blog, and I’m happy for that, that I will have this record, that the girls and Rachel will have this record of a life built not straight up, certainly, but built well and with love.

With that comes recognition of folks who continue to get on my about publishing these dispatches. Ellen Brooks, for one, and so many others. Thanks for staying on me, and for continuing to read even with all the dead deer photos and images of butchering. Even after all the false starts, or what seemed like false starts turning into doors, doors with thresholds worn down like soap because – lo and behold, these doors had always been there, people treading through them across the ages (to borrow an image from Cormac McCarthy.) And now it was my turn. As it turns out nothing like the kid, but something. At the very least.

I’ve put together here what comes down to a blog of the last year. Beginning with the girls in January of 2022 sitting on the gate of the Blue Moose pickup truck, which took us 10k miles across the country during the pandemic. A rig sold because diesel engines just don’t do well on an island with 17 miles of road. Quinn in her camo and favorite whale hat, barely hanging on, with Kiki in her favorite ushanka, so called because it cover your ears.

In that same month of January our family celebrated Burns Night, as we do every year, making our haggis with the stomach of a Sitka blacktail deer. This year taking on particular meaning because my sister discovered that we actually come from the Clan Marjoribanks in Lowland Scotland, erstwhile haters of the British and descendants from Robert the Bruce his own self. Also inventor of the Golden Retriever, according to Wiki. All of this neatly explaining my love of low light and stone, wool and milky tea. All those times weeping at bagpipes for no good reason.

Through February we continued to set our crab traps off Dot, our skiff – each girl having a trap of her own, making the decision when to drop it. Sometimes we had pulls of 8 Dungeness crabs. Out goes the newspaper on the kitchen table, in goes the butter and lemon to the ramekins for a slick, glistening feast of the sweetest meat you’ll ever taste. If you ever do come out with us be forewarned: Haley has no patience with anyone scared of handling a crab. JUST PICK IT UP. IT’S A CRAB.

As spring came on we helped our friend Xander put his boat on the grid. Kiki had the chance to help paint the hull, working very carefully to make sure each spot on the keel was covered. Quinn’s sisters began teaching her the fine art of searching tidepools, appearing like a wee red gnome trolling the seaweed. The girls continued their work on our yellow cedar post-and-rail fence, using wood we harvested with the skiff. Haley knocking out the mortises with a Japanese chisel, Kiki firing up the circ saw (with help, Donna). Nodding politely when the neighbors walked by, the old joke of “When are the cattle coming in?” really not so funny considering that we could, according to town rules, have goats and one cow.

In the meantime Rachel really got after it in the garden, building planters, getting in artichokes and kale and beets and Brussel sprouts. An astonishing amount of stuff actually grows here in the rainforest, so much as you get enough sand from Indian River to allow water to drain. 

In April I had the opportunity to travel to Svalbard, in the Arctic, to write an article for Harper’s Magazine on climate change. That trip has been fairly thoroughly documented in this blog, so I won’t spend too much time on it, preferring instead to let the work of crazy-talented photographer Jordan Rosen speak. 

Jordan set up his hand-picked crew with Scandinavia’s largest wooden sailing vessel The Linden, deal being that if we were able to help get it across the Barents Sea separating mainland Norway from Svalbard without getting attacked by Russian warships and their hypersonic weapons, and we could get to Svalbard, a collection of nine different islands governed by Norway but really open to any nation, then we could get essentially free passage across. And that is what happened. As I’ve recounted we took shifts at the helm, dodging icebergs and rogue waves, throwing up on the heads of minke whales (Jordan), generally making fools of ourselves as we hung from the lines to try and raise the heavy canvas, making for our own selves wings to usher the wooden craft in the direction of the northern pole of this earth. 

With the help of three Swiss aboard who introduced us to a crazy card game involving scorpions and bulls, we made it, managing to drop the hook in a remote bay across Isfjorden from the Norwegian town of Longyearbyen. Making first tracks on a nameless peak after crossing a glacier all roped up, kept warm by Voormi outerwear, and alive by Buck knives.

Witnessing a polar bear with her cub shortly after killing a bearded seal. Doing the same, hunting for seal with 6.5 Creedmore rounds but coming up not so lucky. On a later day skiing six miles across sea ice to make it to the abandoned Soviet-era coal mine called Pyramiden.

Entering that ghost town on skis with our active Special Forces friend skiing point, on the ready to deal with unfriendly polar bears or Russians. Keeping a close eye on all windows for contact. Instead being greeted by a lovely Russian in a wool sweater who called herself Barbara, who gave us accommodations and food before Jordan and I asked a few too many questions and took a few too many photos, and charming Barbara ushered us back out onto the sea ice for the six-mile ski home with our fledgling crew in -20 degree weather with -30 winds off whipping off the monstrous Nordenskiold glacier to the east (the same direction the brass statue of Lenin pointed, directly toward Moscow.) 

But not before we toured the old mine, doing pull-ups on the bars still not rusted through due to the dry air, checking out the magnificent abandoned cafeteria. Walking through the school, the ghosts of kindergarteners asking questions in small voices like “Why can’t your kids come play with us? What has happened?” I knew how much Haley and Kiki missed Russia, their friends, Siberia. What had happened. So sad, all of it.

I won’t say much more about that because the article – not in Harper’s, alas, because I did not write it on climate change because it was so cold up there and that’s just not the story Jordan and I found – just dropped in Adventure Journal, and the article should be online in the next week or two. Also pieces I wrote for Buck Knives and Voormi outerwear forthcoming, as part of the deal. (Both sponsored the trip.)

Back in Sitka, summer became a hive of activity, teaching at Sitka Fine Arts, lecturing on the cruise ships, selling books at every opportunity. Haley hopping on the dingo to move soil that SECON, the construction company rebuilding Sawmill Creek Road here in Sitka, removed from the back of the church. At the end of the day she operated the machinery better than me, and probably took more pleasure doing so. 

One of my best friends from Philly invited me to climb the Grand Teton. We knocked that out of the park – absolutely amazing, but also a full wake-up call to how I have a good 15 more years of doing that sort of thing before the wheels start to loosen and come off. Take a look at the rock here and my buddy on it to get a sense of the exposure. Def pretty gnarly, as they say in the biz. 

The trip put me (us) in the mindset of doing the coolest stuff possible with the girls now before that happens. As a guy recently told me, you have this window between 5 and 11, especially with the girls, when they still think you’re awesome, changes have not yet started, and you can truly make some good memories. After that they start seeing through your little games, realize you’re not actually that cool. Also phones. Phones scare me, how kids watch one another on GPS apps. Who is with who, who’s doing what, constant surveillance.

The girls climbed Verstovia with great aplomb. They had already done Mosquito Cove, and made it to the bench on Verstovia – so getting to Picnic Rock, at over 2500 feet, was not too shabby. Next comes the volcano, hopefully this summer, and then across the island.

Haley helped me put wood flooring down at my Mancave, as the girls called it – a room we built in the garage intended for a writing space, but quickly turned into a spot for doing gymnastics. 

Then the summer was over, with the girls excited to go to school, and Quinn desperate to do the same. Kiki starting at Baranof Elementary, with Haley off to Keet Gooshi Heen to begin second grade. Baranof just a walk away, Kiki following in the footsteps of her older sister, as I imagine she will be for life, more or less. Deer season opened and I got one hiking near Blue Lake alone, blowing the call, the girls getting to butchering and making jerky (sorry, it had to get in there).

Back in Sitka I helped get the Adak dialed in for a trip to Wrangell for a haul-out, though it felt like just the day before we had taken her down for the trip, blazing out the teredo worms with a weed burner, inhaling that glorious, nutty stench. That huge Fairbanks-Morse direct reversible easily firing up, blowing its signature smoke rings – and off the grand dame went to become young again. Along with the boat went Dot, our skiff, as a safety craft. As of this writing the skiff is still not back with us. We miss her, and her crab-catching abilities, and hope to have her back here soon.

Haley made no attempt to hide her frustration with me for not having put up enough fish over the course of the summer to hold us through winter – the lack of boat no excuse. So she took matters into her own hands, slapping on her polarized sunglasses, grabbing her rod to snag salmon with a treble hook tied with an orange shred of survey tape. Kiki meanwhile deeply disturbed that we didn’t have spider webs on our house with a big black widow climbing up it for Halloween. But alas Rachel does not like Halloween, even though it’s our middle daughter’s favorite holiday – perhaps an early attempt to distance herself from mom? The girls still got out trick-or-treating, including Quinn, who (third child that she is) had to make do with a patched-together leprechaun/fairy/princess costume of some dug out of the basement.

We did our harvesting of potatoes, the girls completely into it, Kiki wearing a helmet just in case a potato decided to tumble from the sky. Also got the mother load of winter chanterelles and hedgehogs to be dried for the winter. I was invited to travel to Port Alexander, on the southern tip of Baranof Island, to teach writing to a group of kiddos down there learning for a couple months in the wilderness. And wilderness it is, for sure – perhaps 40 folks in town in the winter, this wave-lashed boardwalk town that once called itself the king salmon capital of the world. PA as it’s known used to have a Main Street of sorts with a number of shops and lodges for fishermen. Ghosts of spent cannery workers, hard-up fishermen and itinerant Irish mobsters seemed to lurk in the mossy woods. With our friend Michaela we picked bog cranberries in the muskeg to freeze for Thanksgiving. This compelled Rachel and me on return to get out into the muskegs around Sitka to continue the hunt. Rachel became particularly adept at searching out the sapphires of light that seem to wink back at you from the green. The girls quickly became distracted by playing in the mud, and with the dog.

In November, a couple weeks before Thanksgiving, my aunt suddenly passed. An absolute shock. We pooled our miles and pennies to fly into NYC and rent a car to Danville, PA, visiting the farm, introducing the girls to their cousins. The service a blend of sadness and joy – Quinn has Mary Jo’s middle name, and as a kid growing up in Philly I adored spending time on the farm with my cousins, all older, and aunt and uncle. What a great pleasure to see the girls play with cousins they had never met, careening about the church in Danville eating butterscotch haystacks, chow mein noodles with peanut butter and melted butterscotch chips, perhaps the most scrumptious and deadly thing you’ll ever ingest. On the return we worked in a trip to New York City to meet with my agent, a sunny walk in Central Park to Bethesda Fountain discussing the submission of Americans in Siberia. Afterward we went up to Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Center, because why not, and it was a beautiful day and the girls had never experienced such a thing.

We had a low-key Thanksgiving here at home, and then lo and behold Christmas carols were in the air once more. Quinn drinking snow from the branches because we had brought no water only hot chocolate in the Thermos. Skating on Swann Lake, and also on a frozen pond in the middle of Galankin Island, motoring out there on a cold, clear day to make a fire and do donuts with Quinn’s stroller, which she finally fell asleep in. On the way back Haley out on the back deck lamenting our loss of Dot and the crab pots, but nonetheless happy to be on the water. 

And then it was Christmas its own self, with all of the fanfare and cheer. Snow sticking on the ground, wild winds. Missing family but also glad to be snug, waking up in our home for presents, giving Santa less of a trip. At right about midnight I got up on a ladder with furry deer hooves sliced off and frozen, to make deer tracks in the snow. A couple 2x4s to slam down the imprints of sled runners. A few shreds of carrots and good to go. Sitting down to write this here at the beginning of January I’d sum up 2022 as a year of setting up a number of projects. Getting a bunch of articles into the world, finding good investors for the church project, seeing those plans come together as we prepare to go into financing. The Green Earth Book Award huge, clearing the way for a great 2023, and the new book.

Mostly, though, the projects of three small creatures we have been able to keep alive and happy for the most part is most gratifying. Except when we forget to bring water into the woods. They don’t like that so much, especially when all the rivers and small creeks are frozen.

As so many folks who know better than me say, the best pieces of work make you feel something. Jordan’s work is like that – and it’s a shame, if not a crying one, that we – he – didn’t get the cover of Adventure Journal. (Don’t get me wrong, Stephen Casimiro is an amazing editor to work with, things have never been easier.) For what it’s worth this photo at the end here is the one I would have liked to have seen on the cover –  a small dark cabin on a snowy ridge, slow and becoming. Or a series of knots on the deck, carefully crafted then let alone to do their work. That’s adventure, in my mind.

In the beginning, there was a tugboat in Alaska. And a royal blue Toyota 4Runner bought off Ebay for 1500 bucks. Followed by a westward push to Alaska, a remote island that once helped me pay for college, and provided a way forward at the age of 19. There I was, in Philly, grasping and doing stupid stuff, hurting good people for reasons only slightly more clear to me now. Wanting, in a crude and often unhelpful way, to step into the Thunderdome of Life, raising kids, not trusting that I could do a good job, that I could be there with a full heart and clear eyes, not trusting that I had the courage to cut lose and just go for it. One big fall start. And then this.

Even now, sitting on this couch working to usher these words and photos into the ether, reviewing these successive posts through all these years, I’m astonished. Shocked and awed by what has come to be.

On second thought, if I had met you at that truck stop at Des Moines I think I would have just laughed in your face. Laughed at the idea that any of this, any of this at all, could have come to be – never mind all of it. That kid with no teeth and a post-and-rail fence built by my wife and me could have anything to do with my life. Or summiting the Grand Teton, balancing on four centimeters of sea ice, peeling the leaves of artichokes planted in dirt of our own making.

All of it continues to be a blessing and gift and not a day goes by when I don’t appreciate it. Rereading this blog only deepens that feeling, and makes me happy to have a record in words and photos. And if tomorrow a blast of magnetism knocked it all out for eternity, that would be fine too.

Because I’ve saved it on a jump drive. To hold in a little buckskin pouch, a little shred of light to take along through the darkened world.

Thanks, as always, for reading.